Interview with Ginger Gentile – Director of Erasing Family – Part 1

Sydney Mitchell:

Hi. My name is Sydney Mitchell.

Matthew Brickman:

Hi, I’m Matthew Brickman, Florida Supreme court mediator. Welcome to the Mediate This! Podcast where we discuss everything mediation and conflict resolution.

(00:16):
So I’m joined today by a special guest, ginger Jen Teel, and, uh, ginger, I am so excited to have you here. Um, just for just a quick opening, I want you to get into, you know, describing more of what you do or whatnot. Um, but Ginger, I know that, um, you are director of a phenomenal documentary called Erasing Family, uh, which I highly suggest everybody go see. Um, I was actually, I’m gonna talk to my marketing guy. I may actually put a link on my website to your, uh, documentary because it, I mean, every client that I have, every family that I mediate with, they need to see this. Um, it is a phenomenal documentary, but you’ve been featured on a number of different things. You were on, uh, Jada Pinkett Smith’s, uh, red Table talk with I think one or two of the, uh, the kids from your documentary, correct?

(01:08):
That is correct. Well, thank you for such a warm introduction and Red Table Talk. Decided to base a whole show on the documentary, in part because as you can imagine, getting people to go public with this is very difficult to talk about their own family issues. And so I think after the production tried to find people, they ended up using a lot of my characters, which was great, uh, to talk about the healing they went through. And I love that the people who I work with in the documentary, since the documentary have continued healing and continued reuniting their family members because all of this messy divorce conflict, parental alienation, estrangement the solution is to learn new skills, learn a new mindset to heal. Yeah. Um, you know, I’m very upfront about this. As a filmmaker, you create a story so you can’t, ’cause I think what’s different is there’s a lot of people who are parents who make films about this subject.

(02:10):
My criticism is when you’re so in it, you wanna give information. So like some people would be like, oh, you don’t really go into like how to diagnose parental alienation or all this stuff. I’m like, it’s not a training film. Yeah. The film I, I created, um, actually for young people Yeah. To help ’em reconnect. So that’s why it’s all about healing. And also, you know, sometimes I made the courts, um, I have my criticism of the courts, the bad guys. So that way they’re not blaming either parents. Correct. Um, so, so that’s definitely was something when I made the film to make it more Yeah. Healing. Yeah. Um, and a lot of films out there are YouTube videos. They’re more like, this is how you diagnosis, this is the research, which is great, but this is not, not that. Um, I made a film after that erasing family that was for hire and, um, I felt burnt out by the whole topic.

(02:57):
And then I returned and really work on the worst cases. And a lot of what I teach people is like, you can’t be right. You gotta work with the other party. And they’ll say, but they’re borderline and high comp with them. Like, I’m not saying they’re not <laugh>. Um, but, so I’m like, you know what if you just said like, Hey, that’s a great idea. Let me think about it. They’re like, well, it’s a bad idea. Like, just try it. And like, just things like that really help these parents, um, get through some very tough situations.

(03:25):
So let’s back up. So how did you get into filmmaking and why a documentary then? For the listeners that haven’t seen it yet, then why a documentary on parental alienation and and whatnot?

(03:41):
Well, that’s a great question. So I became a filmmaker because I had moved to Argentina. This is, this is actually an A racing family. And I was like, well, what can I do? Because I used to be, I, I wrote a lot. I am like, well, I can’t really write in English ’cause I always wanna participate in the culture where I live. So I got into filmmaking, worked my way up. The film ministry was making, uh, was making films when I met a man. And the first thing he told me, and this was became a romantic relationship, and he was the producer of one of my films too. The first thing he told me is, I haven’t seen my daughter in six years. Like most people, I said, well, you must have a bad lawyer. There must be some issue in the courthouse. I actually was a legal translator at that time. Like, let’s go to the courthouse, we’ll work it all out. And then I figured out it wasn’t that easy. And without getting into all the details of his case, it was a very extreme case. And I began to meet other dads going through the same thing. And I say Dads because when I lived in Argentina, custody automatically went to the mother.

(04:42):
Okay. So it, it, it, so there, it’s a cultural thing.

