The Documented Record · 2014 – 2026
Ten Years. Ten Presidents.
Their Own Words. No Answer.
When a child is separated from a parent at the border, the APA told the President of the United States it causes anxiety, depression, lifelong trauma — and, in the APA’s own example, a father’s suicide. So when the same separation is inflicted on a child through a family court — why has the APA answered ten years of letters, 26,000 petitioners, and ten of its own presidencies with a 2008 statement of “no official position”?
This site is an archive of retained, dated correspondence between one father and the American Psychological Association — and of the APA's own published statements. Every quotation on this site is verbatim. Nothing is invented, and nothing is paraphrased. The record speaks. You judge.
The APA knows separation traumatizes.
The APA knows trauma kills.
The APA has known for decades — its own letter says so.
It answered ten years of warnings with “no official position.”
And while it refused to answer, the parents on this wall died.
In Their Own Words
The American Psychological Association, on the record.
"Childhood Psychological Abuse as Harmful as Sexual or Physical Abuse… [children] suffered from anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, symptoms of post-traumatic stress and suicidality at the same rate and, in some cases, at a greater rate than children who were physically or sexually abused."
The APA's own press release, October 8, 2014 — publicizing a study in the APA's own journal"Decades of psychological research have determined that it is in the best interest of the child and the family to keep families together… the longer that parents and children are separated, the greater the reported symptoms of anxiety and depression are for children."
APA letter to the President of the United States, June 14, 2018, signed by APA President Jessica Henderson Daniel"As a tragic example of the current policy's serious potential for harm, a Honduran man who was separated from his wife and 3-year-old son… recently took his own life while detained in a holding cell."
The same APA letter — the APA's own chosen example of what separation does to a parent"…childhood trauma has emerged as a strong risk factor for later suicidal behavior."
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, June 20, 2018, citing the Institute of Medicine"…the overwhelming scientific evidence that separation between children and parents, except in cases where there is evidence of maltreatment, is harmful to the development of children, families, and communities."
Society for Research in Child Development — the scientific consensus recognizes exactly one justification for separating a child from a parent: maltreatment by that parent. Severing a child from a loving parent has no scientific defense — whoever the severing agent is.The Record
Dated. Retained. Unanswered. Full correspondence on the archive pages of this site.
The APA publishes the harm — under its own headline
Its own press office reports psychological abuse rivals sexual abuse, including suicidality, and quotes the study's lead author: it "should be at the forefront of mental health and social service training." A decade later: no protocol, no required training.
The correspondence begins
A father begins documented correspondence with the APA about children turned against a loving parent through the courts — the pattern the DSM-5 names as Child Psychological Abuse, V995.51.
Relabel, then close the door
Asked about attachment-based psychological child abuse, APA Public Affairs answers with a 2008 statement on a different construct — whose own text says "we have no official position." Director Jim Sliwa: "The statement you were referred to is the only statement the APA has on parental alienation of any type." Kim Mills: "My staff has given you all the information that APA has to offer on this topic."
"Exploring the best way"
The APA's office, in writing: "We have received many messages about this issue and are exploring the best way to address concerns that have been raised." The documented record contains nothing after it. Ever.
Eight weeks later — the border gets a letter
The same institution writes the Secretary of Homeland Security opposing family separation. The family-court question is still being "explored."
A petition at their front door
A petition — 16,000 signatures, later 26,000+ — is hand-delivered to APA headquarters. No response.
Their letter to the President
Twenty-one days after telling this father, in personal conversation, that child separation and trauma were "not my field of expertise," President Daniel's signature attests to "decades of psychological research" on precisely that harm — with a father's suicide as the example.
The question that was never answered
Her letter is quoted back to her, paragraph by paragraph, with one question: if the science is true at the border, why does it never reach the children of the family courts? Six personal assurances of a response. None ever came.
Christmas Eve, 6:20 PM — the APA acts
The first formal action in the entire record arrives: a trademark enforcement notice about a domain name, demanding a response "within five (5) days." Followed in 2019 by outside counsel and a domain-seizure proceeding.
Referral to the Attorney General
A formal referral citing D.C.'s mandatory-reporting statutes is submitted, with attachments, to the Attorney General of the District of Columbia — the chief law-enforcement officer of the city where the APA is headquartered. Seven years later, it has never received a response of any kind.
The letter of a father
To President Worrell: "It's been 7 years since I have seen or heard from any of them… Their first car, graduated HS, went on first dates, first days of college, graduated college, got their first jobs, and will probably have children without me in their lives… You can also do the right thing." No response of any kind was received.
The full board, on notice
The documented record is delivered by email to every sitting board member and the Chief Executive Officer, by name.
The record reaches ten presidencies
Letters to Presidents De La Fuentes (2024), Kawahara (2025), and Williams (2026) continue the record: ten consecutive presidencies on written notice since 2016. The five requests below stand open before all of them.
