‘Fatal Attraction: The Making of an Alienator

On Sunday, December 7, 2025 at 8 PM EST, Family Access-Fighting fo Children’s Rights will present Melaine Gill speaking on “Fatal Attraction: The Making of an Alienator”. This will air exclusively on our Families Divided TV You Tube Channel.

Melanie is going to explore the dark and complex relational patterns that evolve in parental relationships meaning one parent becomes an alienator; patterns in which one parent's unresolved trauma, personality disturbance, or unmet emotional needs metastasise into a campaign of hatred, control, and distorted thought processing , ultimately severing a child's bond with the other parent.

Drawing on attachment theory, trauma-informed psychology, and real-world case illustrations, this session traces how intense emotional enmeshment or narcissistic wounding can fuel a dynamic where the alienating parent begins to view the former partner as wholly dangerous, defective, or evil. Over time, this hatred is not only maintained—but amplified, spilling over into the child’s mind, creating a distorted and rigid reality where love becomes fear, and loyalty becomes weaponised.

Melanie is going to examine how this process—rooted in initial relationship dysfunction—begins with one parent’s growing obsession or fear but is then reinforced by the emotional reactivity and helplessness of the other, alienated parent. What begins as psychological vulnerability escalates into a full-blown war for the child’s allegiance, driven by unconscious patterns of projection and trauma re-enactment. The romantic attachment that once existed is blown apart.

Melanie will be showing how to recognize parental alienation not merely as a set of behaviours, but as a fatal attraction—a toxic relational system that develops when fear, control, and unresolved pain become stronger than the original bond of love’.

Melanie Gill is a UK -based attachment specialist, psychologist, and forensic consultant. She worked as an expert witness in complex family proceedings for nearly 2 decades specialising in cases involving accusations of parental alienation using evidenced based assessments with a focus on attachment science.  Her work places an emphasis on understanding the often-complex history behind an existing family dynamic, on the basis that a child cannot be assessed in vacuum, nor can parents and adults be understood separately from their children, other family members and their family history. Despite an ongoing campaign to ‘cancel’ her from working she is continuing to do what she has always done with her specialist training, i.e., explaining complex people. Melanie has been a political campaigner for children and families for many years and is passionate about bringing psychological science and knowledge into Court and family law to improve the lives and understanding of complex families and how all humans develop.