#166 Parental Alienation in the Spanish Family Courts, a Mother's Experience
“I was then silenced by the courts, if I spoke I was going to prison.”
So-called 'Parental alienation' is spreading across the globe. We share one woman’s experience of the courts in Spain. It’s difficult to hear. Once again Mothers are not being believed when they are trying to protect their children from abusive parents.
Listen here (Transcript below):
If you think you can help, please contact us via email at info@filia.org.uk.
If you would like help or support the brilliant Survivor Family Network provides excellent resources.
If you would like to support a woman facing a similar fight in the UK, here is a campaign being shared by FiLiA Trustee Sally Jackson who is helping a woman fighting the Family Court to protect her children in the UK.
Transcript: Sally Jackson in conversation with a Mother.
S – Can we start with you telling us what’s been happening and why you wanted to talk with us.
M – I’d like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell my story and see if it can help other people because I think there are a lot of Mothers in Spain in a very similar situation.
My story goes back 5 years. It’s extremely difficult for me to talk about it. I’ve come to that stage where I have to talk about it very openly to see if we can find anyone who can help me find a solution.
I was married in Spain to a Spanish woman. We were in a relationship. We actually got married after our daughter was born. I am the biological Mother. Our relationship started in 2004, our daughter was born in 2006. She was my miracle. I didn’t ever think, with my sexuality, when I came out as a gay woman, I didn’t ever think I’d be able to have the one thing I’d always wanted – and that was a child. It wasn’t in my time and it wasn’t accepted. So when there was a chance that I could have a baby, I was over the moon.
I was 38 at the time and was told by the clinic that I would have 16% chance of falling pregnant because of my age. I was petrified and I remember phoning my Mum and she said to me – do it because you are going to get pregnant – and I did and I fell pregnant the first time. Obviously over the moon, my partner as well, we were both over the moon. We found out it would be a girl we were both over the moon.
In the first month I started spotting and had a very difficult pregnancy and had to be at home for the whole pregnancy. I lost my job.
The most important thing was our baby.
She was born and my whole life changed. I remember getting home from the hospital – we were going to put the cot into the bedroom but it was too big and we couldn’t get it through so my partner had to rush out and get like a Moses basket. I remember being alone with her and looking down and just think – oh my god you’re so small and you depend on me and I will always be there for you. –
I remember that so clearly, thinking I will always treasure and look after her. Now I feel that I haven’t been able to do that. I’ve broken that promise and that goes through my mind every single day.
S – That’s in no way your fault because you’ve been put in a situation where other people have made decisions.
M – Yes and taken away my right as a Mother. Taken every right as a Mother, taken away from me.
S – What I understand, you had a beautiful baby girl and then a while later that your partner says that there’s someone else?
M – Yes, 9 years later. Literally out of the blue. We had all been away for the weekend with friends. My partner said she hadn’t felt well and she stayed in the room in the hotel. A friend of our daughter’s was there as well. I was the one who looked after them. I believed her, I believed she was ill. I took food to the room.
The next day I was told she had met someone else and that our daughter and I had to move out and her new partner would be moving in and her new partner had a son. My world fell apart. Totally. I didn’t know what to do. I remember just going into work and breaking down at work and them saying to me – you’ve got us, we’ll help you.
Being British in Spain, if I looked for somewhere to live I would have to have someone who would be a guarantor. My ex refused, she said she wouldn’t be a guarantor even though it would be a house for her child as well.
S – So not only had she made you homeless she was preventing you getting accommodation with your daughter.
M – Yes, 100%, with our daughter. That was the thing. Our daughter. And she should have been worried where she was going to be and how she was going to be looked after. But fortunately, my work came as a plus and they were a guarantor. My brother flew over from England to Spain to help us.
In this time, it was Mother’s day a few days later. He helped us move and do everything. My brother and I sat down and said – even though all this is going on, she still has 2 Mums. We arranged for a meal and we said to my ex that she could come, my brother went out and bought presents for both of us.
What I’m trying to say is, everything that we could do, we did.
S – You were respecting her role as Mother.
M – 100% because I have been accused of wanting to kidnap our daughter and bring her to England. If I had wanted to do that, why would I have stayed? I wouldn’t have. I would have got on a plane when she kicked us out and moved back to England. That would have been easy. But I never did that because I would never ever have done that to our daughter because whatever my ex did to me and in a way to our daughter as well, I still respected the fact that she was her Mother.
