On October 8, 2014, the American Psychological Association published a press release with the following headline:

"Childhood Psychological Abuse as Harmful as Sexual or Physical Abuse." — American Psychological Association, October 2014

In that press release the APA acknowledged that childhood psychological abuse is as destructive as sexual or physical abuse, that it produces lasting psychological damage including depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and attachment disorders, and that it deserves the same clinical attention, mandatory reporting standards, and institutional response as other forms of child abuse.

The APA published this. The APA acknowledged this. The APA put their name on it.

And then the APA spent the next decade actively ensuring that no clinician, no law enforcement agency, no child protection organization, and no family court would ever be required to act on it.

Everything that follows on this page is the documented record of how they did it — and who helped them.

SECTION 2: THE DIAGNOSTIC CODE THEY WROTE AND THEN ABANDONED

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — Fifth Edition — known as the DSM-5 — is the American Psychological Association's own publication. It is the diagnostic bible of American psychology. Every clinician, every court, every insurance company, and every mandatory reporter in the United States relies on it.

On page 719 of that document sits diagnostic code V995.51 — Child Psychological Abuse.

The APA defined it. The APA published it. The APA charged the entire psychology community to recognize it, assess it, and report it.

And then the APA issued zero clinical guidelines for identifying Child Psychological Abuse in family court settings. Zero mandatory reporting guidance for clinicians encountering it. Zero public service announcements to law enforcement or child protection agencies. Zero public acknowledgment of the epidemic scale on which it is occurring. Zero response to the clinicians, advocates, and targeted parents who came to them asking for guidance.

The organization that literally wrote the definition of Child Psychological Abuse created a diagnostic code and then built a wall around it to ensure it could never be enforced.

SECTION 3: THE GASLIGHTING CAMPAIGN

When targeted parents — desperate, grieving, watching their children be psychologically destroyed — came to the American Psychological Association for help, the APA did not ignore them.

They actively misled them.

The APA's standard response to inquiries about Child Psychological Abuse in family court settings was to redirect the conversation to "Parental Alienation Syndrome" — a term that does not appear anywhere in the DSM-5 — and then declare that "Parental Alienation Syndrome does not exist."

This is a deliberate misdirection of breathtaking cynicism.

The parents asking for help were not asking about Parental Alienation Syndrome. They were asking about the clinical phenomena described in the APA's own diagnostic code — V995.51. They were asking about Shared Persecutory Delusion. They were asking about Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another. They were asking about the Attachment System Suppression, Personality Disorder Traits, and Encapsulated Persecutory Delusion documented by Dr. C.A. Childress, Psy.D. in his peer-reviewed clinical framework.

The APA responded to every one of those inquiries by talking about something else entirely — and then declaring that something else did not exist.

This technique has a clinical name. It is called gaslighting.

Kenneth Gottfried, Founder of US Psychology Organization, spoke directly with the APA. He made clear that he was not asking about Parental Alienation Syndrome. He asked specifically about Attachment-Based Parental Alienation as documented by Dr. Craig Childress — which connects directly to DSM-5 V995.51 Child Psychological Abuse. The APA's response: "Parental Alienation Syndrome does not exist."

They answered a question he did not ask. They ignored the question he did ask. And then they ended the conversation.

That is not confusion. That is policy.

SECTION 4: THE 20,000 SIGNATURE PETITION THEY REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE

In 2018, Dr. C.A. Childress, Psy.D. submitted a formal petition to the American Psychological Association signed by over 20,000 people. It demanded that the APA formally acknowledge Child Psychological Abuse as defined in DSM-5 V995.51 as a mandatorily reportable form of abuse in family court settings, issue clinical guidance to its members on identifying and reporting this form of abuse, issue a public statement clarifying the relationship between observable family court pathology and existing DSM diagnostic categories, and conduct a formal ethics review of clinicians who systematically mislabel Child Psychological Abuse.

Twenty thousand people. Clinicians. Researchers. Targeted parents. Advocates. All asking the APA to do what its own ethical code required.

The APA's response to 20,000 signatures:

Silence.

Not an acknowledgment. Not a form letter. Not a single word.

