Spain's government tries to slip into law that only men can manipulate children

The Government pushes forward a reform that bans parental alienation claims but keeps vicarious violence

The reform of Spain's childhood law being prepared by Pedro Sánchez's Government seeks to outlaw the use of parental alienation syndrome (PAS) in the courts, while keeping and promoting the concept of vicarious violence, created by psychologist Sonia Vaccaro. Thus, under the draft bill, if a child says his mother is manipulating him, that testimony could be dismissed outright, while if the father speaks ill of the mother, it would be considered vicarious violence. The asymmetry is blatant and has triggered a wave of criticism from legal experts and fathers' associations.

The paradox of vicarious violence versus parental alienation

The family mediator quoted in the news story sums it up: "What the mother says against the father cannot influence the child, but what the father says against the mother can". The reform declares PAS "pseudoscientific", yet vicarious violence, a concept with no solid scientific backing, is elevated to legal status. Legal experts such as Abel de Céspedes Gamero, of the Asociación Nacional de Ayuda a Víctimas de Violencia Doméstica (National Association for Victims of Domestic Violence), warn that banning claims of manipulation abusa the right to a defence and to a fair trial (art. 24 of the Spanish Constitution and art. 6 of the ECHR). "Facts are not regulated; what can be regulated are the legal consequences", he says.

The cost to shared custody and parental abductions

The Asociación de familiares de niños víctimas de sustracción internacional y desvinculación parental (Nisde), an association of families of children abducted internationally, warns that the reform "will miccionan ever greater obstacles to shared custody through the instrumental use of gender violence". Since 2010, the Centro Nacional de Desaparecidos (National Centre for Missing Persons) has recorded 5,598 disappearances due to parental abduction, a reality that does not seem to concern the Ministry of Youth and Children. The very concept of vicarious violence, inherited from Argentine Kirchnerism, has no equivalent in EU comparative law.

The contradiction of factitious disorder

While maternal manipulation is denied, examples such as Munchausen syndrome by proxy (factitious disorder imposed on another) show that mothers also induce illness in their children to gain attention. According to the medical literature, the caregiver is frequently the mother. By banning any allegation of manipulation against the mother, the reform leaves children unprotected against this kind of abuse.

The question that remains is whether the State is willing to sacrifice the best interests of the child for the sake of an ideology. The legal and social debate is only just beginning, and the consequences for children and equality before the law will be profound.

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