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.

Those poor poor babies, i looked at mine when it was on the news and thought what on earth was going through their little heads when their dad did that. I hope to god he had sedated them or something

For me, there are similarities with the young men who have carried out mass shootings in the past few years - usually straight and white, and there’s an entitlement there that they should have this ultimate control. I absolutely put the blame at the door of toxic masculinity - if we (as a society and that means fathers stepping up far more than the majority do) want to prevent our sons from turning into murderers or abusive partners, we have to guide them into a healthier model of what being a man is.

Spring

Well I guess you could then argue that every murderer is mentally unwell.
I would argue exactly this.

Because to most, normal people killing someone doesn’t seem very sane.
Quite.

Maybe we should let all the murderers out of prison, including the serial killers and give them counselling and meds.
Norway does this (well, doesn't just 'let them out'; prisoners are heavily rehabilitated/counselled etc) and I think has a pretty low rate of recidivism.

This thread is so distasteful. A family is dead. But their relatives live on. Grieving, distraught, and so instead of allowing the authorities to piece together what has led to this tragedy, and it is a tragedy, no matter what led to the death of the people concerned, we have armchair critics, giving their verdicts on the motivations, likely mental health, and relationship history of people they have never known, simply because they have the misfortune to make it into the news. It's worse than any of the journalism that is so fondly scorned and 'refused to click'. I'm reporting this thread, and I sincerely hope it is taken down swiftly.

I think something needs to be done to separate mental illness from domestic violence. They are NOT necessarily the same.

Some people are really evil, violent and controlling to their partners regularly, willingly and with full clarity of mind. They shall NOT be excused on the grounds of a mental illness they DON’T have.

How can anyone on here be so arrogant to think they know what the reasons were?!

Because it's fucking standard.

How many mentally ill people kill random people because of their illness?

Think about how many stories you have heard of genuine mental illness that resulted in murder. Then think of how many men killed their families and we later found out he was an abusive piece of shit after the fact?

It's just interesting his mental illness didn't cause him to murder random people. It made him stab his wife and then drive his children miles away and dump them off a cliff

@MichaelBendfaster that’s a really good point, especially about Norway.

Question for the hard of thinking on here:

How come men who beat their wives and kids nearly dead are abusers, but men who finish the job are just victims of mental illness??

Or do you think that men who beat their partners/kids half dead but not quite are also just scared distresses victims of failing mental health servicea too??

A purely selfish bastard

How many other people were thinking to themselves, "I bet it was another abusive controlling dickhead man" as they clicked on this thread?

Me

I read that, didn't they all have a joint funeral and burial? The poor family were swept along in the 'poor man' story.

That's right. They were all buried side by side. There was a thread running at the time about it and Clodagh's mother took a bashing for that decision. When she'd finally had time to process her grief he was exhumed.

It just demonstrates the impact the 'poor him' mentality can have. There was barely anything in the news about Clodagh, it was was all about how quiet she was in comparison to how friendly and lovely he was.

Hopefully the same won't happen with this poor woman and her children.

We say they are unwell, or they are mentally ill to avoid the fact that there are people like this in our midst, that some people are just nasty, just evil and hide in plain sight

we say they are ill because it means that we can put them apart from "normal" people, that we shouldn't feel bad that we didn't notice everything wrong in the situation because their illness made them do it.

it is easy to tick the ill box, less easy to have done something.

The people here who can't see the pattern of male entitlement and violence - why is that?

Do you not watch the news? Do you not remember the many other cases like this?

Do you think those of us who can see the pattern, and are naming it, are somehow colluding?

OK, so we’ve indentified the type of person usually behind this crime. It wasn’t a surprise to most of us. What do we do to stop it happening again? What resources do we need to campaign for so that if his wife was the victim of domestic violence (and as noted, it’s likely she was) she could have gotten away safely? And what can we do to make sure that the next generation of men don’t do this?

Handwringing is all very well, but we have an epidemic of violent men and we need to stem the tide.

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/03/theodore-johnson-freed-to-kill-domestic-violence-failure

They don't always restrict themselves to only harming one partner.

No sympathy for anyone be they man or woman who does this. If you’re mentally ill kill yourself by all means. But the instant someone murders someone else they lose any right to any kind of sympathy IMO. And I don’t care whether they’re men or women, it takes a special kind of evil bastard to be able to murder their innocent children.

There should be a special place in hell for anyone who does that.

I'm sorry but I'm not buying into the MH assumption.

As a PP has said - he might be mentally unwell, he might have been an abusive cunt taking things to its final end point (like previous examples have eventually been shown to be).

I don't think we should make assumptions.

In addition, assuming MH issues increases stigma around them. There are very few MH issues that result in such behaviour - really only ones that lead to psychosis can excuse murder and they're reasonably rare.

Spring, I guess I'm one of your hard-of-thinkings.

I don't really get your questions, TBH.

Who has claimed that men who beat their wives and kids nearly dead are abusers, but men who finish the job are just victims of mental illness?

I personally am quite clear that men who beat and otherwise terrorise their families are abusers. I am also clear that no normally functioning person behaves like this, so, whether you call it mental illness or a web of factors including toxic masculinity, society's models and expectations for men, etc etc, they are 'unwell' in the very broadest sense.

The people here who can't see the pattern of male entitlement and violence - why is that?

I think most of us can. We just view it as a more complex issue than 'they're just evil/cunts' etc.

Do you think those of us who can see the pattern, and are naming it, are somehow colluding?
'colluding'. What an odd thing to say.
I can see the pattern, thank you. I just don't come to the same conclusions about it as the 'evil', 'bastard', 'rot in hell' posters.

Poor man, he must have been desperate. So very sad.

WTAF?? 😡

Oops, my post about 'hard-of-thinkings' was meant for SpringHen as opposed to Springiscoming!

So many assumptions on here, none of us know the facts.
It's horrendously tragic, my thoughts are with their families
and prayers, may they RIP.

Some of the replies on this thread are making me feel genuinely ill. This man was a murderer. It’s a common pattern. There is no excusing it.

“We don’t know” - fuck that. We know with certainty. Those children were murdered. And fuck calling it “distasteful” to name the problem. The mealy-mouthed apologist BS on this issue enrages me.

A murderer