Texas lawmakers limit use of parent-child reunification therapy in custody battles

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Abbey O’Brien, 18, went to the Texas Capitol in May to publicly support lawmakers’ attempt to restrict a type of family therapy a court ordered her to participate in after her parents’ divorce.

Her dad was there to persuade legislators to continue allowing judges to require the therapy.

House Bill 3783 targeted court-ordered use of reunification therapy, a treatment designed to reconcile parents with children who reject relationships with them after a divorce. The treatment often aims to prevent so-called parental alienation, a theory that a parent in the midst of a custody battle will manipulate children to reject the other parent or to accuse the other parent of abuse.

Judges sometimes require reunification therapy during custody disputes. Supporters of the therapy say it is unnatural for a child to reject a parent, even if they have been abusive, and can only occur through manipulation by the other parent.

“It is like a form of psychological abuse that the child is being taught to reject the parent,” said Amy Eichler, a therapist in Georgetown who has written a book about alienation.

But opponents of reunification therapy say it can psychologically harm children — even when there have been no accusations of physical or sexual abuse against a parent. The therapy involves controversial elements such as banning contact between children and the parent with whom they have a stronger relationship and feel more secure.

Abbey’s father was not accused of abuse and Abbey said she’s never refused to have a relationship with her dad. Still, Abbey said it was difficult to be forced to live with him and have no contact with her mother as part of the court-ordered reunification therapy.

“These programs isolate kids from the people they trust,” Abbey told lawmakers in May. “After participating in the program, I knew I couldn't allow these unethical practices to continue.”

HB 3783 does not explicitly mention reunification therapy. But when state Rep. Lacey Hull, R-Houston, introduced the bill in a Senate committee hearing, she said it targets a “niche industry called reunification therapy or reunification camps that do not involve evidence-based practices and have been outlawed by many other states.”

The Legislature passed the bill in June and Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law. It took effect immediately. The version of the law that passed does not ban reunification outright. But it prohibits Texas courts from issuing no-contact orders between a child and the parent they have a stronger relationship with, transporting a child out of state to partake in intensive therapy, and any use of threat or coercion against the child to get them to cooperate. It also bans courts from requiring victims of abuse to participate in counseling with their alleged abuser.

However, the new law also gives judges authority to determine what constitutes “credible evidence” of abuse, which means judges who don’t believe allegations of abuse may still order children to do therapy with an accused parent.

Eichler said she’s worked with children who say they’ve been sexually abused by a parent and “they usually want sessions with that parent … they just don’t want that parent to do that again.” In her experience, she said, children who refuse to see a parent have been alienated by the other parent.

“That’s absolutely not true,” said Molly Voyles, the director of the policy team at the Texas Council on Family Violence. The idea that alienation is a reason a child could reject an abusive parent, she said, “allows you to excuse their violence.”

Parental alienation is not recognized by the American Psychological Association and is not part of the DSM-5, the handbook for diagnosing mental health disorders.

In a 2023 report, the United Nations called parental alienation a “pseudo-concept” and recommended that jurisdictions worldwide cease reunification therapies.

“This [therapy] is very frightening,” said Jean Mercer, a professor emerita of psychology at Stockton University in New Jersey who has focused her career on researching dangerous psychological treatments. “It certainly sends a message to the kids that they are not important, and that as far as the court is concerned, only one of their parents is important.”

How reunification therapy began

The concept of parental alienation was developed in the 1980s by psychologist Richard Gardner, who taught child psychiatry at Columbia University and testified in over 400 child custody cases.

Gardner wrote that when children in high-conflict divorces accused their fathers of sexual abuse, they had been influenced by their mothers to reject their fathers. He proposed a new type of therapy for the children and the rejected parents.

In a 1999 article in The American Journal of Family Therapy, he wrote that alienated children “actually want to be forced to visit [their fathers]” and it’s normal for them to complain about the therapists’ “cruel manipulations” when they are compelled to do therapy with their fathers.

