A legal note from Marshal Willick about the Nevada Legislature stepping in to ban the child abuse masquerading as “treatment” known as “immersion therapy.”
I. BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
Readers of these Legal Notes know that over the years I have been critical of misbehavior by and incompetence of certain Mental Health Professionals (“MHPs”), factually, legally, and otherwise, to the harm of litigants, their children, and the family law system. See Legal Notes Volumes 34, 51, 55, and 62, all posted on the Newsletter Page.
The last Note of this Series was Vol. 65, on June 2, 2017, describing and decrying the “particularly pernicious practice” known as “immersion therapy.” Those wanting a more complete background and analysis should refer to that Legal Note, but in brief it is an effort to break a child’s will by isolating the child from any emotional or other support, and leaving the child in a hostile environment until the child parrots back a prepared script saying how wonderful the estranged parent is.
More specifically, to overcome resistance to reunification with an estranged parent, a child is transferred to the sole custody of that parent and denied access to the “accepted” parent, until a “breakthrough” is achieved in which the child “accepts” the “rejected” parent, and thereby earns permission—months or years later—to eventually resume contact with the parent the child loves and trusts.
As detailed in Vol. 65, all of this comes from the work of a quack out of California which has not been peer-reviewed or approved by the American Psychological Association, or anyone else reputable. It sets up a magical paradigm by which the MHP “diagnoses” one person by looking at the behavior of a different person, which every bit of legitimate psychological literature says is impossible, wrong-headed, and fraudulent. Stripped of psychological double-speak, the professed goal of this “treatment” is to destroy the child’s spirit.
In short, it is state-sanctioned junk pseudo-science, overtly intended specifically to cause Stockholm syndrome. The places applying this “therapy” have been investigated by various authorities, and some of them have been sued for child abuse. Vol. 65 detailed a case in which its application rendered a perfectly healthy and happy child physically and mentally ill.
Society does not let prisons do to inmates what has been done to these children. Yet this “therapy” has been enthusiastically embraced by a few MHPs and has been inflicted for years in lieu of actual work and legitimate therapy, out of negligence, laziness, ineptitude, or worse.
The prior Legal Note described the awful impact of this “therapy” on the health, education, and welfare of the children involved. Since then, we have seen multiple other examples, including one where the child (predictably) ran away, disappeared for more than two years, and re-surfaced on her 18th birthday, swearing that she would sue her father for harassment if he ever attempted contact. What would have been her late adolescence and education were pretty thoroughly trashed.
II. SB 275
A. Background of the Bill
The bill was proposed by a client of mine who was involved in a custody case in which the family court judge had sua sponte decided that the terrible relationship of the three children (H, M, and S) with their father was “really” the fault of the mother with whom they were bonded and with whom they felt safe. None of the various therapists involved made any such diagnosis. The judge even blamed the mother for the father’s physical violence against two of the children. One incident was caught on tape, but the judge refused to listen to it, ruling without hearing it that “it was just dad defending himself.”
Ignoring the advice of the children’s treating psychologists, the family court judge “decided” without evidence that the mother was “alienating” the children and sent all three to the father’s exclusive custody. Without an evidentiary hearing or any expert testimony saying it might be a good idea, the judge further permitted the father to take the children to the Gottlieb “Turning Points” reunification camp program in New York, which the judge found, based on a brochure provided by the father, to be “terrific.” The judge ordered the children to stay in the father’s exclusive custody for an extended time thereafter and to have no contact with anyone in the mother’s family until the children reported loving their father and wanting to be with him.
In New York, H was physically assaulted during “treatment” and hospitalized and drugged against her will; all three children were traumatized. Upon return, H ran away, preferring to wander in the desert rather than stay with her father, until making her way to her mother’s house, where eventually she was permitted to stay. In the meantime (and before and after), the father deprived M of food as punishment for not being adequately affectionate.
Eventually, the Court of Appeals removed the judge ordering that “therapy” from the case. H, traumatized by her treatment at her father’s hands, returned to being a straight-A and well-socialized child in her mother’s exclusive custody. M, still alternating between households, considered himself a prisoner while with his father and remained entirely isolated during the time he spent there.
The mother approached a legislator, and SB 275 was drafted to prohibit what happened to these children from being inflicted on anyone else. All three children testified in the Nevada Legislature on April 4, 2025, in support of the bill. The children, who composed their own statements, bravely provided details of the abusive treatment by their father and Ms. Gottlieb. The youngest, S, explained the trauma of seeing their father assault her siblings, described life in his house as being like living “in a cage,” and recounted her recurrent nightmares, continuing to the present, stemming from his threat that if she spoke to her mother without his permission she would be separated from her mother and siblings forever and forced to live with strangers. The children’s detailed statements moved legislators to tears.
At the legislative hearing, multiple witnesses from around the country phoned in to testify as survivors of the Gottlieb “program,” and how being subjected to it had scarred their childhoods and resulting lives. Essentially every such witness recounted how the Gottlieb “program” is a horror show of outright abuse to which no child should ever be subjected.