Twenty thousand human beings documenting a national child protection crisis — and the organization with the authority, the platform, and the ethical obligation to respond chose to say nothing.

That silence is now part of the documented public record.

SECTION 5: THE INSTITUTIONAL COALITION — WHO IS WORKING WITH THE APA

The APA's suppression of Child Psychological Abuse is not a unilateral institutional failure. It is the product of an organized coalition of organizations working in concert to ensure that Child Psychological Abuse in family court settings is never clinically recognized, never mandatorily reported, and never prosecuted.

In 2019 a collective memo was submitted to the World Health Organization attempting to prevent any reference to Parental Alienation from being included in the International Classification of Diseases — ICD-11. This memo was signed by 173 individuals representing organizations across the United States and internationally.

Of the 30 United States signatories — not one was a specialist in Shared Persecutory Delusion, Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another, Cross-Generational Coalition, Attachment System Suppression, Bowen Family Systems Theory, or Minuchin Structural Family Therapy.

Every single United States signatory represented either a women's rights legal organization, a domestic violence advocacy group, or a legal firm.

The pattern is clear. A coalition of legal and advocacy organizations — with significant financial and political influence — has systematically worked to ensure that the clinical framework connecting observable family court pathology to DSM-classified Child Psychological Abuse is never formally recognized. Because formal recognition means mandatory reporting. Mandatory reporting means investigation. Investigation means accountability.

The United States signatories to the 2019 WHO collective memo include Caroline Bettinger-López, Cynthia Cummings, Margaret Drew, Sasha Drobnick, Nancy Erickson, Lisa Fischel-Wolovick, Denise Gamache, Dr. Robert Geffner, Joan Meier, Kathleen Russell, Lynn Hecht Schafran, Dr. Evan Stark, and Esta Soler.

Not one specialist in Shared Persecutory Delusion. Not one specialist in Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another. Not one specialist in the clinical framework that connects observable family court pathology to DSM-5 V995.51. Every name on that list signed a document designed to prevent the clinical recognition of Child Psychological Abuse.

SECTION 6: WHAT THEY DID TO DR. CRAIG CHILDRESS

Dr. C.A. Childress, Psy.D. spent his career building the most scientifically precise, clinically grounded framework for identifying Child Psychological Abuse in family systems that exists anywhere in the world. His three diagnostic indicators — Attachment System Suppression, Personality Disorder Traits directed at the targeted parent, and the Encapsulated Persecutory Delusion — are grounded in decades of peer-reviewed research.

He submitted a petition signed by over 20,000 people to the APA demanding action. He published books, clinical frameworks, assessment tools, and educational materials. He spoke publicly, persistently, and precisely about what the system was doing to children and targeted parents.

And the system responded.

In 2025 the California Board of Psychology — working in concert with individuals connected to the Parental Alienation advocacy community — stripped Dr. Childress of his professional license.

The complaint against Dr. Childress was brought by individuals whose financial and professional interests are directly served by the continued mislabeling of Child Psychological Abuse as "Parental Alienation." The very people who profit from keeping Child Psychological Abuse unrecognized and unreported used the regulatory system to silence the clinician who was most effectively exposing what they were doing.

Dr. Childress provided the California Board of Psychology with documented clinical evidence of Child Psychological Abuse. The Board covered it up. And then they stripped him of his license.

What was done to Dr. Childress is not a regulatory action. It is retaliation.

What they took from Dr. Childress on paper does not diminish by a single word the validity, the integrity, or the lasting clinical importance of his work. His framework is correct. His diagnostic indicators are sound. His assessment tools are clinically defensible. And his work is the foundation upon which US Psychology Organization was built.

They silenced the messenger. The message remains.

SECTION 7: THE HUMAN COST OF INSTITUTIONAL SILENCE

This is not an academic debate. This is not a policy disagreement. People are dying.

Targeted parents are dying because every legal avenue has been closed to them. They are dying because their children have been conditioned to reject them and no institution will intervene. They are dying because the grief of losing a living child — a child who has been taught to hate you, who has been told you never loved them, who has changed their name and testified against you in court — is a form of devastation that has no name in public health records, no category in coroner reports, and no acknowledgment in any government office.