Today, there are different versions of reunification therapy, which some therapists also call reintegration therapy. There are camps where the children are taken from their home and placed in a hotel, or the rejected parent’s home, for intensive therapy guided by a reunification therapist. Other times, the therapy involves weekly sessions that allow children to stay in their home while meeting with the estranged parent.

William Bernet, a child psychiatrist who began working with Gardner in the 1990s, said removing a child from the custodial parent is necessary in cases of severe alienation. In moderate cases, Bernet said each family member has a therapist and the therapists share notes to coordinate treatment.

“People who object to parental alienation … say Gardner invented parental alienation simply to get fathers out of trouble, which is just not true,” Bernet said. He added that he’s sure parental alienation can be misused or misdiagnosed, but so can domestic violence claims.

Some experts argue that claiming parental alienation is a way for abusive partners to continue exerting control over their ex-spouse even after a divorce. In the 2023 report, the United Nations found that “perpetrators of domestic violence can also misuse family law proceedings to continue to perpetrate violence against their victims” and in that context, “parental alienation may be employed as a useful tactic.”

A study of 669 U.S. court cases involving parental alienation claims published in the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law found that when mothers reported child abuse and fathers countered with alienation claims, courts were nearly four times more likely to dismiss the mothers’ abuse allegations compared to cases where alienation was not claimed.

The study also revealed a gender disparity: when fathers accused mothers of alienation, the mother lost custody 44% of the time. But when mothers accused fathers of alienation, fathers lost custody only 28% of the time.

Joan Meier, the study author and law professor at The George Washington University, said one reason parental alienation has been accepted in family courts is because “there’s very, very little regulation of these experts.”

“They don’t have to be trained on abuse most of the time,” Meier said. “You've got uneducated, ignorant evaluators opining that abuse is not a concern or isn't true, and alienation is the real concern … and you have judges thinking that that's all neutral and objective.”

“You feel like your memories are fake”

After their parents separated Abbey and her brother, then ages 15 and 13, first began traditional family therapy with their dad before a Travis County judge ordered them to do reunification therapy in 2024.

Paul O’Brien, Abbey’s father, said a court-appointed advocate for the children concluded that the children’s mother was alienating them from him and that more intensive therapy was needed as a solution. Tiffanie O’Brien, Abbey’s mother, said that she never alienated the children from their father and that she was always very supportive of their relationship with him.

The weeklong intensive therapy was followed by 45 days of no contact with their mom, during which the kids went to live with their dad, according to Tiffanie O’Brien.

Paul O’Brien said he was grateful that reunification therapy gave him an opportunity to reconnect with his children.

“After many months, if not years, of not being able to spend time with your kids … there is something special about getting 24 hours a day together for a week,” he said.

Abbey told lawmakers during the committee hearing that her father and the therapist told her that her mother “was abusive, manipulative, mentally ill, a liar, and that we had false memories but were never given any reason as to why they believed this.”

Paul O’Brien said he wasn’t present when such statements were made. The therapist, who testified against the bill, said in response to Abbey’s testimony, “I am aware of significant factual misrepresentations and omissions occurring.”

After going through reunification therapy, Abbey said in an interview that she began questioning which of her memories were real and which were false.

“You kind of doubt everything that you thought had happened or thought you knew,” Abbey said. “They really focus on making you feel like your memories are fake.”

According to court records and interviews with Tiffanie O’Brien, the 45 days of no-contact was extended to 70 days at the recommendation of a court-appointed advocate for the children who is a reunification specialist.

Tiffanie O’Brien said that period was extremely difficult for her.

“I missed Abbey’s 17th birthday… I missed [my son’s] very first high school track meet,” she said in an interview, adding that she refused the therapist’s request to write her kids a letter apologizing for alienating them from their father.

No-contact orders, commonly used as a part of reunification therapy, have effectively been outlawed by HB 3783.

