The divorce was scrappy but the battle lines were clear. He wanted unfettered access to his two-year-old son, who lived with his ex-wife 10 minutes away by foot in the central Bosnian city of Zenica. She wanted him out of the boy’s life entirely.
In the end, they begrudgingly agreed a compromise: the father would see the boy for four hours every Wednesday and two full days every second weekend.
But soon, the boy’s mother started reneging on the deal, according to the father who declined to be identified. Despite the proximity of their apartments, he often waited weeks to see his son.
“It was especially difficult when I’d take him back to his mother … and he would cry and say, ‘Daddy, don’t go,’” said the father, 35, who is unemployed. “Then two months ago, she started to coach him.”
He used a cell phone to record a video in which the boy is seen sitting on a plastic tricycle with a smile on his face, saying in a sing-song voice, “I don’t want to go to Daddy, I don’t want to go to Daddy.’”
In the recording, the father is heard asking: “Who told you to say that?”
“Mama did,” the boy replies.
In his view, this was a classic case of Malicious Parent Syndrome, a pattern of behaviour described by psychologists in which one parent tries to turn a child against the other after a hostile breakup.
It was not possible to contact the mother to hear her side of the story.
In a country where family courts do not recognise joint custody of children as an option, the father says he is trying to get social workers to intervene to make sure he can see his son — though he says what he really needs is a legal remedy.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