When a targeted parent dies by suicide no death certificate asks whether their children were taken from them by a family court. No coroner records the institutional chain of events that led a loving parent to see no reason left to live. No public health agency tracks the connection between family court abuse and parental suicide.

The deaths are invisible by design.

Kenneth Gottfried — Founder of US Psychology Organization and a targeted parent who has not seen his three daughters since 2014 — has personally witnessed over 400 suicides documented within targeted parent communities. These are not statistics. These are people he knew. Parents who exhausted every legal avenue. Parents who were told by the APA's own institutional framework that what was happening to their children did not exist. Parents who died believing that no one would ever acknowledge what was done to them and to their children.

Four hundred witnessed deaths represent a fraction of a fraction of the actual toll. With an estimated 22 million targeted parents in the United States the true suicide death toll is conservatively estimated in the tens of thousands.

The APA has the research. They published it themselves in 2014. They know that the forced separation of a parent and child causes lifelong psychological trauma, complex PTSD, and suicidal ideation. They know because their own studies, their own press releases, and their own diagnostic codes tell them so.

And yet the APA continues to gaslight the parents who come to them for help. They continue to watch families disintegrate, parents collapse, and children spiral into mental anguish — while refusing to issue a single public service announcement, a single clinical guideline, or a single acknowledgment that this is happening.

The APA has the knowledge. They have the authority. They have the clinical framework. They have the institutional power to stop this.

They have chosen not to use any of it.

In any moral framework that choice has a name. We will let you decide what that name is.

SECTION 8: THE MANDATORY REPORTING CRISIS

Mandatory reporting laws exist in all 50 states. Every mental health professional, every law enforcement officer, every teacher, every medical provider is legally required to report suspected child abuse when they encounter it.

Child Psychological Abuse — DSM-5 V995.51 — is child abuse. It is covered by mandatory reporting laws in every state in the country.

And yet sheriff's departments across all 50 states uniformly refuse to write mandatory child abuse reports when the abuse is psychological rather than physical or sexual. Child protection agencies refuse to assess children for psychological abuse even when presented with documented clinical evidence. Family court judges issue orders that facilitate and entrench the abuse. Mental health professionals mislabel the clinical presentation as "Parental Alienation" — a non-DSM term — bypassing mandatory reporting obligations entirely.

The result is a perfectly self-sealing system. No reports means no investigations. No investigations means no accountability. No accountability means the abuse continues. And the APA — which has the authority to issue clinical guidance that would break this cycle — has chosen silence instead.

This is not a local failure. This is a national system of coordinated non-reporting — and the APA is at the center of it.

SECTION 9: WHAT WE ARE DOING ABOUT IT

US Psychology Organization was founded because the APA abdicated its responsibility to America's children. We exist to fill the clinical, ethical, and advocacy void the APA has created.

We are documenting every instance of institutional refusal to recognize, assess, and report Child Psychological Abuse — through ChildAbusiveJudges.com and this accountability record.

We are educating clinicians on the correct DSM-referenced clinical framework for identifying and reporting Child Psychological Abuse.

We are developing and deploying clinical assessment tools — including the CAPA (Child Attachment Pathology Assessment) — that provide neutral, court-ready, mandatorily reportable clinical evidence.

We are advocating for the enforcement of mandatory reporting laws as they apply to Child Psychological Abuse in all 50 states.

We are submitting this documented record to the FBI, the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and every oversight body with jurisdiction over this crisis.

We are building the professional organization that should have existed decades ago.

The APA wrote the diagnostic code. We are going to enforce it.

SECTION 10: THE DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE — EVERY NAME. EVERY DATE. EVERY QUOTE.

This section documents — with exact dates, named individuals, and direct quotes from their own correspondence — the American Psychological Association's systematic suppression of Child Psychological Abuse. All communications are preserved in the permanent archive of US Psychology Organization.