The legislation prohibiting that “treatment” passed the Nevada Legislature unanimously, was signed into law by the Governor, and went into effect July 1, 2025. In the meantime, the father was in touch with Ms. Gottlieb, and expressed the desire to take the children back there for “another round.”
As of this writing, a motion is pending to relieve M of his every-other-week sentence of solitary confinement and intermittent starvation at his father’s house, which he has endured for years.
B. Provisions of SB 275
The legislation as passed was significantly shortened from its original provisions. It applies to all divorce, custody, and protective order proceedings, but not delinquency cases under NRS title 5, termination of parental rights cases, or NRS 432B cases.
The core of the legislation is aimed directly at the odious practice of “immersion therapy”; it flatly prohibits a court from removing a child from a parent or litigant or restricting contact between the parent or litigant who: (1) is capable of meeting the needs of the child; (2) is protective of the child; (3) does not physically or sexually abuse the child or neglect the child; and (4) is a person with whom the child is bonded or to whom the child is attached.
The statute prohibits “an order requiring a child to receive reunification treatment” unless: (1) the court makes specific findings based on the papers, pleadings and arguments presented that generally accepted and scientifically valid proof demonstrates that the treatment is safe, effective and of therapeutic value; and will not harm a child; and (2) the reunification treatment is not predicated on isolating a child from a parent who meets the requirements set forth above or otherwise prohibiting contact between a child and that parent.
The statute also provides that whenever there is an allegation of domestic violence or child abuse: (1) expert evidence relating to alleged domestic violence or child abuse may only be admitted by a professional who possesses demonstrated expertise and substantial clinical experience that is not primarily forensic; (2) The court shall, in making any finding relating to an allegation of domestic violence or child abuse, consider all relevant and admissible evidence of past domestic violence or child abuse committed by the parent who is the subject of the allegation, including, without limitation, any evidence which indicates that the parent has been arrested for or convicted of domestic violence or child abuse, or is a party against whom an order for protection, restraining order, or similar injunction has issued.
Additionally, courts are prohibited from issuing an order to remediate the resistance of a child to have contact with a parent alleged to have committed domestic violence or child abuse unless the order “primarily addresses the behavior of the parent with whom the child resists contact” and requires that parent to take action to remediate the resistance of the child as a condition precedent to requiring the other parent to take any action to improve the relationship of the child with the parent with whom the child resists contact.
In other words, if a child is bonded with parent A and resistant to parent B, the court is required to start with the behavior of parent B and fix that before requiring parent A to do things to “improve” the relationship of the child with parent B.
Finally, the Administrative Office of the Courts is to provide training in domestic violence and child abuse and “to the extent money is available” provide that training to judges, hearing masters and other staff, in compliance with the requirements of the federal Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022.
III. CONCLUSIONS
As detailed in legal Note 65, it is true that it is Nevada public policy for a child to have a relationship with both parents. It is also true, however, that “in any action for determining physical custody of a minor child, the sole consideration of the court is the best interest of the child.” NRS 125C.0035.
The conclusions stated eight years ago remain equally true today:
These are not conflicting concepts. The point is to determine – not presume – the truth. There will be cases where one parent has caused or actively encouraged an estrangement between a child and the other parent, and courts should take such steps as are practicable and reasonable to remediate such estrangements . . . .
But there will also be cases where a parent’s poor behavior – often over a period of years – has crippled that parent’s legitimacy as a parental figure and where it is rational, reasonable, and very much in the child’s physical, mental, and emotional best interest to minimize contact with that parent. In those cases, the best interest of the child takes priority over “general public policy” and the wishes of the estranged parent.
The trick, of course, is to tell those situations apart, and address them appropriately. Doing so requires actual work by lawyers, judges, and any MHPs involved. It is beyond “absurd” – it is insane – to reverse cause and effect and conclusively presume that a child’s estrangement from one parent can “only” have been caused by the other parent; “frequent associations” are not to be achieved “at any cost.”
The Nevada Legislature has now correctly weighed in on which consideration is to receive priority. A court may not terminate or restrict child contact with a supportive parent in the hopes of encouraging a better relationship with the other parent. Children are not to be isolated, oppressed, and abused for the purpose of brainwashing them into parroting how wonderful the parent they are estranged from might be. And their best interest is to be given priority over the ego and pride of a parent who feels that he or she has been “disrespected.”
It is long past time that the state-sanctioned abuse of children under the rubric of “immersion therapy” has been terminated.
IV. QUOTES OF THE ISSUE
“6. The right to be in a physically and emotionally safe environment.”
– From Children’s Bill of Rights (AAML 1998).
“I believe the best service to the child is the service closest to the child, and children who are victims of neglect, abuse, or abandonment must not also be victims of bureaucracy. They deserve our devoted attention, not our divided attention.”
– Gov. Kenny Guinn.
“I and the public know.
What all schoolchildren learn.
Those to whom evil is done.
Do evil in return.”
– W.H. Auden
“The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
– Anon.
