What kind of person jumps off a cliff with two children? **MNHQ warning: upsetting content**

[Leafyhouse]

I've been really shaken by that story about the woman stabbed at home, and the father found at the bottom of the cliff with 2 dead children, 10 and 7.

Their home is about 400 yards away from me. I also have 2 DS's, aged 8 and 10. It's just made me sick to the core. Police and forensic officers all over this lovely house, in a really nice area - and for what? Why would someone do that? Have your own problems, but why take the children?

Just reeling at the moment, am going to hug my kids extra tight tonight. This one's just so very close to home.

My bf abused me for almost a decade. Well, it was 5 years before he started hitting me, but eventually he did come close to killing me.

He was perfectly "functioning", was never out of control with anyone else/ about anything except our relationship. He knew exactly what he was doing.

The endless posts on here quoting "the script" being the many things that men say and do when they are abusive. These murders are just the last page of the script. Not every abuser gets to that stage, but i have no doubt it's all in the same trajectory.

There is a reason that mental health units are different to forensic mental health units. My feeling is that there are mental health disorders that people "suffer" from, and conditions that cause the person in question no pain at all.

Patients with schizophrenia, bipolar, many conditions we are taught to fear, are often frightened themselves. They either have insight and that scares them, or the delusions etc terrify them.

Men (yes, 95% of the time ) who consider their behaviour perfectly reasonable, have no insight, are perfectly happy to use their power to keep others in line... They are not "suffering" with a mental health illness.

Oddly I doubt these killers know my opinion before they commit the crime

The killers do know your opinion. They know the culture we live in which looks for excuses when men murder their wives and children. They see the coverage of cases like this, where it's framed as a 'family tragedy' rather than another example of male violence facilitated by a patriarchal society.
So yes, everyone making excuses is facilitating a culture that says it's somehow less of a crime if it's a man violently ending the lives of his wife and children. Instead of saying 'a violent man acted reprehensibly yet again'.

Perhaps sympathy for what mental illness can drive you to unless proven otherwise?

I wonder how much sympathy you'd have if this man walked into your children's school and killed them instead of his own? If all murderers were mentally ill they'd be charged with manslaughter and locked up in a secure psychiatric unit, but they're not, thousands of men are found to be sane, guilty of murder and sent to prison which kinda debunks the whole 'oh poor men they must be ill' theory being thrown around on here.

What signs are there this man suffered from a psychotic episode or long term mental illness

I have to admit my first thought was family annihilators and DV.

I obviously don't know if there was any mental illness but my first guess would be history of DV.

Lots of people are unwell mentally and it doesn’t turn them into MURDERERS!

Absolute fucking cunt.

Clearly controlling if he wanted the whole family to die horribly instead of just killing himself

As PP have said: a man.

Family annihilator. I'd bet my house on a history of DV.

As WooWoo says above, "another example of male violence facilitated by a patriarchal society" and "a violent man acted reprehensibly yet again".

(And yet people still wonder why there are so many threads expressing concern about males being able to call themselves females at a moment's notice, and thereby gain access to vulnerable women.)

why do people think that obsessive control issues aren't mental health issues?

OCD is all about control, anorexia is all about control. Needing excessive control within your life certainly is a mental health issue.

Labelling family annihilators as experiencing mental health issues doesn't excuse their actions or force anyone to a point of sympathy. They are still to blame and they certainly should have addressed their issues before it came to this point.

Can't we all agree it would be better to diagnose and TREAT a man who felt so obsessively about controlling his family that he would rather kill them then lose them?

Or should we continue to stand by and watch...then call him names after they are all dead?

Funny how these men with "obsessive control issues" due to menta health only try and control their female partner. Their friends, male family members, parents, colleagues get left alone, don't they? Anyone physically stronger than them gets left alone, don't they? Funny that.

Can't we all agree it would be better to diagnose and TREAT a man who felt so obsessively about controlling his family that he would rather kill them then lose them?

There is no treatment for sociopathy/psychopathy or narcissistic personality disorders. These conditions are untreatable.

Obsessive controls issues

How the hell does that lead someone to kill their own children

Their anger and hatred doesn’t drive them to be psychotic it’s a choice they have made to act in such a way

And rehabilitating men who commit dv has very very poor positive outcomes becuase they don’t want to change they want to stay in control

why do people think that obsessive control issues aren't mental health issues?

I'm unaware of any research linking mental illness and DV. Is there any?

Personally people I know who suffer heavily with OCD - including a few men - have never been involved with DV in any way.

I only know a few female anorexics who are very loving mothers and have never been violent to anyone.

My DSis ex who was financially and emotionally abusive - though I don’t think he was physically violent to her - though may have been to their child - has no OCD or food issues. He is a selfish cunt who keeps fucking up his relationships by cheating though.

