Even comedians cry. That’s what happened to Maurice Baptista Roman artist known to the Rai public, who vented on social media against his ex-partner during Christmas days, Alessandra Moretti, who “for real or untrue reasons prevented me from being with my daughter”, a 6-year-old girl. First school, then the fever, and so Christmas passed without even a hug. “And when I asked her to take it at least on the 31st and the first of hers – she continues in the end-of-year video – she told me that the little girl could get tired at my show and that she would have to take it back. But who told you that she gets tired? And, if anything, am I not able to handle it? I’m not saying a week, as would be expected, but at least 2 days. Then take my last name away from him, if I can’t be a father. I must begging to be with my daughter? As soon as the court opens, I ask for the technical intervention (Ctu) and the legal opinion. But only the little girl will lose out: is this what you want?”.
In the end, the partner gave in, and Battista celebrated the first of the year by posting a video together with the baby, smiling and happy.
The Roman comedian is not the first public figure who has decided to put his staff on the streets family drama hoping to unblock the situation. The most tenacious and noisy was Tiberio Timperi, a long-time Rai journalist, who in the past dedicated broadcasts, interviews, books and many public battles to the rights denied to separated fathers.
But despite the advent ofshared custodynow almost always sanctioned in separation documents, “if a placement mother decides to hinder her ex-partner or husband in their relationship with their children – explains the president of the Aps Italian Fathers Association separated Tiziana Franchi – sadly he still manages to do it”. It is enough to invent excuses, say that the son is ill or has sports commitments or any other emergency, “and the father has no other weapons than to go to the police or start long legal actions that have very high costs from a psychological and economic”.
For over thirty years Tiziana Franchi, one of the first daughters of separated parents after the divorce law, works in this historic association that helps separated fathers. She herself was the victim of a sad and tearing conflict from which she chose to get out – still a teenager – by going to stay with her father. “I know what it means – says Franchi, now president of the association – and I still suffer when I receive SOS calls from men who are suddenly prevented from carrying out their paternal function”. Men sometimes so depressed and surrendered in the face of the determination and injustices suffered by the ex, “who often call us the female figures who are next to him: his grandmother, his new partner, an aunt”. If this does not happen, if the spiral does not stop, “time passes and it becomes increasingly difficult for fathers to recover the relationship with their children”.
“In conflicts the mother always wins, Timberi denounced in his battles, and fathers have no rights”. But what mother is the one who denies the father figure to her son or daughter? “Many women take advantage of the outdated view of inattentive fathers to justify their possession of their offspring – says the president of the Separated Fathers Association – but just go in front of a school or a supermarket to see exactly how many dads take care of their children like mothers, sometimes better”. Also the increased attention on feminicides can play in favor of “alienating mothers”: “We frequently get unfounded accusations of violence to claim that the ex-husband can’t keep the children, but what they get is only damaging their children forever”.
Per Maurice Baptist, separated from his daughter’s mother for a year, this deprivation was so painful that he decided to dismantle the bedroom he had set up for his little girl in the new home. “Going in and seeing it always empty – he said in one of the Christmas Eve videos – is too much suffering. I prefer to give it away and know that maybe I can make another child happy”.
The parental alienation syndrome
“Children have the right to grow up with both parental figures – says the president of theSeparated Fathers Association – and by denying the father, not only the present time of the children is jeopardized but also the future one. For example, what emotional development can a child have who already at the age of 4 learns to humor his mother so as not to displease her by pretending not to want to see her father? This happens very often, for example, in the stories we collect. And they are enormous psychological damage for those future adults ”.
In the eighties the forensic psychiatrist Richard Alan Gardner coined the term “PAS” (Parental Alienation Syndrome), or parental alienation syndrome, to define the psychological-dysfunctional disorder found in minor children of conflicting couples due to separations or divorces. The phenomenon consists in a real “brainwashing” of the children perpetrated by the alienating parent against the alienated parent with a denigrating campaign made up of hatred, contempt and anger towards the ex-spouse. With the result that the minor, without a justified reason, begins to do the same, to discredit, defame and alienate the alienated parent until he no longer wants to see him. Gardner defines PAS (which can be mild, moderate or severe) as “a form of emotional abuse that arises at the beginning of a cascade of psychic events due to the trauma of the children’s continued exposure to the indoctrinating parent, who transmits them an experience of imminent threat due to the approach of the other parent, as well as his pathological hatred”.
A situation, explains the psychiatrist, which “may predispose to the development of developmental problems such as low self-esteem, separation anxiety disorder, affective-emotional disorientation, phobias and/or paranoia”. And that, in adulthood, “can lead to psychopathological disorders of various kinds such as, for example, severe depressive states and/or narcissistic pathologies, or drug/alcohol abuse”.
The legal consequences
In Italy, the PAS syndrome has been recognized by various sentences which have sanctioned the principle of law according to which, among the requisites of parental responsibility, there is also the ability to maintain the link with the other parent, to protect the interest and right of the child to big parenting. The conduct of the placement or custodial parent who “materially or morally distances the child from the other parent, and who therefore maintains an alienating behavior aimed at the marginalization and neutralization of the other parent”, reads one of the most recent sentences, is judged unconstitutional.
The Tribunal can therefore intervene and even get to remove the minor from one or both parents. But is it a desirable solution? How many “alienated” parents have the strength or the courage to undertake such painful judicial and psychological paths for everyone? That’s why Maurizio Battista, like other public figures, use their forums to claim rights that are so difficult to respect. The comedian’s videos have received tons of messages of support and solidarity from other dads. And also some criticism for making private matters public. But judging, in such painful cases, is not easy.