Published in Litigation, Volume 50, Number 1, Fall 2023. © 2023 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be
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On a Sticky Wicket
Representing the Best Interests of
Brainwashed and Programmed Children in
High-Conflict Child Custody Cases
ASHISH JOSHI
The author is a senior editor of Litigation, the Section’s publications and content officer, and the author of
Litigating Parental Alienation—Evaluating and Presenting an Effective Case in Court (ABA 2021).
Consider this scenario: You are appointed as the guardian ad
litem (GAL) in a high-conflict child custody litigation. The
nine-year-old child has aligned with her father and is refusing
to spend any time with her mother. Despite a significant history
of maternal love and care, the child claims that the mother has
“abandoned us” and, with no evidence in support, alleges that her
mother has a “drinking problem.” When speaking of her mother,
the child, who is otherwise polite, respectful, and well behaved,
uses words like “slut,” “whore,” and “sinner.” Court-ordered par-
enting time and visitation with the mother are routinely and
consistently violated. Child-exchange transitions between the
parents turn into nightmarish scenarios as the child demo nstrates
hysterical behavior and refuses to go with the mother. There is
a history of multiple police interventions and child protective
services investigations. The frustrated mother keeps demanding
court intervention, and the court appoints you to investigate the
matter and advocate for the child’s best interests.
During your interview of the child, she tells you sordid tales
about her mother in an uncharacteristic, unchildlike manner:
Mom is “abusive,” “never cared for ‘us’,” yells “for hours,” “drinks
like a fish,” “violates my boundaries,” and “sins.” You spend signif-
icant time reviewing the child protective services’ reports, which
have found no evidence to substantiate abuse allegations against
the mother. You review the records of the child’s therapy—ses-
sion after session spent in “therapy” with the therapist listening
to the child’s tirades against her mother. You wade through the
maze of legal filings that the parties have filed, with the father
accusing the mother of being abusive and the mother accusing the
father of alienating, brainwashing, and programming the daugh-
ter. Legal fees and costs have spiraled out of control. Something
must give. Amid this chaos, given the child’s adamant refusal to
see her mother, the father requests that you listen to the “voice
of the child” and recommend to the court a “cooling off” period;
that is, to suspend the mother’s parenting time and give the child
some space to process her feelings and emotions. The suggestion,
as innocuous it sounds, appears reasonable to you and you are
seriously thinking of making that recommendation to the court.
Guardian, be careful. Be very careful. You could be dealing
with a brainwashed and programmed child; and as every cricket
afficionado knows, you could be playing on a dangerously decep-
tive sticky wicket—the damp, slippery pitch on which the ball
bounces in front of the batsman in unpredictable ways.
Brainwashing and programming are the processes that may
lead to parental alienation, the result of such processes. Parental
alienation is a form of emotional abuse and a result of tactics
and strategies employed by one parent trying to undermine and
