”Violence is never the fault of the victim and violence is far more common than most people realise. Living a life free from fear, threats and violence from loved ones is a human right.
The municipality has a statutory obligation to protect all victims of crime and especially women and children exposed to violence (Chapter 5, Section 11 of the Social Services Act). You have the right to receive help from the municipality in which you live, regardless of the type of violence you are subjected to.”
The above is taken from the Jämställdhetsmyndigheten (The Swedish Equality Authority) website. The agency encourages anyone who is a victim of domestic violence to report the violence and to contact social services for help and support. Even in the texts specifically aimed at children exposed to violence, the call to contact social services for help is repeated, and the child is told that:
”The Convention on the Rights of the Child has been law in Sweden since 1 January 2020 and it states that children should never be subjected to violence. There are adults who work to ensure that you, as a child, have a good life.
However, the reality is different.
Anyone who visits online support forums, talks to family lawyers or representatives of organisations working with abused women and children will hear about a different reality: one where women’s and children’s stories of violence are constantly relativised and questioned, and where investigators in social services and family courts use these stories to work against victims of violence.
The violence that women and children in Sweden have an absolute and legal right to be protected from can continue because municipal officials often side with the perpetrator.
A classic scenario is a custody dispute initiated after a separation where the parents cannot agree on the child’s custody and living arrangements. If, during this custody dispute, the mother and/or the child tell about being subjected to violence by the father, the risk today is imminent that these stories will be used as a weapon against them: the fact that the mother has been subjected to violence is then considered to contribute to her not being able to help (also the victimised) child to create a positive image of the father who perpetrated violence.
The family court can help the parents to reach an agreement on the custody and living arrangements of the child.
In these cases, the family court may recommend that the district court award the father sole custody and full residence, even if the child has expressed to social services and the family court that he refuses to live with the father, or even see him, because of the fear of violence. The district courts trust the competence of the municipal officials, and therefore generally rule in favour of the father in these cases.
It is worse to protect from violence than to perpetrate it
In an online support group for abused women, the following dialogue between a mother and the family court is reported:
– You and the children are victims of violence. It is important that you understand that. There are different forms of violence and we see and understand and have read all the previous investigations and know about the father’s violent convictions. He has also subjected the children to violence. Is that correct?
– Yes. Everything is correct.
– Leaving aside his negatives, what are his positive qualities as a father? Can you describe them?
Another mother describes how the family court cited the father’s violence against her as a reason for the mother to lose custody. The violence is consistently referred to as a “conflict between the parents” and because the mother has been abused by the father, she is considered unable to convey a “positive image of the father” to the child. The father should therefore be awarded sole custody, according to the family court in a central Swedish municipality.
A third mother attaches the following extract from an investigation by the family court in a Stockholm neighbourhood:
”Although both parents have used custody in a way that has affected [child’s name], the mother has been the one who has done so to a greater extent and with more serious consequences for the child, which [child’s name] needs to be protected from.”
The child in question is a 12-year-old girl who has told the family court, social services, school and child psychiatry about how her father subjected her to extensive mental and physical violence. The girl is also receiving treatment after expressing suicidal thoughts linked to her relationship with her father. The girl’s mother has been granted support by the social services via the Relationship Violence Centre, after being subjected to violence by the father. The documentation contains evidence of how the father has used joint custody for many years to deny the child contact with the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Service (BUP), prevent passports, prevent holiday trips, stop pre-school placements and so on. But none of this is considered particularly burdensome by the family court.
What the family court believes has had “more serious consequences” for the child than the above, is that the mother has not forced the child to have contact with the father. In other words, the mother has done exactly what she is legally obliged to do – she has protected the child from violence. But that behaviour means, according to the family court, that the father should be awarded sole custody and that a 12-year-old child should be forced to live with the parent who has abused her, even though the child is clear that she will then take her own life.
How is that possible? The answer is PAS.
