Maya: Get away from me! No, no, no! No! Get the f--- off of me! Get off of me! Olivia: When this video of two kids being taken by force went
viral, people were shocked. Bystander: I can see it on film. Don't hurt her. Maya: You're f---ing
pulling down my pants. Bystander: Legalized kidnapping.
That's what you're doing. Olivia: But actually, it
had been ordered by a judge. And the same thing has happened to children across the country. I'm terrified. Tomorrow is the day that
they're going to try
to take me. They're going to try to force
me to my abuser's house. I would mention the
ways our dad abused us, and they would say our mom
must be telling us lies and manipulating us. I just want to go home. I want mommy cuddles. We were being held against our
will, and I'm speaking out, because I don't want anybody
else to go through it. If anyone could just share this, just spread awareness for what's going on, that would be amazing. A reunification camp? Yeah. Kiersten: I was trying to process
why these two adults were
cornering my friends. I wasn't really thinking in this moment. I kind of just walked
up and gave a big hug. Olivia: Maya and Sebastian were 15 and 11. Their parents had divorced, and they were refusing
to see their mother. Get the f--- away from me. Kiersten: I put myself
between the transporters and Maya and Sebastian. I really thought I could
stop them from being taken. Olivia: The day before she was taken, Maya testified that
her mother was abusive. But the judge ga
ve her
mother sole custody, banned her father from
seeing her and her brother, and ordered the kids into something called a reunification program. Supposedly this was to repair their relationship with their mom. I found in my reporting
that judges have ordered at least 600 kids into these
reunification programs. There is actually a very
predictable pattern. There's the abuse allegation, there's the alienation rebuttal, there's the custody switch, and there's the program. One young woman, Ally To
yos, was one of the first kids to start posting about these programs on social media. Ally: Reunification camps are camps that are part of the
troubled teen industry and allow abusers the ability to buy back the custody of their children through family court. So few of the abductions get videoed. The Maya and Sebastian
video was shocking to me. It was very hard to watch as a survivor. I really was taken back to when my sister and I were transported. Maya and Sebastian were abducted
from Santa Cr
uz, California, and taken to Lynn Steinberg. Lynn Steinberg is a licensed therapist who runs a forced reunification camp to make money off of forcing kids back into the custody of their abuser. Lynn: What was put out on the internet was that I had somehow
kidnapped these children and I was child trafficking them and that they had just disappeared off the face of the earth. Olivia: So in your opinion, did the transporters do
anything wrong that night? They did nothing wrong. This was a court orde
r, and everybody had to obey court orders. The judge ordered for the children to be in my four-day therapy program. The children rejected their mother because they were brainwashed
into rejecting their mother. Parental alienation is when one parent turns the children
against the other parent following a divorce or separation. When I first started, the judge or the lawyer would accuse me of peddling snake oil, or they wouldn't allow me to use the word parental alienation. Now, when I go into a
co
urtroom, they know who I am. I get the most severe cases. They always come to my program with false allegations of
abuse, the children do. They're pretty -- I hate to say laughable. Jean: There is no major
medical or psychiatric or psychological or
scientific organization that has stated that they
consider parental alienation to be a valid scientific concept. Very often, when there
have been allegations of parental alienation, the child is sent to a treatment program, which is essentially an
exp
erimental treatment, is not a proven, effective,
or a safe treatment. These venues are, as I understand it, usually a place in a rented
apartment or a hotel or motel. Ally: We were taken to a
hotel called the C'Mon Inn. I was 16 when I was
taken to Family Bridges. The next three days really consisted of just watching YouTube videos. Memory works a little bit
more like a Wikipedia page. You can go in there and change
it, but so can other people. Ally: They were really chosen to make us not believ
e
our own experiences. What is alienation? Not a nation of aliens. Ally: "Welcome Back, Pluto"
was a very interesting video. Video: Alienated doesn't
mean an alien ate something. Ally: They told us that if we learned about parental alienation, we would be cured, and we would have a great