(04:47):
It’s a cultural thing, but it also is a cultural thing in the US until maybe 50, 60 years ago. Correct. Um, with the tender years doctrine. Correct. So they still have the tender years doctrine and no allow, joint custody was not allowed. So you couldn’t privately do that, but you couldn’t have that written into a decree. And when we made that the first film on this topic, um, a erasing dad came out in 2014. And it’s a very different film. It’s more like a true crime film there, it’s a documentary. So it’s all real. But it, it talks about how the people who were trained to protect kids were, it’s gonna sound pretty extreme. They were trained by a pedophile who used his position to accuse other people of pedophilia to hide what he was doing. So everybody trained in the psychological establishment. Argentina was trained by a known pedophile who was in jail.

(05:37):
Wow. And we also showed the film how a dad went to, um, the police and is like, my ex wants to kill our 6-year-old son and is threatening to, they do nothing. And then she does with like all the writing on the wall. Like, if you can’t, if I can’t have him, nobody will. Um, so it’s much more of a true crime film. There’s not a happy ending at the end. All the dads are there at the end saying, I still can’t see my kid. No one wants to make any changes. And when the film came out, it was actually the first film censored in Argentina since democracy came back. Wow. It was a huge controversial film. Everyone’s always surprised when I say it’s a film that got censored. ’cause people think, you know, I was like, against the police or the government or something.

(06:22):
And the good news about a censored film is everybody wants to see it. So topics like high conflict divorce, parental alienation, estrangement became front page news and the law changed to allow for joint custody and took the gender bias out the law. So that was a really big change, um, for people wondering. Um, my romantic partner, who’s also the, uh, producer of the film we’re no longer together, but he did reunite with his daughter after 12 years of no contact and now have a great relationship. And I moved back to the United States and decided to do a follow up film, which became a racing family. And the first thing that I did is I always take a deep dive in the subject. So I saw two things that were very different from Argentina. One social media by that point had become huge. We forget that there was a point where it wasn’t huge.

(07:15):
Yeah. <laugh>. And, um, so kids as young as seven were posting videos about they couldn’t see a brother, a sister, they couldn’t see a parent, um, you know, um, asking judges to change rulings. So I was like, okay, I can actually reach children or young adults. Whereas before I was like, how do I find kids who are alienated? Sure. If possible. And then the other thing that I saw is about half the people who contacted me with stories, a lot of kids contacted me about half were moms. Now, I don’t wanna make a statistical inference on who reaches out because sometimes people, more people from a certain group will reach out for help. Sure. And those who are affected. But about half to 60% of my current followers and people who I work with are moms. So this is not a gender issue. Um, I do think dads can face additional biases in the courts, especially in some districts. Sometimes moms can for working it for other reasons. But there is a general bias against dads. But what we’re talking about with, um, what’s often referred to as parental alienation or alienating behaviors or refuse and resist is there’s a parent that for either practical reasons or deep emotional trauma needs to cut the other parent out. Yeah. And that can happen to both men and women.

(08:36):
Yeah. When you moved back from Argentina, where did you Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Where in the United States did you go?

(08:42):
I went to San Diego because my family had moved to San Diego.

(08:45):
Okay. So when you were doing research and stuff, um, ’cause ’cause I know in the film there, I think there was California, there was references to some in Florida, there was Baltimore Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, but I noticed that like in Canada. Yeah. And, and yeah. And, and, and in Canada there’s also the reference to Sweden. Um, and Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and Swedish law almost mirrors Florida law in many aspects. I did a Swedish divorce many years ago using my iChat mediation platform. But the main, like one of the most touching stories in there was the father who was the barber cosmetologist in California with his daughter. And that was California law. That was California judges, um, and whatnot. Um, so, so I guess, and I guess as you were looking around doing this in the various places, of course, you know, noticing that family law varies state to state.