PART 1: THE APA'S OWN STAFF — NAMED AND DOCUMENTED

KIM MILLS Title: Interim Senior Communications Advisor / Sr. Director, Strategic External Communications & Public Affairs American Psychological Association | 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002

December 12, 2016 — Kenneth Gottfried contacted the APA asking specifically about Attachment-Based Parental Alienation — the clinical framework documented by Dr. C.A. Childress that connects directly to DSM-5 V995.51 Child Psychological Abuse.

Kim Mills responded in writing:

"My staff has given you all the information that APA has to offer on this topic. Our positions are based on scientific evidence, which explains APA's position with respect to parental alienation." — Kim Mills, APA, December 12, 2016

This response deliberately conflated a question about Attachment-Based Parental Alienation and DSM-5 V995.51 with "parental alienation syndrome" — a term that was never raised. The subject of the inquiry — Child Psychological Abuse under the APA's own diagnostic code — was never addressed.

March 12, 2024 — After years of continued correspondence documenting ongoing child abuse, Kim Mills responded again:

"The answers I provided to your previous email still stand. APA does advocate for the mental health of children and will continue to do so. I ask that you cease sending APA — including our elected officers — emails on this topic." — Kim Mills, APA, March 12, 2024

The American Psychological Association's Senior Director of Strategic External Communications asked a targeted parent documenting child abuse to stop sending emails about it. That is the documented record of the APA's position.

JIM SLIWA Title: Director, Public Affairs American Psychological Association

December 9, 2016 — When Kenneth Gottfried asked Jim Sliwa directly for the APA's position on Attachment-Based Parental Alienation, Sliwa responded:

"The statement you were referred to is the only statement the APA has on parental alienation of any type." — Jim Sliwa, APA Public Affairs Director, December 9, 2016

He provided a link to a statement about Parental Alienation Syndrome — a term Kenneth Gottfried had not asked about, and a term that does not appear in the DSM-5. The APA's three communications staff members — Shulman, Sliwa, and Mills — all redirected the same inquiry about Child Psychological Abuse to a statement about something that was never asked about. This is not coincidence. This is policy.

MICHAEL SHULMAN Title: Public Affairs Specialist American Psychological Association

December 9, 2016 — Michael Shulman was the first APA staff member to respond. Rather than addressing the question about DSM-5 V995.51, Shulman provided a link to the APA's statement on Parental Alienation Syndrome — which was not the subject of the inquiry — and referred the matter to Jim Sliwa.

JO ANNE MURPHY Title: Director, Governance Operations American Psychological Association

February 7, 2017 — Jo Anne Murphy responded:

"Good afternoon. Thank you for contacting the American Psychological Association. We have received many messages about this issue and are exploring the best way to address concerns that have been raised." — Jo Anne Murphy, APA Director of Governance Operations, February 7, 2017

The APA's Director of Governance Operations confirmed in writing that they had received many messages about this issue. They knew. They acknowledged knowing. That was February 7, 2017. It is now 2026. Nine years later. The APA has issued no clinical guidance. No public statement. No mandatory reporting directive. They are still "exploring."

NADINE KASLOW, PhD, ABPP Former APA President | Emory University

February 1, 2025 — Kenneth Gottfried contacted former APA President Nadine Kaslow regarding the APA's institutional failures. Dr. Kaslow responded:

"hello, I am not currently part of APA leadership. It is a rotating board." — Nadine J. Kaslow, PhD, ABPP, February 1, 2025

A former President of the American Psychological Association declined responsibility by noting that the board rotates. The abuse does not rotate. The children do not rotate. The deaths do not rotate.

LEA WINERMAN Title: Public Affairs Manager / Producer, Speaking of Psychology American Psychological Association

September 15, 2023 — Kenneth Gottfried requested that Dr. C.A. Childress be invited to appear on the APA's podcast "Speaking of Psychology." Lea Winerman responded:

"Hello. Thanks for reaching out to Speaking of Psychology. Unfortunately, I don't think this is the right fit for the show, but appreciate your thinking of us." — Lea Winerman, APA Public Affairs Manager, September 15, 2023

The APA's podcast producer declined to have the field's leading clinician on child psychological abuse appear on their psychology podcast. The clinical framework most precisely documenting Child Psychological Abuse was not "the right fit."