PAS – the pseudo-theory that explains away the violence
Parental Alientation Syndrome (PAS) is a theory used to relativise and explain away children’s accounts of exposure to violence. In the article ”Parental alienation is pseudoscience”, published in the June 2024 issue of the Psychological Journal, 13 professors and psychologists criticise the use of the concept:
”Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), Parental Alienation (PA) or Alienating Behaviours (AB) are concepts used to question children’s will and own experiences by introducing an alternative hypothesis that one parent influenced the child to distance themselves from the other parent. [In short, PA/AB involves blaming the residential parent (usually the mother) for painting a false picture that the other parent (usually the father) is dangerous. This is to make the child feel afraid and not want to have contact.”
The idea that mothers are more likely to alienate children than fathers is also gendered: according to PAS theory, around 90 per cent of parental alienation is carried out by mothers, and statistics show that fathers usually win custody cases where the mother is accused of influencing and alienating the child. However, when the relationship is the opposite, the accusations are usually not taken seriously, according to the article in Psykologtidningen.
The Swedish report Barn i kläm – hur uppmärksammas barn i mål om verkställighet av umgänge (Children caught in the middle – how children are noticed in cases of enforcement of visits) from 2007 made similar findings. Children who were described as ambivalent or who did not want to see the father were questioned and responsibility for the child’s views was placed on the mother who was alleged to have influenced the child. If the child wanted to see his father, this was accepted as an expression of the child’s “true will”, but if the child did not want to see his father, it was questioned whether this was the child’s “true will”. The authors conclude bluntly:
”The findings force us to realise that not all parents are good parents, that not everyone is always telling the truth, and that professionals are results-oriented and want to get cases off their hands.”
In the case of the 12-year-old girl described above, the authorities’ desire for a quick conclusion is clear. Despite the fact that the girl has been the subject of five previous custody disputes and there is extensive documentation of violence, the investigation must not take longer. The family court concludes that the girl’s accounts of violence are ”somewhat vague” and that there is also ”a suspicion that the mother is deliberately influencing and cutting off [child’s name] from the father”.
But if the child’s stories are only the result of a mother who denies the father contact with the child, there is no violence to take into account? Then, on the contrary, it is the mother who is “guilty”? A mother says:
– When I met with the family court for the first time, I was so relieved. I would finally be able to talk about what the children and I had been through to someone who could actually help us. But after I told them about the father’s abuse and the violence that was there every day, one of the social workers leaned back in her chair and exclaimed: “Yes, that’s usually what the mums say when they want to discredit the fathers”.
Role reversal when perpetrator becomes victim
When PAS is used as an explanatory model, there is a shift in focus: violence or other neglect on the part of one parent is downplayed, while the parent who has tried to protect the child is often described as mentally unstable and over-involved. Suddenly, the abusive parent is seen as the real victim. The article text continues:
”The PA representatives assume that the child would in no way be harmed by contact; on the contrary, contact should in principle always take place. Furthermore, the representatives argue that in such cases the court should transfer custody to the parent the child is afraid of, in order to secure the child’s contact with him or her and reduce the other parent’s influence and impact on the child.”
But in custody investigations and court decisions, the term PAS is not used – instead, fuzzy terms such as “conflict between parents”, ”socialising sabotage” and ”cooperation difficulties” are used, and in a debate article published in ETC, Adine Samadi, vice president of the National Organisation for Women’s and Girls’ Shelters (Roks), writes that all expressions of PAS must disappear from the courts because it is a strategy to downplay the significance of men’s violence and place the blame on the mother. Samadi writes:
”The pseudoscience [of PAS] claims that the child’s account of the father’s violence and abuse is a symptom of the mother’s manipulation. In other words, it is claimed that the mother makes the child believe that it has been victimised by its father. There is also a pseudo-scientific remedy for this that is used in court rulings internationally: a complete separation from the mother – in order to deprogramme the child. But PAS is nothing more than a strategy for men to downplay the significance of their violence and place the blame on the mother by silencing the child. [—]
The arguments are based on an outdated view of women in which women are considered mentally unstable, vindictive, oversensitive and manipulative. It is not just a strategy, but a weapon against her that society carries for him.”