(09:42):
Oh, it not only varies state to state. Um, after the film, I, I’ve served as the executive director of the National Parents Organization. Okay. That works on shared <inaudible> legislation. It’s not only state to state, it’s jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Yeah. So you have guidelines in different jurisdictions. So the whole thing is very confusing. And the big takeaways, there’s no scientific basis for any of this. Why in one county, dad gets 10% of the time, the next county over, he gets 50% as a standard guideline. Um, and people often default to the guidelines just naturally. Yeah. Um, so it sets a precedent. That’s what people think that they are entitled to. And they often don’t ask for more. And if they ask for more than there, there could be more of a battle. But state law is very different. And also people kind of see California as a model because they do have a lot of 50 50 divorce is a big industry there. So like people kind of see as they’re more progressive. But there are problems in, in California, which I saw in the film, but I did wanna, it, it wasn’t about like one district or one judge. It was more like an overlying system.

(10:45):
Also something that was interesting in the film, you know, people watch tv, they watch, you know, court shows, and they think, oh yeah, I’m gonna file, I’ll be in front of the judge. The judge will rule. No, that is not how it happens. It takes months to get in front of the judge and in the state of Florida a number of years ago, but I’m, I’m talking a number of years ago, I’m thinking like less than five. So it’s not that many number. Right. Yeah. The legislature had to actually pass a law to make judges rule expeditiously because they were just taking their time, but they were also overloaded. And so, you know, it like, like people would finally get in front of a judge and the judge doesn’t say, okay, thank you for putting on your show. This is my finding. It could take six or nine months after your hearing to finally even get a hearing. Or I mean, finally get a final. And it just leaves everybody, the children, even the parents in this holding state going, what are we doing? Right. You know? And at that point, you know, it can, it can be, and I, I tell people all the time, very dangerous. You know, and I mean, it can be dangerous. It’s dangerous mentally, emotionally, psychologically, physically it can be.

(12:00):
Right.

(12:00):
Um,

(12:01):
Well, you have no rules set. Often more they just ask for more and more evaluations. Yeah. Which can be very expensive. Um, sometimes these evaluators bring their own biases and, um, I mean, I’ve heard cases of people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on evaluators where they will talk to everybody in the family, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. I’m just like, what are we trying to see with this? Yeah.

(12:24):
I mean, you

(12:25):
Know, is a parent a danger to a child as a parent, unhealthy for a child, but what their relationship was like to their boyfriend 20 years ago? But, but that’s, you know, you get to bill with that. Yeah. So, so it, it, it is very dangerous. And also you set a precedent. Yeah. Because if one parent has the kid most of the time, then sometimes judges will say, well, the kid seems to be doing okay with this. Let’s just keep the status quo.

(12:49):
Yeah. Um, here’s what’s interesting in Florida, I know you had said something about California leading when it comes to mediation, but, um, let’s go back to 1987. Okay. So there was a man called, um, his name was David Str. He served as a Florida Circuit Court judge, sheriff, he’s a professor, professorial lecturer at University of Florida’s Law School. And while practicing law, he led the courts to, um, to, um, mediation as the chair of the state’s legislative study, uh, and commission on a DR. So he wrote a book, this was the first book I read when I was like, I think I wanna become a mediator <laugh>. And it was called Dispute Management, how to End the litigation Problem. And in, in the preface of the book, he, um, he, he actually wrote, in Florida, we have applied several of the basic concepts, beginning with legislation adopting or adopted in 1987.

(13:49):
By 94, these methods had resulted in an estimated 80% reduction of the number of cases which judges and juries were required to decide. And by 2003, found mediation as the primary form of dispute resolution in the, in the state of Florida. As of February, 2023, there were 5,962 individual certified mediators in the state of Florida. Um, particularly with family, which is what I do primarily, there’s 2,313 certified family mediators dealing with family issues. There’s 215 dependency mediators dealing with the dependency court, and the rest are spread out between county circuit and appellate. But for the millions of people that do live in Florida, that’s not that many mediators to take on all of the family cases. Another fascinating tidbit that most people don’t know about family law is all the things that were afforded under the United States Constitution do not exist in family law. There’s no trial by jury.