S – And you were also, as Mum’s do, thinking from your daughter’s point of view and what she needed and she had had 9 years of 2 Mums in her life and you wanted that stability to continue for her.
M – I wanted us to be able to work out how we would work; I didn’t want ever to step foot in a court. I wanted to sort all of this out naturally and in the best way for our daughter. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
We started living in our new place. Obviously, my ex and I were in contact. We started to organise ourselves with visits and days. I immediately noticed that our daughter wasn’t keen on going. A lot happened. Eventually, she started to speak to me and tell me the reasons. It was because she didn’t want to share her bedroom, there was another boy in her bedroom, there was another woman that she didn’t know.
I spoke to my ex and said – why don’t you have just you for a while and introduce your new partner slowly?
From one day to the other, it’s too much for a child to take in.
S – And that was her home. It must be very strange for her to get her head round, she had lost her space in the bedroom and other strange people in the house. It’s a lot to deal with.
M – It’s too much, I said – why don’t we go and see a psychologist who can maybe help us all to help our daughter find a way to accept everything, a way that is best for her. Us adults have to cope, the only important person in this is our daughter.
Eventually, she agreed, we started seeing a psychologist. Immediately the psychologist picked up on that inadequate measures were being used. It was way too soon for a child to adapt to a situation and she gave my ex things to do, like meeting her, on her own, spending time with your daughter, reassuring her that you’re going to be there for her, it’s not just this new family and you are important.
None of this was done and it just got worse. Then when our daughter started saying she didn’t want to go, they started using violence.
It first started when they locked her in a room and took away her phone, they’d push her. This was done openly. They would pick her up from school and if our daughter didn’t want to go, they would literally pick her up and drag her across the street.
When this started happening, parents would take photos and send them to me and say – this is what’s happening at school –
Once she came home with a big mark on her back. She said her back was hurting, I had to take her to the hospital, photos, a hospital report of what happened. The psychologist again spoke to my ex but nothing changed.
It got worse and worse until one day my ex started saying – she had filed papers for a divorce and shared custody. She was saying – this is all going to get sorted out in the court house and we’re now going to see a proper court psychologist and this will get sorted out.
After we had seen the court psychologist and got the report, I eventually found out through Facebook that they were all friends and that the person who went as a witness for my ex, a false witness because there was nothing that she could say, was the court psychologist’s best friend. They stood outside the court house and pretended not to know each other.
The court psychologist, when she goes in, is sworn in. In family court we’re not sworn in so basically it’s an open book for a person to perjure themselves. My ex has lied through her back teeth, they are lies I can just prove with documents and photos.
Everything she said was accepted, everything I said, nothing was accepted.
The court psychologist wrote a report going against every other report written, all the hospital reports, against everything and claimed that I had alienated our daughter from my ex and that it was all my fault.
Two weeks later, I was at work and I got a fax through. I started to read the fax, I couldn’t even understand it. At the same time the police started knocking on my works door. My boss went out, he was speaking to them and saying how awful this was and that he personally knows the story and that this is criminal and that ..
I was at work, my cousin’s wife, my Mum and my cousin’s wife’s 2 children, our daughters first cousins, were there. They were all at a hotel. The police wanted to go to the hotel and take our daughter. I begged them – please let me come. My boss spoke to them. Then they said we’ll give you one night with her. I ran to the hotel. I tried to sit and explain. Our daughter was crying hysterically. It was awful. Within 5 minutes, the police were at the hotel. No one night, nothing. They dragged her off like an animal, screaming.
I tried to keep my calm and I tried not to cry and I didn’t cry at that moment, I was quite robotic I think. I thought if I broke down and cried that would affect our daughter even more. I was trying to be strong. We were bundled in a police car, taken to the police station. My daughter needed to go to the toilet and we had to be escorted. They wouldn’t let us go alone. Then I had to leave. I had to leave my daughter in this police station, alone.
My last words from my daughter to me, she was 10 at this time, she was crying and she said to me, we’re Jewish, she said – if the Nazis couldn’t kill they’re not going to take me from you – she had learned about the horror of being separated.
I came out of that police station and I just broke down. My friends and cousin’s wife were there for me.
This all happened in a busy hotel. Someone must have phoned the Press because I received a call. Literally as I was coming out and I answered this call, I can’t even remember what I said, I just started talking and crying. I was then silenced by the courts. They said if I spoke I would be put in prison.
