Originally Posted by budnkota

While it has to be pretty extreme, I can tell you with absolute certainty it CAN happen. I don't know about studies - but I can tell you about my experiences. My parents split when I was about 10, my brothers about 4. By some sick slip, my abusive father was given custody. We were barely able to see our mom. My father would go on an on about how she was this, she was that. She left because she didn't want us. We were the reason she left. You name it.
I had memories of my mom, so I was able to ignore most of it (not that it wasn't difficult). My brothers, however, did not. All they really knew was my dad's abusive tirades. As my brother told me last weekend, he really bought into all of it, and hated my mother because as he said "I thought if she didn't want me, then f' her..." When she died, however, he started to talk with her siblings and stuff. Found out some of the truths that he'd had no idea about.
My brother and mother basically had NO relationship because this sick, disturbed SOB we called a father was so sick, jealous and insecure that he had to do everything in his power to destroy that. and he succeeded. It was only after she was gone that he was able to learn the truth. My brother is always going to have that gap in who he was meant to be.

You know what's really sick? When my dad learned that my mom was dying in a matter of days, he told her friend that he'd always thought they would get back together in their "golden years." He did everything he could to destroy her life, didn't allow her her children and thought that she'd come back to him. how sick is that? but that's how that kind of mind works.
After all the BS with Mr Wonderful (and here I thought I'd found the exact oppostite of my father), all the harassment and psychological abuse, he started crying one day and told me "I thought you were going to come back." You ignore our son, withhold child support, leave me nasty, harassing, vicious messages about the visits YOU chose not to show up for - and I was supposed to come back to that? WTF?
But that is the kind of person who does this kind of stuff.