relationship with our father. Jean: According to practitioners of the parental alienation treatments, if you don't have substantiated evidence, for example, a child protective
services investigation, the child's
disclosure of abuse is not in and of itself
considered to be evidence that there was abuse. It was all, "Oh, you
didn't experience abuse. It was all made up. Your mom told you to say these things." Well, everybody knows children lie. Jean: The original writing about the parental alienation concept was by a child psychiatrist
named Richard Gardner. News reporter: Dr. Richard
Gardner is a one-man antidote to what he calls sex-abuse hysteria. In the early 1980s, I began
to see a new phenomenon. It
is a syndrome that arises in the context of a child custody dispute. Judges generally awarded
women full custody. But that started to change in the '70s. Judges started to say, let's just see which parent will best serve the needs of the child. So judges started turning to mental health
professionals for assistance. And one of the most influential
mental health professionals working in family court
was Richard Gardner. He was an adviser to judges
deciding custody cases. News reporter: Consider
what Dr. Gardner says a good mother would do if her child told her of sexual abuse. "I don't believe you. I'm going to beat you for for saying it. Don't you ever talk that way
again about your father." Olivia: Gardner thought
that a lot of angry, mentally unstable women were brainwashing their
children against their fathers. Step no. 1 is to take the child away and protect the child
from the indoctrinations. And then, two, it requires
a transitional site. An option, and I'm very
serious about th
is, is to take the kid and put
him in jail. A day or two. Juvenile detention center. Olivia: Gardner's ideas
didn't catch on right away. I have zero success in
convincing courts to do this. Olivia: Gardner had some successors. That included Richard
Warshak and William Bernet. There are many children out there who are being influenced and manipulated to take sides with one
parent against the other. I am going to tell you about our effort to get this condition,
this mental condition, accepted as a
n official diagnosis. Olivia: Judges didn't necessarily know that the theory hadn't been
scientifically validated. We're actually hosting a family for a High Road to Reunification. So we are on day two. We have a dad and a couple of kids. Olivia: Nowadays, as in the
Maya and Sebastian case, Fathers sometimes get
accused of alienation, too. The basic tragedy of parental alienation is that we have a a cottage industry which thrives on increasing
conflict between parents in child custody situations
. If you include transport costs, some parents spend more than $70,000 on the four-day program. Jean: I'm not convinced
that judges understand what they're ordering. We have children who are
being given into the custody of parents who have
been abusive in the past and are likely to be abusive again. Kelly: How could you say no to that? Ashton: That's true. That's cute. Kelly: In 2016, this was
all new at that time. Nobody had even heard of these programs. Do you think that's summer of 2016 maybe
? Ashton: I said, "What
happens if I don't go?" My mom told me that they
would come take me by force. I was 14. Kelly: The original ruling
was the children stay with me, because Michael's drinking
was out of control. He had to blow into a
breathalyzer prior to visitation so that I could be guaranteed
the children's safety while he was there. Ashton: When my dad was
trying to get us back, I told Judge Ostroski that I
was afraid to go back there. I'd get screamed and yelled at, locked in my room,
locked outside, hit, pushed, thrown things at. Eventually my dad resorted to self-harm. He would slam his head into the table or beat himself up when
he was screaming at me. Judge Ostroski eventually decided that we were going to do this
parent reunification therapy with my dad and that my
mom had alienated us. They were forced into the program called Turning Points for Families. Video: Turning Points for Families places unqualified confidence
in the alienated parent to heal the child. Olivia: T
urning Points is run by a therapist
named Linda Gottlieb. Gottlieb calls her program
a therapeutic vacation. She claims almost a 100% success rate. But, once again, what's the success? What was the problem? No child rejects a parent
unless they're influenced. We equate the process to
a brainwashing in a cult. Olivia: Some mothers whose
kids had been taken from them and sent to Turning Points shared recordings of their phone calls. Olivia: Parents write the letters because they think that, that w