PART 2: THE APA SUED KENNETH GOTTFRIED

March 21, 2019 — The American Psychological Association, Inc. filed a formal legal action against Kenneth Gottfried — a targeted parent and child abuse advocate — over the domain name americanpsychologicalassoc.com.

Case: American Psychological Association, Inc. v. Kenneth Gottfried Forum: National Arbitration Forum (ICANN UDRP) Commencement Date: March 21, 2019 Disputed Domain: americanpsychologicalassoc.com

April 30, 2019 — The APA won the domain transfer.

The APA — which had refused to respond to documented evidence of child abuse, refused to issue clinical guidance, refused to acknowledge a petition signed by 20,000 people, and told a targeted parent to stop sending emails — deployed their legal resources against that same targeted parent over a domain name.

An organization that would not lift a finger to protect children from documented abuse moved swiftly and decisively to protect their brand. That is the documented record of the APA's priorities.

PART 3: SHERIFF LEN HAGAMAN — WATAUGA COUNTY, NC

January 3, 2019 — Sheriff Len Hagaman of Watauga County, NC was presented with documented evidence of Child Psychological Abuse and asked to file mandatory child abuse reports. His response in writing:

"Ken, that is my understanding, the route of guidance and inquiry would be through your legal counsel, and/or possibly the NC State Bar, and/or perhaps the NC Attorney General's Office." — Sheriff Len Hagaman, Watauga County Sheriff's Office, January 3, 2019

March 13, 2019 — After Kenneth Gottfried continued to press for action, Sheriff Hagaman responded:

"Wow, I am at wit's end about your plight, as all avenues I have thought of have run aground — schools, DSS, health department, DA, Attorney General, SBI, NC Bar, etc." — Sheriff Len Hagaman, Watauga County Sheriff's Office, March 13, 2019

The Sheriff of Watauga County acknowledged in writing that every institutional avenue had run aground — schools, DSS, the health department, the District Attorney, the Attorney General, the State Bureau of Investigation, and the NC Bar — all simultaneously. And still no mandatory child abuse report was filed.

August 16, 2019 — Sheriff Hagaman responded:

"Kenneth, to be honest, the individuals you have named are the very ones this, or any other local, State of NC, law enforcement agency, must receive counsel regarding any criminal charges. From what I understand, the allegations are civil in nature." — Sheriff Len Hagaman, Watauga County Sheriff's Office, August 16, 2019

The named individuals — judges and court officers — were the very people the Sheriff's department required legal counsel from before taking action against them. This is the self-sealing system documented in its purest form. In writing. By the Sheriff himself.

PART 4: THE FBI — DOCUMENTED NON-RESPONSE

FBI Special Agent Richard A. Sutherland, Jr. | Western District of North Carolina

September 21, 2022 — Agent Sutherland reviewed evidence of child abuse involving 250+ judges and responded:

"I read again NCGS 7B-301 and DOJ Policy on mandatory reporting to make sure I understood my obligations. I am in complete compliance with DOJ Policy and State of NC Law." — Richard Sutherland, FBI, September 21, 2022

November 9, 2022 — After Kenneth Gottfried pressed for a nationwide response, Sutherland responded:

"There is no blanket way for the FBI to address each of these cases. Because they are subject to different state laws, state courts, and federal courts, each case has to be considered on its own... My role in this, again, is to look at specific allegations of wrong doing in the Western District of NC." — Richard Sutherland, FBI, November 9, 2022

November 14, 2022 — Sutherland responded:

"It is never ok to abuse a child... The FBI does not encourage people to take vengeance into their own hands. People must work within the law, and the systems that are in place." — Richard Sutherland, FBI, November 14, 2022

The FBI confirmed that child abuse is wrong. The FBI confirmed that people must work within the system. The FBI did not open an investigation. The system they referred parents back to is the same system documented in this record as uniformly refusing to act.

PART 5: WATAUGA COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA — THE LOCAL COVER-UP

ANDREA N. CAPUA Attorney/Partner — Capua Law Firm | 118 North Depot Street, Boone, NC 28607 Former attorney for Kenneth Gottfried. Now represents Watauga County.