(14:53):
You have one individual judge, jury executioner. You don’t get an attorney if you cannot afford a one will be placed. That’s criminal law, not family law. And then people say all the time, oh, they lied. They lied. They’re a liar. Perjury. Now it’s sort of kind of assumed in family law that everybody lies. So the things that we’re used to that we see on TV or even that are in our constitution, not in family court. And I, I tell people all the time, I’m like, you really want one person to decide your entire, the fate of your family. And sometimes I get yes. I’m like, are you sure about that? Let me tell you a story. And I share my, my, my story with them, or I’ve got, you know, I mean, I’ve been, I’ve done over 3000 mediations, so we’ve got plenty of stories.

(15:37):
I’m like, okay, let me tell you a story. Let me tell you what a judge has said. Like recently, you know, a 15-year-old said, I want nothing to do with my father. So when he did his final ruling, he said, um, he said, I don’t care that you don’t want to see your father. Public policy of this state doesn’t give you that. Right. Therefore, I’m ordering you to reunification therapy with your father two times a week, and you can work out whatever issues you’ve got in therapy with a trained professional. And that was the judge’s ruling, which was pretty awesome. Um, in Florida public policy. So this changed, I think around 2011. And that was, you, you, you had alluded to the tender years doctrine. Um, and that was around the time that, uh, the University of Arizona had uncovered from their 10 year study of, of acod or adult children of divorce.

(16:38):
They had uncovered the fallacies that created the tender years doctrine. Right. And that was when everything, at least in Florida started to shift. When they uncovered that, they released that to the American Bar Association. They took that to the individual states. The states then adopted different variations of their finding. Florida adopted every single finding except for one mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which was the presumption or the premise of equal time sharing. But they changed the child support calculation, ginger to a one size fits all 50 50 calculation. So if you didn’t do 50 50 child support, made no sense because it was based on equal. So if you didn’t do equal, well, the money that used to be there wasn’t there anymore. They did that in an effort to start to push people to more equal time sharing. But

(17:35):
Yeah, that’s very smart. Um, in the Erasing Family documentary, we talk a lot about how child support incentivizes custody battles. And also to go back to one of the stories in the film, dizzy, um, and sorry, Ashlyn, he’s someone who’s bankrupted by child support, spends time in jail, and he finally can pay it off when his kids are adults. And he says, the worst part of this is I’m paying off interest. It doesn’t go to my kids. Yeah. It doesn’t go to my ex. It goes to the state. It goes to the state. It’s awful. And, and people’s lives are, are, are destroyed by this. And we also showed, um, in South Carolina how there’s so many dads who, and this is a discussion for another time who are just, they’re not deadbeat, they’re dead broke. Yeah. You’re putting men in jail, and it’s mainly men who they don’t have the means to pay.

(18:24):
And we can make all the moral arguments we want, but putting someone in jail who’s already poor, you take away the livelihood he has, you are putting a burden on the taxpayers. It’s about $75,000 a year to put someone in jail. Yeah. Depend on the state. Um, and I mean, you’re destroying this person’s life in connection with the kids. And then you say, well, you’re only good for money. So then it makes men withdraw more from their kids. And we also have a very big problem now, which I’m sure you, you know, um, you’ve seen Florida. But it’s, it’s, it’s a national problem that income and money isn’t what it used to be. Right. The man, the providers and what it used to be. So, so it’s to support two different households. The money should secure. I always feel like the divorce laws were invented thinking of a very, very rich man who leaves his wife to buy a Ferrari to marry his mistress. And the poor woman has never worked a day in her life and has a eighth grade education. Yep. And that’s not what happens anymore. Most men are financially destroyed after divorce, with the exception of like the people in the upper five or 10%. Join me next episode as we conclude our conversation with Ginger Gentile.

Matthew Brickman:
Occasionally Sydney and I will be releasing Q&A bonus episodes where we’ll answer your questions and give you a personal shoutout.

Sydney Mitchell:
If you have a comment or question regarding anything that we discuss, email us at info@ichatmediation.com that’s info@ichatmediation.com and stay tuned to hear your shout out and have your question answered here on the show.

Matthew Brickman:

For more information about my services or to schedule your mediation with me, either in person or using my iChatMediation Virtual Platform built by Cisco Communications. Visit me online at www.iMediateInc.com. Call me at 561-262-9121, Toll-Free at 877-822-1479 or email me at MBrickman@iChatMediation.com.