Retrospectively I wish I had not listened, I would willingly go to prison and I wish I had stuck to my grounds and told my story. I feel now as time has gone past.
My daughter, the one I have been accused of alienating, I was seeing in a visiting centre for two and half years. It’s a place for delinquents, drug addicts. I was there having to be watched while I saw my child. Every single report from that visiting centre was positive towards me. They used to say to me – we don’t even know why you’re here. We cannot get our heads round it –
Then they started to notice that our daughter was being contradictory. It wasn’t her fault. She was being told what to do, told what to say. A small example, I would take her presents every Friday when I saw her for one and a half hours, for two and a half years, I would take her presents. One day a friend of hers gave me present for her, she loved Harry Potter. The friend gave her a Butter Beer, not alcoholic, I know she loves this, can you take it as a present? I took it and she loved it. we’ve got photos of her holding it, all happy and with the people who have to watch us, she was explaining everything to them, then it was time to go, and she went. Then literally 30 seconds after she had gone out the door, the other Mother came back and literally through the bottle at the people watching over us and said she does not want this and she doesn’t like it.
This is all written in the report. Everything I am saying, I can back up with proper evidence. This was written and noted by the people there. Other things I gave her like a cushion was giving back. So many different things. All of it noted.
The court ignored it. 100% ignored it.
S – This is something we hear from women here in the UK and Spain and Europe and Latin America and various countries where this concept of alienation is used by perpetrators in the court to further punish Mothers. You have all the evidence to show you are a loving caring parent and you can prove it and often have evidence of harm that has been done by the other parent and yet the court seems oblivious to it. it seems once they have made their mind up they continue down that rout and the system of the court is not listening or hearing anything that would be in the best interest of the child.
M – You’ve got 100% right. I have so much evidence, I also have evidence of the abuse yet nothing is looked at. After they have made their minds up, that’s it. Doesn’t matter how they’ve got there and everything else is ignored.
I got to the stage, I’m not proud of this, my only way of proving that I’m not lying, when I started to have weekends, in the beginning it was lovely, my ex would be phoning all the time and then our daughter’s mood would change after that and it got very difficult.
Once I could have her at weekends it was a chance for my family to see her. My Mum who our daughter absolutely adored and even though she lived in England, we would come here 3 times a year. My parents would come over and see us. The relationship was once a day speaking on the phone, so you can imagine how close we were.
When I started noticing that our daughter’s behaviour would change after these phone calls, it was happening so much and it got to be so bad, I decided that the only way I would be able to prove what was happening – I knew what was happening, it wasn’t rocket science, she was being told what to do. I decided to record these conversations. I’m not in these conversations, I don’t think it is 100% right to do something like that but it was my only way of proving certain things so I decided to do that.
I have conversations where my ex – when my family would come over – saying – do not move from the house, do not go to the hotel, I am Spanish and I can sort this out, all I have to do is phone the court and say she (me) is doing everything wrong, this is a criminal offence what she’s doing, she cannot have people there when you’re there.
The conversations I have recorded, all of that, are unbelievable, there’s so many of her saying things against all of our family.
If that’s not manipulating a child, then what is?
S – It’s awful for your daughter to be in that position when she finally has some time with you but is getting all these instructions and knowing she has got to go back there and will have to account. At this stage she was how old?
M – She was 12. This went on for another year and it just got worse and worse and then she started saying she didn’t want to see me.
It’s the most painful thing to have to listen to a child saying she doesn’t want to see you.
Even though in my heart I know it’s not her at all, 100% it’s not her fault, she’s an innocent victim in all this. She was led to believe that I blame her for this. I know exactly who is to blame and it’s certainly not our daughter. An innocent victim whose life, even though at this moment in time, she believes what has been fed to her, it’s even got so bad that apparently, I had told her to hurt herself and this is why she had ended up in hospital. Once I heard this I really started to freak out. I took all the medical reports to a child psychologist who looked at them and said – there is no way, first of all a child can’t hurt themselves on their back, the marks do not correspond, she is being totally gas lighted into believing it. it’s all to protect ..
S – There’s so much that’s wrong, at some point your daughter is going to recognise what she’s said to you and to others. The damage done by perpetrators and to you and your child is just so callous.
M – I feel like I’m mourning my daughter in life. That is my heart break. What keeps me awake most is, what can be going through her head? What can she be thinking? What effect is this going to have on her for the rest of her life? I’m an adult and my hearts broken, 5 years and no one can give us that back.