October 24, 2024 — Andrea Capua, responding on behalf of Watauga County:

"I will forward your concerns to DSS, the County Manager and the Watauga County Sheriff's Department. That is all that I can offer you at this point. If I'm not mistaken, these concerns were already raised years ago so they should all be aware of them from before." — Andrea Capua, Watauga County Attorney, October 24, 2024

She acknowledged these concerns were raised years ago and the officials were already aware. This is documented prior knowledge of ongoing child abuse combined with documented institutional inaction.

October 25, 2024 — Andrea Capua's final response:

"The policies in place are consistent with State and Federal law and guidelines. If you want change, you might consider contacting elected officials who create the laws. This will be my last response, as there is not anything more to say or do at this point." — Andrea Capua, Watauga County Attorney, October 25, 2024

Named officials in this documented record: — Judge Hal G. Harrison — Watauga County Family Court — Judge Rebecca Eggers-Gryder — Watauga County Family Court — Tom Hughes — Director, Watauga County DHHS — Deron Geouque — Watauga County Manager — Sheriff Len Hagaman — Watauga County Sheriff's Office

"Our recent email exchanges have amounted to more communication than I've had with my daughters in the past 10 years." — Kenneth R. Gottfried, to Andrea Capua, November 27, 2024

PART 6: THE DC ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE

Multiple correspondence between December 2019 and February 2020 with the DC Attorney General's Office documented a pattern of acknowledgment without action.

Lucinda Mulzac — DC Office of Attorney General — acknowledged receipt of correspondence regarding the APA's failure to report child abuse. No investigation opened.

Valerie Scott — DC Office of Attorney General — responded June 2019. No action taken.

Lindsay Morton — DC Office of Attorney General — responded February 2020. No action taken.

The DC Attorney General's Office — which has direct jurisdiction over the APA — received documented evidence of the APA's institutional suppression of Child Psychological Abuse reporting and took no action.

THE DOCUMENTED PATTERN

Every institution. Every level. Every response the same.

The APA — received documented evidence, acknowledged it, redirected it, and ultimately told the advocate to stop sending emails.

The Sheriff — received documented evidence, acknowledged it was credible, redirected it to every other agency, and acknowledged that every agency had run aground.

The FBI — received documented evidence involving 250+ judges, reviewed it, and declined to open a coordinated investigation.

The DC Attorney General — received documented evidence, acknowledged the correspondence, and took no action.

This is not incompetence. This is a system. And this is the documented record of how it works.

All correspondence documented in this record is preserved in the permanent archive of US Psychology Organization. The complete email record — 1,085 documented communications spanning 2016-2026 — is available upon request to verified journalists, legal representatives, and oversight bodies.

This record is a living document. It will be updated as additional evidence becomes available.

CALL TO ACTION SECTION

HEADLINE: This Cannot Continue. Join the Organization That Is Fighting Back.

If you are a clinician who has witnessed this system fail children — join us. If you are a targeted parent who has been told what you witnessed does not exist — join us. If you are a researcher, advocate, or legal professional who believes children deserve protection — join us.

BUTTON 1: Become a Member BUTTON 2: Submit Your Documentation BUTTON 3: Visit ChildAbusiveJudges.com

US Psychology Organization Kenneth R. Gottfried, Founder & President USPsychology.com | ChildAbusiveJudges.com | [email protected] © 2026 US Psychology Organization. Founded by Kenneth R. Gottfried.

SECTION 11: THE MOST DAMNING EVIDENCE OF ALL — DR. JESSICA HENDERSON DANIEL AND THE LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

The APA President Who Knew Everything — And Did Nothing For American Children

This section documents the single most devastating piece of evidence in the entire APA accountability record. It proves — using the APA President's own signed letter — that the American Psychological Association possessed full knowledge of the harm caused by parent-child separation, cited that knowledge in a formal letter to the President of the United States, and then simultaneously refused to apply that same knowledge to 11 million American children being separated from loving parents through family court.