The effects of reunification therapy

A woman from Fort Bend County who testified in favor of HB 3783 told lawmakers that a court ordered her two children, ages 10 and 11, to participate in a reunification program after her children accused their father of abuse. A 90-day no contact order turned into six years, with her children living with their father, she testified.

In a case in Harris County, a judge ordered two children to enter reunification therapy with their father, who was investigated for abusing his children.

Their mother said she suffered years of verbal and sometimes physical abuse before she filed for divorce in 2016. Two years later, Texas Department of Family and Protective Services investigators found “reason to believe” that the father had sexually abused his then 5-year-old daughter, according to records obtained by The Texas Tribune. (The Tribune is not naming the family members because the children are minors).

The mother then obtained a protective order preventing the father from contacting the children until the younger one turns 18.

The father told the Tribune that the state investigator was biased against him. He denied abusing his daughter and said he didn’t see his kids for four years.

“It’s kind of like they died when this happened, and I just continued to live,” he said.

In 2023, when a new judge was elected to the court overseeing their case, the father filed a motion to get the protective order vacated. The judge initially rejected this request but ordered the children, then ages 10 and 8, to undergo reunification therapy.

For eight months, the children went to reunification therapy with their dad for two hours almost every week. The father described the therapy as “beautifully ugly” and said that over time, he noticed his children opening up to him more.

Once, the therapist blocked the door to prevent the daughter from leaving the room when she was refusing to participate. Both the daughter and the father recalled this incident in interviews with the Tribune and the father said, “it was impressive to me” that the therapist did so.

“It was scary,” the daughter, now 12, said. “I was trapped in a room with someone who had physically hurt me, and some therapist who had decided that I could no longer have free will to exit the building.”

The daughter, who had been previously diagnosed with PTSD, said in an interview that she began having suicidal thoughts after reunification therapy.

“I would not want to see him ever again,” the daughter said. “He hurt us. Physically, emotionally, he hurt us.”

In late July, the father successfully got the protective order vacated. Now he’s worried that without reunification therapy, there won’t be “safeguards to help us reconnect the way we were able to safely reconnect inside reunification therapy,” he said, calling the new law “very disappointing.”

Questions about the law’s impact

Many advocates and supporters of HB 3783 believe it prohibits the most harmful parts of reunification therapy. But reunification therapists don’t see it that way.

“My understanding is it doesn't ban it, but it puts parameters on it that can maybe make the therapy less helpful,” said Eichler, the Georgetown therapist.

She believes it’s important to cut contact between a child and the parent accused of alienating the other parent.

“I’ve had several cases where the kid desperately was very grateful when removed from the home of the alienator,” Eichler said, even though “some of them look like they were thriving” at the alienating parent’s home.

A crucial component of the law gives judges discretion to decide what is considered credible evidence of family violence and sexual abuse. Meier, the law professor at The George Washington University, applauded the bill for that provision.

“One of the problems we see in these cases is that courts don't want to make findings of abuse. They often just sort of duck it,” she said. “So this is saying, okay, we're not asking you to make a finding, but if there's credible evidence, that's enough to take a pause on this kind of remedy.”

Meier said a judge could consider a therapist’s report or a child’s testimony as evidence of abuse, which could take reunification therapy off the table. The law, however, does not define what is considered credible evidence, so it is up to each individual judge to decide.

Christy Bradshaw Schmidt, a child custody evaluator in family law who has trained reunification therapists, said she is unsure about how the law will be implemented.

“We don't know how judges are going to necessarily take what this bill says… and how that's actually going to impact families going forward,” Schmidt said.

Several parents who support the use of court-ordered reunification therapy are unhappy about the new law.

Paul O’Brien’s two main concerns about the new law were that it only asks judges to consider sexual abuse and family violence, and not all types of abuse, and that it limits courts’ ability to order mental health interventions that serve as a last resort, such as reunification therapy.

“We should be concerned about when we take away what's called judicial discretion, when we remove from the court the ability to help the family,” Paul said.

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