Strong criticism of Sweden
Sweden has therefore been heavily criticised for its failure to protect women and children from violence. The Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Actions against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), for example, argues that Sweden is in breach of the Istanbul Convention, an international convention aimed at combating violence against women and domestic violence, on several counts.
In the Istanbul Convention, Sweden is in breach of the Istanbul Convention, an international convention aimed at combating violence against women and domestic violence.
The GREVIO report published in November 2024 criticises Sweden on several points. One of these points is precisely about PAS, where GREVIO says that Sweden must ensure that all social workers, everyone in the legal process and child psychologists are aware of the lack of evidence-based research on parental alienation. GREVIO further demands that concepts such as PAS/PA/AB be banned from use in Swedish courts.
Not being believed is a greater trauma than the violence
The mistrust that women who are victims of violence face in their contact with social authorities is highlighted in the interview study by Sara Skoog Waller, PhD and lecturer in psychology, presented in the report Without me, you’re all alone: women’s lived experiences of the loneliness of their surroundings and society in the wake of men’s violence and post-violence from 2022.
The interviews showed that it was not the experience of violence that was the most traumatising for the women concerned – instead, what was experienced as most difficult was not being believed when telling the authorities that are officially there to help about the violence. Being questioned by social services and the family court meant that the women exposed to violence isolated themselves. The experience that the authorities they turned to for help had reacted by dismissing both the women’s experiences of violence and their ability to parent created strong feelings of failure, doubt and shame.
Skoog Waller argues that societal actors can exhibit a resistance to interfering in domestic violence. It is simply easier for officials to abdicate responsibility by viewing the violence as a “conflict between two equal parties” that the parents are responsible for resolving. However, if the violence and vulnerability are not recognised by those with the resources and authority to intervene, it is difficult to stop the violence.
The application of PAS also means that a mother who is a victim of violence can never do the right thing: Either she is judged to be manipulating and fabricating the violence, which can then lead to her losing custody of the child because of the “alienation” she is considered guilty of. Or she is judged to have actually been a victim of violence, which may also lead to her losing custody because she is then considered to lack the ability to convey a positive image of the perpetrator to the child.
The child’s right to safety must be prioritised
The lack of knowledge about domestic violence and the use of PAS to relativise violence must be given greater focus, especially in a society like today’s Sweden, where mental illness, self-harming behaviours and criminality are increasingly spreading down the ages. How are children affected when they are initially encouraged to seek help if they are exposed to violence through school teaching about children’s rights, advertising campaigns and information material, but are then met with mistrust and betrayal when they actually tell? What is the impact on the mental and physical health of a child who is forced, against their will, from their safe parent to an abusive parent? How is self-esteem affected when what one feels and says has no meaning, and how is the attitude towards society affected when social services, family law and the courts fail?
I would venture to say that it is highly unlikely that this child will grow up to be a stable, harmonious and trusting member of society.
Sweden has long prioritised the parent’s right to their child over the child’s right to safety (although this is often masked by phrases such as “the child’s right to both parents”, which is a given in non-violent relationships). But despite an average of five children being killed by a parent every year in Sweden, despite the Convention on the Rights of the Child becoming Swedish law in 2020, and despite new rules on enhanced protection for children coming into force on 1 January 2025, children exposed to violence still have their stories disregarded by the same authorities tasked with protecting them.
The 13 professors and psychologists note:
”To change the situation of children exposed to violence, knowledge about risks and the processes of violence is needed. Differentiation is needed in terms of children’s needs, generally and specifically when exposed to violence. We particularly emphasise the importance of listening to children’s own experiences. We also believe that children’s right to protection from all forms of violence should always take precedence over contact with a potentially violent parent, and that no child should be forced to live or have contact with a parent against his or her will, especially when the child expresses fear.”
It seems so obvious. But as long as it is not, violence continues to be perpetrated against women and children in Sweden – and that with the good memory and assistance of the authorities.
When I interviewed a lawyer with more than three decades of experience in family law while working on this text, I asked what happens to the mothers and children who are separated when the child is moved to the violent father. The answer was short:
– They perish.