PART A: WHAT DR. DANIEL TOLD KENNETH GOTTFRIED

May 24, 2018 — In a direct conversation with APA President Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel, Kenneth Gottfried asked about the forced separation of a parent and child by the family court system and its connection to Attachment-Based Parental Alienation. Dr. Daniel told him that child separation, trauma, and child abuse was not her field of expertise. She directed him to contact Lauren Caldwell of the APA's Children Youth and Family division.

PART B: WHAT DR. DANIEL TOLD PRESIDENT TRUMP — 21 DAYS LATER

June 14, 2018 — Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel, as President of the American Psychological Association, signed and sent a formal letter to President Donald Trump, with copies to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen.

In that letter, using the APA's own research and institutional authority, Dr. Daniel wrote:

"Based on empirical evidence of the psychological harm that children and parents experience when separated, we implore you to reconsider this policy and commit to the more humane practice of housing families together pending immigration proceedings to protect them from further trauma." — Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel, APA President, June 14, 2018

She continued:

"Decades of psychological research have determined that it is in the best interest of the child and the family to keep families together. Sudden and unexpected family separation, such as separating families at the border, can add to that stress, leading to emotional trauma in children. Research also suggests that the longer that parents and children are separated, the greater the reported symptoms of anxiety and depression are for children. Adverse childhood experiences, such as parent-child separation, are important social determinants of mental disorders. For children, traumatic events can lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health disorders that can cause long lasting effects." — Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel, APA President, June 14, 2018

She included a documented example of suicide as a consequence of parent-child separation:

"As a tragic example of the current policy's serious potential for harm, a Honduran man who was separated from his wife and 3-year-old son after he crossed the border into Texas recently took his own life while detained in a holding cell." — Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel, APA President, June 14, 2018

She concluded:

"We have documented multiple harmful effects of parent-child separation on children's emotional and psychological development and well-being and urge that the current policy of family separation be reversed." — Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel, APA President, June 14, 2018

PART C: KENNETH GOTTFRIED'S LETTER TO DR. DANIEL — THE IRREFUTABLE CONTRADICTION

Upon discovering this letter, Kenneth Gottfried wrote directly to Dr. Daniel presenting her with the contradiction between what she told him and what she told the President of the United States.

He presented her with two options:

Option 1 — Her letter to President Trump was incorrect, baseless, and the referenced material was fabricated.

Option 2 — Her letter was correct. In which case the question became: why do you not apply the knowledge and ethical concern of your letter for the separated border children to the 11 million American children separated from a loving parent by the other parent, in the process of attachment-based parental alienation?

He cited her own APA ethical standards against her:

Standard 1.05 — If an apparent ethical violation has substantially harmed or is likely to substantially harm a person or organization, psychologists take further action appropriate to the situation.

Standard 2.01a — Boundaries of Competence

Standard 3.04 — Avoiding Harm to the Client

Standard 2.03 — Maintaining Competence

He closed with three statements that remain on the record:

"Silence in response to ethical code violations is complicity."

"Silence in response to the rampant and unchecked psychological abuse of children by narcissistic and borderline personality parents is complicity with the psychological abuse of children."

"Silence in response to the wholesale destruction of families and the lives of children by forensic psychology is complicity with this devastation and harm."

THE DOCUMENTED CONCLUSION

Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel — as President of the American Psychological Association in 2018 — possessed and publicly cited decades of research documenting that parent-child separation causes psychological trauma, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and suicide. She used that research to demand policy change from the President of the United States regarding immigrant children.

At the same time, she told Kenneth Gottfried — a targeted parent representing millions of American families experiencing identical harm through family court — that this was not her field of expertise.

The research was the same. The harm was the same. The children were different.

That is not a policy disagreement. That is not an oversight. That is a documented, deliberate, selective application of science — used when it served the APA's institutional interests and withheld when it did not.

In the same month that Dr. Daniel wrote to the President of the United States about the harm of parent-child separation, Kenneth Gottfried documented two more suicides in the targeted parent community — friends of David Shubert — directly connected to the family court system the APA refused to address.

The APA knew. Their own President knew. She said so in writing — to the President of the United States.

And she told Kenneth Gottfried it was not her field.

That is the documented record.