ay, they're going to get to be
able to see their kids again. And unfortunately, that's
often not the case. Ashton: No, it's too late
for my football career. Kelly: Ashton, he ran away prior to aging out of the
program and came back. And I know that was
very hard for him to do, because he had to leave
his brother behind, who he loves dearly, and he struggles with
that choice every day. Happy birthday. Today is your 15th birthday. I really miss you, and I
hope I get to see you soon. They were supp
osed to be
sequestered there for a weekend, but it's turned into six years. The baby, he was 9. I hope that I see him before he turns 18. Do I think it's going to
happen? Honestly, probably not. Kiersten: It's still hard
to believe that she's gone. It just doesn't seem fair
to Maya and Sebastian that, for the rest of their lives, they're going to have
to live with the memory of what they've gone through. Protesters: Maya and
Sebastian, bring them home! Maya and Sebastian, bring them home! Kierst
en: We just don't know
where she is, if she's safe. Even though it's been
six and a half months, we're not stopping. We're not going to stop our
fight until they're returned. We're pushing to fix
the broken system itself by bringing light to the issues, sharing our stories, sharing
Maya and Sebastian's story. Protesters: Stop reunification camps! Shut them down! Olivia: We published an article mentioning the children
in the viral video, and a few days later,
Maya reached out to me. Maya: I haven
't been able
to talk to my friends or my grandparents or my step-siblings or my dad or my stepmom or any of those people who
are actually supportive family in, like, seven months now. Olivia: So are you concerned that this could go on
until you're both 18? Maya: Yeah, I pretty
much expect that it will. Olivia: Later that night, they ran away from their mom's house. We finally got away. So, update. We're doing OK now that we got away. We can't tell you where we are. Yeah, for obvious reasons. But
we're safe, and we're OK. Ally: These camps need to be shut down to prevent further trauma to kids, and I think one way we could
do that is through legislation. Some of you may have heard
this particular instance from Santa Cruz, where two children were ripped from their homes
in the middle of the night, almost like a kidnapping. We will now turn to the witness. Maya: Hi, my name is Maya Laing. I'm 16 from Santa Cruz. We ran away from our mother last month. We still aren't allowed
to live with
our father because of the court order. The court called me a
liar, ignored my testimony, and gave full custody to my mother. Three large adults
dragged us to their car. This was the start of reunification camp. The therapist interrogated
us for four days. They threatened us, called us sociopaths, and said we had, quote, "false memories." This is our family court system, and this was deemed in our best interest. I ask that you to please vote yes. Rubio: This bill will save lives and prohibits cou
nseling that takes place in an unregulated, nonclinical setting, counseling that is
coercive and threatening, especially to children. I think it's now been nearly eight months since we've been able to see our dad. Can you tell me about what
your lives have been like over the past few weeks,
when you've been in hiding? There's nowhere that
really feels entirely safe, because our mom's still out there and still has custody of us. If they do try to take
you, what will you do? I'm not getting taken
again. And if I do, I'll run,
and run, and run again. Ally: This is not a path
that is healthy for any kid. To force kids into a
relationship with any parent, whether they're abusive or
not, is still very traumatic. Ashton: I have severe emotional trauma that I'm going to have to live with probably for the rest of my life. I can't see a therapist, because that just creates a panic for me. Once I'm free to go about my life, I want to be the person who
can help protect other children and make this
not a reality. Maya: I used to describe
myself more as a quiet person, but now I've become a little bit louder. My friends have already
been talking to lawmakers and tried to create this
as a national movement, and I want to keep doing that work. I have some really, really amazing news. Piqui's Law, which is a
law here in California that will keep kids safe from what happened to me and my brother, just passed the State Senate. I stand here today with my brother, my friends Kiersten and Claire,
who spoke for me when we could not. Gov. Gavin Newsom,
please sign Piqui's Law, and protect me, my brother, and so many other children
like us in California. Thank you. Aye 72, no zero. Bill passes.
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