Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today.
I'm an 18-year-old Canadian woman and a survivor of coercive behaviour and reunification therapy. I hope to provide some insight into the broad spectrum of what Canadian youth experience under the black cloud of the preferred parent being accused of parental alienation in family court custody disputes.
Within a few days of being told about my parents' separation, my sibling and I were brought to reunification therapy to repair our relationship with our dad. When asked about our experiences at home, we communicated that our dad was absent throughout our lives and therefore a stranger to us. When he was around, he was easily angered and emotionally abusive towards us and our mother. There are many examples, but some include yelling in my face, swearing at me, calling me names, making homophobic comments to me, listening in on my conversations, sneaking up and startling me, monitoring me, forcing affection, threatening me and videoing me without my consent.
My sibling and I avoided interaction with him because of how unpredictable his behaviour was, how nervous he made us and how much he scared us. In the reunification therapy sessions, we watched our dad inappropriately flirt with the therapist and lie repeatedly. As a result, the therapist denied our reality. When we described emotionally abusive episodes, our dad told the therapist they didn't happen. The therapist told us that we needed to think of things from our dad's perspective, that we weren't remembering things correctly—