Another family annihilator strikes *warning distressing details*

2BthatUnnoticed, you're right, I should have said Australia is culturally the deep south; and Queensland is Texas!

I grew up to adulthood in one of those states so I speak from long personal experience. I love Australia dearly and go back often but it does have an even bigger problem around attitudes and responses to male violence than even the UK. Anyone who doubts this can easily look at the stats.

DM today is totally different.

Headline is about the abusive background of the man who "burnt his family to death" and the piece is about how he massacred them.

There's also a smaller piece just under it (on the online version) that says the cop who made the "open minds" comment has been suspended.

Maybe they do listen after all.

That officer is horrifying and needs to go. His boss is gaslighting us. It was not bad phrasing. It was bad misogyny.

To say there were “two sides” and that people were “weighing up” which side to take!? WTF!?

That attitude is the whole problem!!

Queensland is not “culturally the Deep South” sadly, police say similar sickening things wherever in Australia it happens (see Karen Ristevski, Eurydice Dixon, Kim Hunt - one woman every week)

What this man did is off the scale wicked.

The causes of violence are complex, we all know that. There's evidence that most UK prisoners have some sort of addiction issue, lots of them (both male and female) will have had violent/dysfunctional upbringings, lots have undiagnosed learning difficulties and/or ADH so didn't do well at school and have struggled to get jobs, no stable family life, genetic influences might be at play in psychopathy, a great many have had head injuries which can cause brain damage - etc etc etc.

But putting all of that to one side, the fact remains that men are far more likely to be violent than women and almost all family annihilators, terrorists, serial killers are male. Who knows if it's the testosterone or the socialisation or just the knowledge that they can overpower physically weaker people like women, children, the elderly? No idea what we can do about it, but it should be a priority for governments. Not holding my breath on that one, though.

The linked thread is just awful. I had to stop reading, not much fazes me anymore but it was actually quite triggering - and I don't use that word lightly.

Seriously people it's not hard. Women are allowed to be outraged, we're not the baddies here. And may I remind people that Hannah's experience as a DV victim is far from unique, she's not an other woman, she's just like us. Many many other DV survivors are right here on this site, churning at the apologism and whataboutism.

I'm sorry Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey. I'm so so sorry Hannah, that in your last moments your worst nightmares came true. How horrific to not be able to protect your babies.

Yeah and I don’t understand how anyone can defend this man.

Violent men “ snap “ all the time. Every time the woman does something he doesn’t want her to do

It’s not snapping it’s violence and it never stops it keeps going and going
Escalating

And Katarina Carroll, Queensland's police commissioner, has been Tring to do damage limitation, including taking the lead detective off the case. For those who don't know Australia well, Qld is kind of Australia's 'deep south' culturally. It appears there was plenty of direct police involvement with domestic violence in the preceding months and Baxter had snatched the eldest child from her mother in the street and fled interstate. Police found and rescued the child after for days. There was stalking and electronic surveillance after (before?) the separation and Baxter had a DVO to stay 20m from his wife, for all the good that did. And people still ask why women don't just up and leave violent men, as if it's as simple as walking away. This is why.

But yeah, a big dollop of victim blaming balances everything. Makes violent men feel justified, feel better about themselves.

The officer has been now been removed from the case thank god.
I have no words though. We dont stand a chance.

I can’t go on the other thread because my blood pressure peaks.

I’m sure other people on here — it was certainly much discussed on Craicnet — remember the violent 2016 murder in Ireland of Clodagh Hawes and her three sons by her husband, their father, who then killed himself. The initial narrative until feminists and Clodagh’s family spoke out was a tragic tale of a ‘good man with MH issues who snapped’, and incredibly, after a collective funeral which was mostly about what a good guy and pillar of the community Alan was — and a eulogy which failed to mention that one of the dead had killed the other four, including a 13 year old, an 11 year old and a 6 year old with a knife — they were all buried together in the same plot. (Later he was exhumed.)

Distressing but predictable details of the years of abuse Hannah suffered before this.

