Why would your children testify against you?

I must admit, having my daughters say they don’t want to see me initially came as a shock. Since their mother left, I made them my highest priority. I determined to place their interests before my own. I stopped traveling for work. I homeschooled my youngest, coached both my daughters’ soccer teams, volunteered at their school, took them them on fieldtrips, taught their Sunday and Wednesday Bible classes, planned lots of fun family outings, and read to them every night without fail. We enjoyed a wonderful relationship.

I did not have a category to understand why they would suddenly say they feared me until I read several books on parental alienation. One parent can turn children against a loving parent in a matter of just a few weeks. It became clear during the legal proceedings that my children, like most children, wanted to please their mother. After years of making false allegations and investigators finding no evidence of abuse, Ms. Anderson learned how to twist everyday interactions into sinister events. My youngest testified in the criminal trial that her mom told her I committed a crime against her.

During the seven hours I had with my girls in March 2022, my middle child broke down in tears, confessing, “This is all my fault. I lied.” She refused to testify against me in the criminal trial.

My oldest, however, is a different story, and a heart-wrenching one. Her superpower is empathy. She easily identifies the emotions of other people and wants to please them. In this situation, her empathy turned into her kryptonite. She does not have the ability to separate herself from her mother. Would an 11-yr-old independently reach the legal conclusion that her father should “have his parental rights terminated”? She was committed to a psychiatric hospital the day after her testimony in the Juvenile Trial. I feel no pain deeper than the egregious harm caused to my oldest child through this hellish process. The lies of her mother and the interrogations by the State have pushed my daughter off a mental health cliff.

This must end now.