Memorial set up outside court over “needless deaths" linked to "parental alienation”

People Against Parental Alienation (PAPA) launched their Death Penalty Campaign memorial demonstration in Portsmouth last week, which will run for two weeks.

PAPA founder Simon Cobb, from Portsmouth, spoke to members of the public about the campaign, which has been taking places in towns and cities across the country. He laid a special memorial in Pompey colours for people in this area who have taken their lives as a result of parental alienation.

A statement from PAPA said: “(The) global campaign designed to raise awareness of the untimely deaths linked to contact denial and parental alienation.

​“To do this we are putting on demonstrations outside courthouses in the UK and across the globe, including our PAPA Canada chapter, to illustrate the severe consequences of parental alienation and contact denial.

​“The failure of the family court process is inadvertently issuing the 'Death Penalty' to some alienated parents. A process that takes far too long, leaving parents alienated for months before it even gets to court.

“Some families are stuck in the family court process for years, with no viable way out, as court orders are repeatedly broken with a lack of enforcement.”

The statement added: “Loving parents are sadly sentencing themselves to death by taking their own lives, as a result of being alienated and denied access to their children. Their only ‘crime’ being that they loved their children, fought for their children and sadly could not endure any more.​ We at PAPA say no to the ‘death penalty’ because loving your child is not a crime.

“Our campaign is designed to demonstrate the impact these needless deaths have on families across the world and to call for better frameworks to prevent these deaths from happening.”