Hannah Clarke was abused for 10 years before burned to death

mol.im/a/8026497

I have no words.

www.thesun.co.uk/news/11009522/outrage-police-suggest-abusive-rugby-player-driven-too-far/

He went to a Petrol station and filled a jerry with Petrol , before driving to where his wife was

He timed it for when she had put three kids into their sears ave was about to drive them to school. He had the family home, she left with nothing but the kids, she was trying to get them all to safety

He did not snap!!! It was cold, cold, cold, premeditated as hell

At least one person attempted to approach the car to get the children out , they were stopped by the violent man

holding a knife (the one who poured Petrol all over the children and struck a match)

I’m not sure how bad the fire was then - they may not have been able to get near the children. But they tried to help. And were stopped by the murderer

He not only murdered three young children and woman. He ensured they had the most terrifying and agonising death imaginable

Anyone low - key minimising what he did is despicable

It seems that the message being put forward is "since many parents of whatever sex kill their children, therefore a man killing his wife and children after abusing her for several years should not be discussed in those terms." With a side order of "he must have come to believe things would be better for his loved ones with all of them dead" and no possibility that he had shown himself to be violent and vengeful against his wife, to such an extent that the police had taken action about his behaviour at least once. Oh, and probably a few outlying "he just snapped"s, in spite of his clearly having polanned it and gone out to buy the petrol the night before....

Gah!

GinnyLane, yup, so it would seem. You get the sense that he'd been brewing up for a while; the actions seem planned and envisaged. You don't accidentally rock up to a particular house at a particular time and find that, just by chance, you have petrol and the means to ignite it with you, do you?

If anyone imagines or suggests this man just suddenly 'snapped', they need to reconsider what was involved. Someone who 'snaps' might perhaps punch or grab or strangle a victim if they came across them, but not this. Not anything remotely like this. He will have slept on it, possibly more than once, and persisted with the plan.

A passerby tried to get the children out and received burns in the unsuccessful attempt. He was out of the car and stabbing himself to death.

Fuck me, if that's true.

So... immolation good enough for his children, but too slow and painful for him?

I saw a headline "Inferno Family"

Fuck me, that is gutter press in a nutshell

Yes that other thread is just disgusting. Almost as bad as the initial news headlines, which as usual read "family dies in car fire" - as if the car randomly burst in to flames. A man set poured petrol on and then set fire to his family in front of many witnesses, one of which suffered burns trying to help, his wife was screaming "he poured petrol on us". But yeah, I guess it's not clear who is at fault here

There should be a law against decribing family annhilators in positive terms. It gives the impression that men can kill without negatively impacting their images in any way. Maybe a MN campaign? I'd call it "Stick to the Facts".

Men who commit suicide and family annihilators (which is what this thread is about) are very distinct groups of men, though. It's not banging a "political drum" to recognise that the family annihilator is typically someone who is a domestic abuser and has ramped up the abuse to its ultimate crescendo. There has been research published on this:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23686913

Personally, I find it really shocking that so many people on this site are so invested in stopping people talking about family annihilators and trying to obscure the realities of this kind of crime. It's no wonder we are getting absolutely nowhere as a society in dealing with this kind of abuser. We are not even allowed to acknowledge that they exist.

That’s less relevant than what I posted because misogyny offers no explanation for the murder of boy children.

What?

Rufus

You know, my dad tried to commit suicide, a few years after his twin brother did. In both cases it was because they had a flawed grasp of reality, their perception of events was distorted.

Any case of parents killing their kids who they love, and themselves, and even some where they don't kill themselves, seems to have a similar origin. Somehow they come to believe things would be better for their loved ones with all of them dead. Maybe the kids won't be able to cope without the parent, maybe they will be targeted, maybe they are infested by demons, whatever. Not rational thinking. That's what happens in mental illness.

I find it really shocking that anyone, whatever their sex, where all the evidence is that there is something like this going on, becomes generalised to some sort of political drum. Or that there is a complete denial that men suffer from mental illness that cause them to behave abnormally. Because that is what threads like this read like.

Thank you thyme

Going to take my own advice... 😀

No need to get so upset

Oh good lord

Not screaming, not upset