Re
Your Organization's Deliberate Gaslighting of Targeted Parents, Your Active Suppression of Mandatory Reporting for Child Psychological Abuse, and Your Role in the Ongoing Destruction of Millions of American Children and Families — Using Your Own Research, Your Own Diagnostic Code, and Your Own Stated Mission Against You
To the Leadership of the American Psychological Association:
Your organization describes itself as "the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and the largest association of psychologists in the world." You use that description on your website, in your publications, in your correspondence with government officials, and in your advocacy materials. You have used it for decades.
We are writing to ask you — directly, on the record, in a letter that will be permanently archived and publicly available — how that description is consistent with what you have done to the children and families of the United States.
"Childhood Psychological Abuse as Harmful as Sexual or Physical Abuse."
— American Psychological Association Press Release, October 8, 2014
You published that. You put your name on it. You distributed it in a press release to the world. You had your own peer-reviewed research confirming it. And then you spent the next decade ensuring that not one clinical guideline, not one mandatory reporting directive, not one public service announcement, and not one institutional response was issued to the 22 million targeted parents and the millions of children in family court who were experiencing exactly what your own research documented.
That is not oversight. That is not institutional delay. That is a deliberate choice — made by named individuals within your organization, documented in writing, preserved in our permanent archive — to gaslight every parent who came to you for help, to suppress every clinical inquiry about DSM-5 V995.51, and to protect the financial and institutional interests of the practitioners who profit from keeping Child Psychological Abuse unrecognized and unreported.
The American Psychological Association — the organization that calls itself the leading scientific authority on psychology in the United States — actively gaslighted the parents of millions of abused children. Redirected every inquiry to terminology that does not exist in your own DSM. Silenced advocates. Ignored a petition signed by 20,000 people. Told a targeted parent advocate to stop sending emails. And used your legal resources to pursue a domain name dispute against that same advocate — while his children were being psychologically destroyed by a system your organization had the authority and the obligation to reform.
The Documented Record — What Your Own Staff Said and Did
01
Kim Mills, Sr. Director of Strategic Communications — March 12, 2024: "I ask that you cease sending APA — including our elected officers — emails on this topic." — The APA's Senior Communications Director told a targeted parent documenting child abuse to stop sending emails about it. Eight years after the first documented correspondence.
02
Jo Anne Murphy, Director of Governance Operations — February 7, 2017: "We have received many messages about this issue and are exploring the best way to address concerns that have been raised." — Nine years later the APA is still exploring. No clinical guidelines have been issued. No mandatory reporting directive has been published. No acknowledgment of the crisis has been made.
03
Dr. Jessica Henderson Daniel, APA President — May 24, 2018: Told Kenneth Gottfried that child separation, trauma, and child abuse was "not her field of expertise." Twenty-one days later she signed a letter to President Trump citing decades of psychological research on the harm of parent-child separation — and referenced suicide as a documented consequence. The same research. The same knowledge. Applied selectively — for immigrant children separated at the border, and withheld from 22 million American children separated from loving parents by family court.
04
Lea Winerman, APA Podcast Producer — September 15, 2023: Declined to have Dr. C.A. Childress — the field's leading clinician on Child Psychological Abuse — appear on the APA's psychology podcast. Reason given: "not the right fit for the show."
05
Dr. C.A. Childress, Psy.D. — 2018 Petition — 20,000 Signatures — Zero Response: Dr. Childress submitted a formal petition to the American Psychological Association signed by over 20,000 people — clinicians, researchers, targeted parents, and advocates — demanding that the APA formally acknowledge Child Psychological Abuse as defined in DSM-5 V995.51 as mandatorily reportable, issue clinical guidance to its members, and conduct a formal ethics review of clinicians who systematically mislabel Child Psychological Abuse. Twenty thousand human beings. A formal petition. Signed by clinicians and researchers who understood exactly what was being asked. The APA's response: silence. Not an acknowledgment. Not a form letter. Not a single word. The APA — the organization that calls itself the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States — received a formal petition from 20,000 people documenting a national child protection crisis and chose to say nothing. And then used its regulatory apparatus to strip Dr. Childress of his professional license for continuing to speak out.
06
APA Legal Action — April 2019: The American Psychological Association filed a legal action against Kenneth Gottfried over the domain name americanpsychologicalassoc.com — deploying your legal resources against a targeted parent advocate — while 22 million targeted parents waited for your institutional acknowledgment that their children were being abused.
