Experiences of an alienated young woman

Last week we spoke about one of the forms of violence exercised by the alienating mother/father, namely that which “occurs in a pattern of violent behaviors, in a repetitive cycle that varies between behaviors and attitudes by the alienating mother/father of aggression/punishment and through displays of affection and compensation if the child or adolescent complies with the behavior desired by the alienator” (Delgado-Martins, E.; in Observador , May 3, 2025).

Today we will talk about another form of violence used by the alienating parent. The family and social isolation of the alienated victim. Family and social isolation is one of the strategies used by the alienating parent to make it difficult for the alienated child to report the violence/alienation of which he/she is a victim.

We will describe the experiences shared by an alienated young woman, Madalena, who is the victim of an alienating father and stepmother who, through alienating behaviors and attitudes that correspond to the use of strategies of family and social isolation to control the victim's life, namely by limiting contact with the outside world, family, friends and other people. Family members and friends who defend the alienated child or adolescent are usually removed. Madalena uses the expression “Bubble…in a Golden Cage” to refer to the isolation/separation to which she was subjected. Through these strategies, the alienator uses continued violent behavior, resorting to a pattern of imposing social isolation and coercive control over the alienated children, with the aim of exerting his power and control over them to ensure the success of the alienation. As Madalena shared with us: “It's interesting, because people who noticed from the outside had to be cut off immediately, whether they were family or not”.

In this context, social isolation is also a type of domestic violence that results from the strategies that the alienating mother/father adopts to separate the victim from their social and family network. For the alienator, if the victim is isolated from relationships with others (relational isolation), she is more easily manipulated and controlled, as Madalena said: “they wouldn’t leave us alone (her and her brother) with family members… who talk about their mother…”. Madalena shared a way her father and stepmother used to isolate her from having friends at school: “I would dress differently at school and it was my friends who isolated me”. Alienating mothers and fathers find as a complementary strategy the encouragement of new friends who do not know the past and behavior of the child or adolescent. However, if they perceive that these friends question them about matters concerning the alienated mother/father, they too end up being distanced, returning to the situation of social isolation. As Madalena told us: “Only those who knew us before knew that we were different, and that’s why they had so many new friendships and were never able to keep friends for very long… I think it’s a very common thing, a very common pattern among manipulators, manipulators can’t keep friendships for very long, and she was always saying this about my mother, that mine ended friendships very quickly because she was very manipulative.”

In addition to these, other social isolation strategies involve prohibiting alienated children from: leaving the house alone without the consent of the alienating mother/father, taking part in extracurricular activities, spending time with family and friends. They also include controlling what they do, who they meet and talk to, their access to social media, and what they read. Madalena said that she was “prohibited from having friends…prohibited from doing activities…prohibited from swimming…prohibited from surfing”.

Another strategy used by alienating mothers/fathers is constant surveillance and monitoring of the victim’s compliance with isolation from the world. Madalena mentioned to us that her father and stepmother would check her cell phone every day to “see if she had contacted her mother”. Another isolation strategy is to change the alienated child or adolescent’s phone number so that they cannot be contacted by anyone. Madalena was also the target of this: “The phone I left my mother’s house with was never given to me again… my mother didn’t have my number and didn’t know it existed, there was no way to contact me, they changed my phone number… my mother kept sending me messages to the old number and it was my stepmother who answered… I knew that my stepmother or father would answer the messages for me”. Even when alienating mothers/fathers give the alienated child or adolescent a mobile phone with a new number, unknown to the alienated mothers/fathers, so that they cannot contact them, contact with the outside world continues to be controlled, with the alienator himself often responding to others, pretending to be the alienated child or adolescent, to create discomfort and problems, making it difficult for the child or adolescent to create relationships and social interactions, such as with friends at school, conditioning him/her to remain isolated, without friends, as Madalena mentioned: “they spoke to their classmates as if they were me… they spoke in the group class as if they were me, to check whether I was saying what it was like (tests, work)”.

Alienators not only control and monitor the alienated children’s cell phones, but also all the belongings through which they may have contact with the outside world, as Madalena shared with us: “Checking my backpack every day when I got home from school”. Another form of control and isolation by the alienating mother/father is to take away the autonomy of the alienated child or adolescent, such as being able to walk or go to school alone, as happened with Madalena: “Control… not being able to come home from school alone”.

The isolation of the victim of parental alienation means that the alienated child or adolescent does not spontaneously seek support or assistance or reveal the experience of which they are a victim to those closest to them, such as extended family (grandparents, cousins, uncles, etc.). Madalena told us about her example of isolation with her family: “I remember this cousin-aunt of mine, I only met her once in my life and after my grandfather’s funeral, she asked me to go for a walk with her around Aveiro, my stepmother didn’t want to go at all, she said no, no… there she is to maintain this isolation… and I went out and she started asking questions about my mother… well, she asked me so many questions about what was going on… I think the lady was shocked by what she was seeing of us, because I think she had met us when we were kids, a few years before, and we were normal kids, right, and there we behaved completely aberrantly… that’s what she asked me “don’t you want to be with your mother?”, she made me cry so much… I arrived and we never went back to their house”. Another strategy of the alienating mother or father is to isolate the alienated child or adolescent from friends, teachers/educators; health professionals (psychologists, pediatricians, etc.) or another trusted adult, not authorizing her to talk about her mother or any related subject, as Madalena told us: “My father was the guardian. At the beginning of the year, my father would tell the story… manipulating the teachers… I knew that my mother had been at school because of my class teacher João… not alienated, not manipulated… so he was hated by my father and my brother, because they realized that he didn’t fall for the nonsense… The other class teachers I had would meet my mother and not say – alienated by the father”.

As soon as the alienator feels that someone can be a confidant and provide support, they are immediately removed from the family nucleus, and the alienated children are told that they should not talk to that person because “they are bad”.

Illustrating the isolation she was subjected to, Madalena testified that she was isolated at home, in her room, without contact, deprived of going to school: “punishments for not going to school… I ended up having 30 to 40 absences… they knew that I liked being at school more than at home with them… a heavy atmosphere… I could spend a whole day without speaking… or glued to my books”.

Parental alienation is experienced in a context of intra-family and domestic violence, in the lack of protection created by the strategies of social isolation of the alienated person in a space of privacy and intimacy, making them invisible and unprotected, and contributing to a lack of capacity and autonomy to seek help or report the situation, intentionally promoting ignorance of their rights and the true reality, consequently creating greater difficulty in reporting and timely intervention. Parental alienation is not a personal problem, nor is it a family problem; it is a social problem.