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.

'Lovely house - this is a nice area' You really think mental illness and tragic incidents like this only happen to people who live in tiny bedsits in deprived areas?

But can an abusive horrible person not also be mentally ill?

Because surely we assume that a mentally-well person would NEVER kill their own children.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/17/we-didnt-recognise-that-he-was-dangerous-our-father-killed-our-mother-and-sister

This is the article about the sons of the man who murdered his wife and daughter in Spalding a few years ago.

They were saying how he had been abusive for years, and killed them as a final act of control after they had the audacity to leave.

If he was ill and (say) his parents or sister came across this thread how do you think they might feel?

Seriously! They will feel exactly the same as they did before they came across this thread. Their child murdered his wife and two children and killed himself in a very violent way. They know what people are speculating. It is the least of their worries.

I think it's really horrible to speculate about this. Something that has just happened.

Charlotte Bevan jumped from Avon Gorge with her newborn baby daughter. She was very unwell and had schizophrenia and depression. I don’t remember anybody saying she was evil or that she would burn in hell. Poor Charlotte was very sick and may have been hearing voices or thinking she was being chased in the midst of psychosis.

I don’t know about this incident so I am reserving judgment.

There was always the opportunity to just kill himself. If things were too tough for him, he could've just ended his life. But he didn't - he killed his wife in an horrific assault that must have been incredibly shocking and painful for her - we can only hope his children didn't witness it - and then killed his own children. That's completely beyond my understanding. End your own life if you must, but don't take others with you.

It’s depressing isn’t it - all the cries of “poor poppet”. Honestly some people need shaking.

I can't bring myself to take such a bleak view of humankind to see him as anything but very ill or very desperate.

Because surely we assume that a mentally-well person would NEVER kill their own children.

Bollocks. There are plenty of stone cold sane abusive bastards.

I too reserve my sympathy for the women and children he murdered.

I can't believe how people rush to sympathise with these family annihilating men.

GayAllen

I think what's equally depressing is people expressing a judgment of something they know nothing about., online, so soon after it happened.

If someone kills themselves I totally feel sympathy for them.
If someone kills their spouse, their children and THEN themselves I think they are just cunts.

Nasty double standard. Sick women have done this yet I don't see the same reaction.

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

The kind of person who does this is a murderer, period.

Domestic violence perpetrators. Usually the ultimate revenge for the woman finally leaving the bastard!

hmm i think it may be a case of the wife leaving him etc but thats totaly a guess

but some on hear have no idea how mental health can effect what people do when they are at their worst

a couple of years ago i was very unwell with Bipolar i planned in my head that i would kill myself and my youngest son,not because i wanted to hurt him but my thinking was that nobody could look after him like i could and just could not envisage leaving him and leaving him to cope with my exit

i am now well and do not have them thoughts and cringe when i think about it,he is my life and in many ways keeps me going

please if you have no experience of mental health maybe educate yourself and look at the bigger picture

I'm afraid I'm in the 'controlling, most likely violent' camp.

Yes, women do take their own lives, together with their children sometimes. Many, many more men take their partner's life, along with their children's and their own.

This is absolutely about men. Because most violent crime such as this is committed by men. And I love my dh and ds with everything I've got, I'm absolutely not a man hater.

This.

I'd think they were a family annihilator.

I can't bring myself to take such a bleak view of humankind to see him as anything but very ill or very desperat

It's nothing to do with "humankind" it's one man, a member of a small subset of men who think they own their families and are so obsessed by them that they can't permit them to carry on living if life isn't exactly how the killer dictates it should be.

It’s depressing isn’t it - all the cries of “poor poppet”. Honestly some people need shaking.

Its a fucking disgrace.

As for, oh dear, what if his poor parents read this thread, how upsetting for them...wtf? Um, their son has not only murdered his family - but did it in the most violent/terrifying way you could imagine. yet you think reading this thread would be upsetting for them!!

Claire Throssal's blog was on MN once. I would urge people to read it. Or Luke Batty's story.

Ill or fucking desperate. Unbelievable.

Charlotte Bevan jumped from Avon Gorge with her newborn baby daughter. She was very unwell and had schizophrenia and depression. I don’t remember anybody saying she was evil or that she would burn in hell. Poor Charlotte was very sick and may have been hearing voices or thinking she was being chased in the midst of psychosis

The majority of male family annihilators have no history of mental illness.

Selfish cunt is my view and my only sympathy is with the victims he murdered.

Big difference between Charlotte Bevan, as mentioned above, and this individual is their sex. Women, as I've already said, are almost always severely mentally ill at the time. Often, their mental breakdown can be attributed to post partum psychosis.

When it is a man, on the other hand, there is almost always a history of domestic abuse and violence. The wife/parter has either just left, or was in the process of leaving the relationship. The children have been used by the man to control the woman, and he continues to display that controlling behaviour when he kills them.

Depressingly, this is an established pattern.

This is something that men do. Violent, abusive, controlling men.

please if you have no experience of mental health maybe educate yourself and look at the bigger picture

No, you look at the bigger picture.