We are not confused about what this represents. We have been in direct correspondence with your organization since 2016. We have documented every response, every deflection, every redirect to non-DSM terminology, every silence. We know exactly what you did and we know exactly why you did it.
The why is Institutional Capture. The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts — whose members derive income from the high-conflict family court proceedings that Child Psychological Abuse produces — has embedded itself in your institutional network. Its financial interests have become your institutional positions. Its preference for keeping Child Psychological Abuse unrecognized has become your policy of silence. Its practitioners have become your advisors, your committee members, and your conference speakers.
And the children have paid the price. Not in abstractions. Not in statistics. In lives destroyed. In attachment bonds severed. In critical thinking capacity permanently impaired. In identities built on false foundations that collapse in adulthood. In targeted parents who exhaust every legal avenue and arrive at the same wall — and in too many cases do not survive the grief of what your institutional silence permitted to happen to their children.
"Our recent email exchanges have amounted to more communication than I've had with my daughters in the past 10 years."
— Kenneth R. Gottfried, Founder, US Psychology Organization — to Andrea Capua, Watauga County Attorney, November 27, 2024
Kenneth R. Gottfried has not seen his three daughters since 2014. He has personally witnessed over 400 suicides in targeted parent communities. He has documented 1,400 judges and court officials on ChildAbusiveJudges.com. He has written certified letters to your organization, the FBI, the DC Attorney General, the California Board of Psychology, and the United Nations. Every door has led back to the same wall.
He built US Psychology Organization because someone had to build the door that did not exist. Because your organization — the organization that published the diagnostic code, conducted the research, trained the clinicians, and calls itself the leading authority on psychology in America — chose not to.
The world has woken up to what you have done. The targeted parents who were told their perceptions were wrong have found each other. The clinicians who sensed something was being suppressed now have the clinical framework to name it. The attorneys who suspected the system was captured now have the legal tools to challenge it. And US Psychology Organization is documenting everything — every name, every date, every direct quote — and submitting it to the Department of Justice, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.
We Are Requesting — On The Record — Written Responses to the Following
1.
Does the American Psychological Association recognize DSM-5 V995.51 — Child Psychological Abuse — as mandatorily reportable child abuse under the mandatory reporting laws of every state in the United States? Yes or no.
2.
Why has the APA issued zero clinical guidelines for identifying and reporting Child Psychological Abuse in the twelve years since publishing the DSM-5 and ten years since your own press release confirmed it is as harmful as physical or sexual abuse?
3.
How does the APA reconcile Dr. Daniel's June 14, 2018 letter to President Trump — citing decades of research on the harm of parent-child separation — with her statement to Kenneth Gottfried twenty-one days earlier that this was not her field of expertise?
4.
What action — specific, documented, and verifiable — will the APA take to issue clinical guidance to its members on their mandatory reporting obligations for Child Psychological Abuse under DSM-5 V995.51?
5.
Will the APA conduct a formal ethics review of the members and affiliated professionals who have systematically mislabeled Child Psychological Abuse — bypassing mandatory reporting — in family court settings?
6.
How does the APA — the organization that calls itself the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States — explain the use of its institutional authority and legal resources to silence, redirect, and litigate against targeted parents who came to it with documented evidence of child abuse?
We are not asking these questions in private. We are asking them here — on a public page, in a letter that every targeted parent, every clinician, every attorney, every journalist, and every legislative aide who reads it can see. We are asking them because you have had every opportunity to answer them privately — since 2016 — and you have chosen not to.
We are asking them now because the answer — or the continued silence — is itself evidence. Evidence of what your organization is, what it has chosen to do, and what it has chosen to permit to happen to the children it was founded to protect.
The APA wrote the diagnostic code. The APA conducted the research. The APA trained the clinicians. The APA had the authority, the platform, and the ethical obligation to act.
US Psychology Organization exists because you chose not to. And we are going to enforce what you refused to.
This letter is a matter of public record. It is permanently archived at USPsychology.com. It has been submitted to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, and appropriate congressional oversight offices.
We request a written response within 30 days addressed to
[email protected]. We will publish whatever response we receive — or the absence of one — in our permanent institutional accountability record.
The children cannot wait any longer.
Kenneth R. Gottfried
Founder & President
US Psychology Organization
cc: Department of Justice — Civil Rights Division
cc: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
cc: United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child
cc: Congressional Oversight — House Judiciary Committee
cc: Congressional Oversight — Senate HELP Committee
cc: California Board of Psychology
cc: American Bar Association
cc: National Association of Social Workers
cc: Every targeted parent community in the United States