So that's why I'm not making that link.

Or should we continue to stand by and watch...then call him names after they are all dead?

No, I don't think we should do that. I think we should deal with the problem/s of a patriarchal society and toxic masculinity.

Morphene - how do you suggest 'we' do that . Surely that would take the man confessing to someone that he wanted to kill his family? Or are 'we' supposed to be psychic?

What rubbish.

Okay then, let’s feel sorry for all murderers in that case, and child rapists, men that beat their wives etc... because it’s a mental health issue?

No, fuck that. Absolutely fuck that.

It takes a special kind of cunt to do things like that, mental health has either VERY little or NOTHING to do with it.

My ex was abusive, physically and emotionally, incredibly controlling - and he was not mentally ill. It wasn’t a mental illness, it was because he was a TWAT. He doesn’t deserve sympathy because he’s controlling and you think that’s a mental illness.

Some people are fucking weird.

then call him names after they are all dead?

Someone on here is actually concerned that this thing, who murdered two little boys in a horrendous way, not to mention their mother, is being called 'names'. Looks like the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

(I'm saying this as someone who went through abuse as a child, have mental health issues and lived through DV)

Broadly speaking, aside from this case, the only way we can tackle this prevalence of male on female violence in the long term is to tackle toxic masculinity.
The only way to tackle toxic masculinity is to have open discussions in which MH and childhood abuse will HAVE to be part of the discourse.
His thread shows that we as a society are not ready for these conversations as we are not progressive enough and I would go as far as to say we've actually taken steps back in recent years.
Everybody is too offended, everyone personalises everything. For example, some people are quick to shout down ANY MENTION of mental health as it either offends them personally or vicariously as they have depression or other illness which either isn't relevant or may make up only one factor in a cocktail which would serve to make one individual do bad things. They will say talk of mental health stigmatises anyone with any MH condition so the conversation will be shut down.
We will not be able to take into account the damage caused by child abuse, sexual, physical or other as some people will come along saying they are upset as they were abused as a child and against the odds turned out to be decent members of society and good parents. Of course many people will. I did. But we need to accept that not every person who is affected by bad things reacts or is shaped the same way as others.
The fact is, most perpetrators of violent, disgusting crimes against children and women had very dysfunctional lives themselves but we as a society cannot go forwards to find remedies as we can't hack the 'offensive' issues we could need to confront.

@InSisu so telling people to sympathise with a child murderer is progressive?

If that’s the case, I never want to progress.

lostinsnow, not all mental illness is the same though is it? As I said earlier, there are circumstances where someone has a complete psychotic break and loses touch with reality so they may feel either a relative has been ‘taken over’ and is a danger to them they need to defend against, or that there is something worse than death they need to protect loved ones from by killing them. The example of the girl who killed Katy Rough is a recent one. So yes there are MH issues which can cause violence which the person is not strictly to blame for. Schizophrenia, psychosis.

But then there are other things like depression, personality disorders, OCD which don’t affect people’s ability to know right from wrong and they knowingly choose to do something they know is wrong.

I suspect this was the second type as he was lucid enough to hide the murder of his wife from the children and take them to a specific place which seems planned. But I feel kind of bad for speculating.

There are cases where people do harm or kill others and they are psychotic at the time

But there are many cases where those that harm/kill others do have mental health issues/personality disorders but are able to understand right from wrong at the time and they are no less guilty than someone who doesn’t have mental health issues/personality disorders

Except, actually InSisu having worked with a DV charity, ime iit isn't the case that most perpetrators of DV had very dysfunctional lives themselves. It just isn't.
Read the advice from the Freedom Programme; Lundy Bancroft, etc.
If it was a MH issue then women would commit these crimes at the same rate as men. If it was an effect of an abusive childhood then ditto.
This is a problem of male violence and how we stop that is by naming it, by recognising it, by supporting women to come forward, by helping women to leave and by legislating against it seriously when it first crops up.

I have a holiday cottage at Birling Gap (two minutes walk to beachy head).

I was sitting in the conservatory last September looking through the binoculars at the cliff and I saw a woman in the rain crouching down at the top, I only saw her for a second before she rolled off. I couldn't believe it. I went into total shock. I went down to the beach but it was too rainy and I couldn't bare the thought of seeing a dead woman. We called the coast guards and found out on the news it was a woman in her late 40's. During our 9 day stay there we heard of around 5 suicides within that time, one night a man drove off the cliff. It's a beautiful place but also rather scary. My heart goes out to this family.

Frantically hell no. I don't know where you got that from. No.

I tried to find stats on male deaths due to DV.

All I found was a website that did indeed show that 5 men had died due to DV.

All homosexual relationships.

The article went on to say that this proves DV isn't a gender thing.

Yes, really.

It is MALE VIOLENCE again though.