Earlier this month, Lita Ford made an appearance on the Veterans In Politics TV show on WWDBTV.com to discuss her work as an activist for parental alienation and her efforts to get through to her own children, whom she was recently able to see for the first time in nearly 10 years.
Speaking about her custody arrangement with her ex-husband, Lita said (as transcribed by blabbermouth.net), By the time our divorce was final and everything was said and done, it was such a joke that it didn’t matter what I got on paper. There was no way I was gonna be in those boys’ lives. They were such a mess by the time I left and my ex-husband left that it just didn’t matter. I just needed to walk away from everything and regroup and come back with Plan B. The big problem for me was I couldn’t find them after hiring four or five private investigators and them being out of the country in a Carribbean island. I really didn’t have any United States… The Hague Convention, the Hague treaty was working against me with them being in a Caribbean island. And when they did come back to the United States, it took me nine years to track them down and find out that they were living in Tennessee. If somebody wants to fall below the radar, they can.”
Asked what justification the courts used to deny her custody of her two children, Lita said: “They said I was not taking the medication that they prescribed for me that was absolutely ridiculous. It was just an excuse. I did everything in my power that they asked me to do. I did everything. They had nothing on me. And my ex-husband was just lying, he was just making up stuff as we went along. It was just insane. And as he made stuff up, there was no proof that I did all these things he said I did. It was just absolutely crazy. Because I really was a great mom. I put everything into being a mom. I stopped my musical career. I focused on nothing but my boys. I homeschooled my boys living on that deserted island. I mean, I spent all day every day with these kids. I had stacks of books. And then we would go fishing and we would cook dinner. We had a great, great relationship. So for them to turn around and say, ‘Mom, you did this and you did that.’ Like, ‘Wait a minute. You guys are dreaming. You guys are being brainwashed by your dad.’ And the attorneys are just feeding off of that.”
Ford, who launched the Parental Alienation Awareness Facebook page a few years ago, said that she was finally able to get in touch with her sons and speak to them, although the meeting didn’t go as well as she had hoped.
“I just contacted them for the first time in almost 10 years,” she said. “And I was able to serve my ex-husband with papers saying that I want to see my son, my 17-year-old son. Because my older son now, being 21, there really isn’t much I can do. So I was able to go in and see my kids for maybe 10 minutes in a mediation. But my ex-husband had turned them against me so badly that when I went into the mediation, all they did was accuse me of things and get angry at me and point their finger at me. It was horrible — it was absolutely horrible — because he’s still sticking to the same crap stories.”
Back in 2015, Gillette explained that the court-ordered custody arrangement was in his sons’ best interest.
In July 2015, James Gillette, the older of the two Ford-Gillette sons, released a statement to Metal Sludge in which he called his mother “a child abuser. She was violent, threatening, and tried to make my brother and me hate our dad. Her attempts at parental alienation were constant and never-ending. When we didn’t agree with her, she would become livid and out of control. We told child services, the sheriff’s department, and many court-appointed professionals that our mother was crazy, violent, and we were afraid she would someday kill us in a fit of rage.”
He added, “We have not been kidnapped. We live with our dad and have every right to. Thankfully we never have to see our mother again and we have the legal paperwork to prove it.
Unfortunately, my mother has never accepted any responsibility for her actions and continues to blame anyone and everyone all while publicly playing the victim.”
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Her boys are so young still. So much more life to live and to learn for themselves what works and suits them best. Seems as though they might need to get away from the father as well. Clearly the parents are toxic and the boys would be better served being on there own. I can imagine how torn all of them feel.
Hopefully – there is productive therapy sessions going on to help those involved in this mess.