There comes a point in life and in litigation when parents must accept that the other co-parent is not the demon they believe the other to be, an acting judge said during a bitter tug-of-war between two divorced parents over the care of their 8-year-old son.
The mother had accused the father of “subjecting the child to sexual molestation”, but the allegations had proved to be untrue.
It was ruled earlier that the child should, for now, live with the father because of the mother’s efforts at “parental alienation”.
The mother turned to the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, in a bid for the court to order that the child be returned to her.
Acting Judge Sarita Liebenberg said a child had the right to a close and loving relationship with both parents and both sides of the family.
She said continued litigation was traumatic for a child and did not serve the best interests of either the child or the parents.
“I trust both the applicant (mother) and the first respondent (father) will come to this acceptance sooner rather than later, for the sake of L (the child) and for themselves,” the judge said.
The mother and father, who were never married, have been engaged in litigation in the Brakpan Children’s Court since June 2019, when the father approached the lower court, seeking the restoration and regulation of his contact with L.
The lower court appointed numerous mental health practitioners, with differing mandates, to enable it to establish L’s best interests. The mental health practitioners included persons appointed to investigate allegations that the father had abused illegal substances and had subjected L to acts of sexual molestation.
In each instance, the allegations were found wanting. Others were mandated to supervise contact between L and the father.
The lower court then ordered that the boy live with his father for a while, as it was found that the mother had tried to alienate him from his father.
Apart from wanting her child back in her care, the mother had also wanted an order that he be subjected to further psychological scrutiny.
Judge Liebenberg noted that L has been prodded, interviewed and questioned by numerous strangers in his short life. His relationship with each of his parents remained the subject of investigations and therapeutic processes.
She said the prayer for yet another investigation appeared to be informed by the insult the mother suffered as a result of the references to parental alienation rather than being in L’s best interests.
“I was not satisfied that another investigation aimed at disproving the suggestions of parental alienation is reasonable or necessary in the circumstances … Yet another forensic investigation will result in more trauma and upheaval in L's life and will only serve to delay the finalisation of the proceedings in the lower court, the judge said.
She added that the parties had chosen to have a child and, thereafter, had opted to terminate their romantic relationship.
“I have little doubt that both the applicant and the first respondent have acted less than honourable because of their own pains and the wounds they each suffered.”
Judge Liebenberg cited a quotation by another judge earlier in similar proceedings, where he said: “In ideal circumstances, a child is entitled as part of its security, to the affection of and to pride in both its parents.
“The parent who unnecessarily deprives a child of the opportunity to experience the affection of its other parent, and breaks down the image of that other parent in the eyes of the child, is a selfish parent; robbing the child of what should be its heritage in order to salve its own wounds.”
That judge said that “often parents wounded by the marital conflict lose their objectivity and use, as very effective clubs with which to beat the foe, the objects both profess to love more than life itself: their children, who suffer further trauma in the process.”
Judge Liebenberg, in turning down the mother’s application, expressed the hope that the parents would realise that enough was enough.
Pretoria News