Who knows how long this will carry on for, for all I know it will carry on for another 5 years, 10 years, who knows? But that time will never be recuperated.
What keeps me awake is thinking is the damage done to our daughter. This will affect her one day because she’ll start to realise one day that this can’t be quite right, this isn’t what happened. Why was I taken so brutally? I’ve been made out to be the monster.
S - She will also have the memories; the memories don’t go away of the good times she had with you. She will know that you love her. She will remember the fun times, the laughs, when you’ve just been silly together and having a great time. I think that love and that nurturing, the grounding of your relationship before any of this happened is an incredibly strong base from which to help her to heal eventually.
M – I hope so for her. That’s why I message her every single day. I send her a text message every day. People say I should stop doing it. I want her to know I love her every day and that every day she is in my mind. There’s not one hour or minute that she’s not there.
I came back to England because it got to the stage in court where the court basically said that if she didn’t want to see me, she didn’t have to. It didn’t matter what the reason was that she didn’t want to see me.
Santa Cruz where we lived is very small. I lived not too far from my ex and sometimes I would bump into them and my ex would literally take her phone out and come up to me and start recording me in the street, humiliating me in front of our daughter and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I decided that if my daughter didn’t want to see me then I would have to take a step back and the only way I could do that was to by coming back to live in England and be with the family and have that support because I just couldn’t bare it. I don’t think that behaviour is any good for our daughter to see.
S – This is so incredibly difficult; you have to look after yourself as well and as you say, this is where your support is, that enables you to have the strength to carry on because you’ve got that support behind you.
M – And to build my strength up again to carry on fighting. The fight will never end. She’s my daughter and I will do everything I can to try eventually to bring justice to this.
S – Where are we now with the case? What’s happening at the moment?
M – We’ve exhausted all the court procedures, it’s gone to the appeal court, which it’s just been dismissed by so now it’s the Supreme court and then the United Nations, wherever the fight needs to go. I will find a way and just try and get our story told and for someone to be able to think – maybe I can help.
S – I suppose that’s part of the reason for this podcast, whether the listeners out there in either UK or Spain, if listening to this someone thinks – I can help with that, then we can get you in touch if they contact us we can pass that on.
M – Yes, that would be amazing if anyone could help. I don’t believe, sadly, in the court system, I’m not sure our case will even get to the Supreme. Only 10% get there. We could be in that 10% that do, we could be in the 90% that don’t.
If we don’t, I just think that there must be a human rights, our human rights have been trodden on. Surely there’s a road to go through there.
S – I suppose, as awful as it is and it’s gone on for so long, it’s not long until she’s an adult.
M – She is now 15 and a half. It isn’t long. What scares me is that apparently she seems to believe all these lies that have been told to her and thinks that I am the monster and that everything is my fault and I worry that that is so embedded in her.
S – Maybe that’s what she needs to say to survive the environment she’s in.
M – I understand that. Even if she would just message me and be angry with me – anything – I’m a Mum, not that I don’t care if she was angry with me but it wouldn’t affect my love for her and I would be there to try and explain and help her understand. But at least talking, if we don’t talk, she’s just being told one side of this story and that side isn’t even the truth. So how are we going to get our relationship back on track.
I hope that, it’s 2 and a half years until she’s of age and maybe that will be when she’ll be able to reach out. But we will then have lost 8 years of our lives together and that’s nearly as much as the 10 years we had together. It’s frightening, really frightening.
S – I hope you’re in that 10% and that you get to the Supreme court and that it’s successful there but I think whatever is coming up in future, what she’ll know is that you’ve spent all this time trying to be in touch and making every attempt and you’ve not given up on her and if she can reflect, that will mean an awful lot to her.
M – I hope so, I truly hope so. I will never not be there. I’ll always be there. I message her. Whatever you want, whatever you need, anything, just tell me.
S – I’m sure that’s sinking in and sitting somewhere in her consciousness, she’ll know that in her heart.
Please do let us know what happens about the court case. The women listening to this, there will be an army of women there with you supporting you through that. I’m really pleased you’ve got your family and friends around to support you.
Thank you so much for sharing what is obviously difficult information and as you say, unless we keep raising how these family courts are, we won’t be able to fight this crazy alienation term that just seems to be the latest tool the abusers can use to split Mothers from their children.
M – Exactly, there are so many of us in the same position so we have to get our stories out there because that’s all we can do.