The Ledger: Ten Presidents
Every sitting president of the American Psychological Association since 2016, each personally contacted or on written notice through the retained correspondence archived on this site — and what each did with a documented question about child psychological abuse.
Antonio E. Puente, PhD
Direct emails requesting a recorded conversation about attachment-based child psychological abuse.
Jessica Henderson Daniel, PhD, ABPP
Received the July 5, 2018 letter quoting her own letter to the President of the United States. In roughly six personal conversations, assured a response was coming.
Rosie Phillips Davis, PhD, ABPP
Spoken with personally; the documented record before her office.
Sandra L. Shullman, PhD
Spoken with personally; the documented record before her office.
Frank C. Worrell, PhD
Two months of correspondence, including the letter of January 19, 2021 — a father's story, told plainly, ending "You can also do the right thing."
Jennifer F. Kelly, PhD, ABPP
On written notice through the October 7, 2021 board correspondence, delivered to her board address.
Thema S. Bryant, PhD
Contacted; the documented record before her office.
Cynthia De La Fuentes, PhD
Received the May 11, 2024 letter with both 2018 letters attached, asking acknowledgment of receipt.
Debra M. Kawahara, PhD
Received the 2025 letter posing four questions the record entitles the public to ask.
Wendi S. Williams, PhD
The tenth. Her platform: "Radically Well Together" — wellness as "our commitments as a society to do right by one another." The full ten-year record is now before her.
What Moved Them to Act
Across ten years of retained correspondence, here is what the institution's own record shows it mobilized for — and what it did not.
Children being psychologically abused
A decade of referrals. A 2008 statement of "no official position." One sentence about "exploring." Ten presidents, a full board, an ethics office, a petition of 26,000, and a referral to the Attorney General — not one substantive answer.
The organization's trademark
An enforcement notice on Christmas Eve at 6:20 PM demanding a response within five days. Outside counsel from a major Washington firm. A formal domain-seizure proceeding. Deadlines, lawyers, and follow-through.
The record of where the institution's urgency lives speaks for itself.
In 1994, seven tobacco executives stood before Congress and swore, one after another, that nicotine was not addictive — while their own companies’ files said otherwise. Twelve years later, a federal court formally found the industry had spent decades deceiving the public about a product that was killing them. The world now has a name for what those executives did with their expertise that day.
Now read this record. An institution whose letter to the President of the United States invokes “decades of psychological research” on the trauma of separating a child from a parent — and whose only statement to the parents of the family courts, for those same decades, has been “no official position.”
Both sentences cannot be true. Both are signed.
We do not name what that is. We only ask that you read what the record shows they knew, and when, and what they signed — and name it yourself.
The Only Defense Ever Offered
In ten years, no APA official has publicly defended the conduct documented on this site. The only public defense anyone has offered came from outside the institution: a June 17, 2020 blog post by professor emerita Jean Mercer, reviewing this site. Here is the quality of that defense, in her own published words.
"I wasn't present at the delivery, but what I have gathered is…"
Jean Mercer, describing the petition delivery to APA headquarters — secondhand account, published as fact"I think I am right in assuming that Gottfried has not spent his time studying the various aspects of psychology he mentions…"
Jean Mercer — an assumption about a person she never contacted, published as a finding"Gottfried claims that he has personally witnessed 30 deaths of separated parents in the last 4 years, but does not provide any evidence for this statement."
Jean Mercer — the memorial page answering her stands one click from this paragraphShe demanded evidence; the memorial and the correspondence archive are the evidence, and she has never engaged either. She correctly noted one imprecision about diagnostic-manual authorship — it has been conceded and corrected on this site, the only correction her article produced. Everything else in her defense of the APA is answered by the record above. In ten years, this is the best defense the APA's conduct has received: an assumption, a rumor, and a demand for evidence that was already public.
The Uncounted
No agency records these deaths. No institution counts them. We do.
Fathers and mothers who did not survive being severed from their children. The APA's own 2018 letter described what this separation does to a parent — in its own chosen example, a father who took his life. The National Academies connected this trauma to suicide risk. The people below are what those sentences look like.
Their faces, their stories, and their documentation are kept on the memorial page — sourced, dated, and remembered.
Visit the MemorialFive Requests, Standing Open
Delivered to ten consecutive APA presidencies. Any one of them can be answered today.
The APA is asked to:
- Publish a standard assessment protocol for Child Psychological Abuse (DSM-5 V995.51).
- Require training in its recognition for practitioners evaluating children in custody contexts.
- Affirm that inducing a child's rejection of a loving, non-maltreating parent is reportable Child Psychological Abuse.
- Remove all hold-harmless preconditions from its ethics-complaint process.
- Answer, on the record, the letter of July 5, 2018.
This site is a documented archive and commentary. Every quotation is verbatim from retained correspondence or official publications, preserved in full and available on the archive pages. Statements of opinion are the author's judgments drawn from that record. This site attributes no crime to any person or organization and invents no statement. © Kenneth R. Gottfried. Education, training, and clinical resources: USPsychology.com.