Joan Kloth-Zanard is trained in Marriage and Family Therapy, a trained Guardian ad Litem, a certified ADA Advocate, Founder and Executive Director of PAS Intervention, a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and Co-Board Chair of PA Consortium, a 501(c)(4). For more than four decades, her work has focused on psychological abuse, parental alienation, and custodial interference in high-conflict family cases.
Her involvement in this field began in 1984 after witnessing the systematic alienation of a close friend's children by the children's father and maternal grandmother. At the time, this pattern of family dysfunction had little recognition in research or the courts. That experience, later reinforced by similar circumstances within her own family, led her to dedicate her career to addressing what she views as a significant and often overlooked form of child psychological abuse.
In 1996, Kloth-Zanard founded PAS Intervention, now recognized as one of the oldest nonprofit organizations dedicated to supporting families affected by parental alienation and related family dynamics. The organization has grown to include more than fifty chapters worldwide, providing free support and educational resources to families in crisis. She also serves as Co-Board Chair of the PA Consortium, sits on the boards of the International Council on Shared Parenting and the Parental Alienation Study Group, and has served as a clinician, evaluator, and court-qualified expert witness in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. She is also available to provide these services in other states and internationally.
Kloth-Zanard is the author of two books, including Where Did I Go Wrong? How Did I Miss the Signs?, now entering its third edition, and has published more than fifty peer-reviewed articles. In 2011, she introduced the term "Domestic Violence by Proxy" to describe the use of children as instruments of continued abuse against a former partner following separation. Her collaborative research with Dr. Lynn Steinberg and Charity Schneider examined forty psychological abuse symptoms across five categories: parental alienation, brainwashing, coercive control, custodial interference, and child psychological abuse and reported a 92.5 percent symptom overlap, supporting the conclusion that these behaviours represent closely related manifestations of the same underlying pattern of abuse.
This research serves as the foundation for the Parental Alienation Accreditation Alliance training curriculum, which Kloth-Zanard co-developed with Dr. Steinberg to educate mental health professionals, attorneys, judges, evaluators, as well as parents and extended family members. She has also developed practical court-based interventions, including the "Three Strikes You're Out" program designed to improve compliance with custody orders, testified before state legislatures, and helped secure gubernatorial proclamations recognizing National Parental Alienation Awareness Day and International Falsely Accused Awareness Day.
Through her clinical, research, educational, and legislative work, Kloth-Zanard has focused on improving recognition of psychological abuse in family court systems and equipping professionals with evidence-informed tools to identify, assess, and respond to these complex family dynamics while promoting children's relationships with safe and healthy parents.
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