Page 6 | TW To notice that a lot of child murders have one thing in common

Worldinyourhands · 2024-12-14T00:01:45+00:00

Has anyone else noticed the chilling common theme in the child murders that keep being reported (it feels like) in recent times? There's another today, and as soon as I read the heartbreaking report, that same factor jumped out yet again. An unrelated partner being involved in the child's life. A parent and a boyfriend/girlfriend or (less commonly) new husband/wife. Before anyone jumps on me, I'm obviously OBVIOUSLY not saying that step parents are all evil. Nor am I saying that biological parents can't be evil. In all the cases I'm thinking of, the biological parents were totally complicit. But I am wondering if there needs to be some more red flags raised when school or social workers or whoever become aware that a child is having to live with a parent's romantic partner. Particularly a young child or a new partner, though I'm aware of at least one case involving a teenager (it broke my heart - I'm not naming any of the children on this post, but there have been multiple over the past few years). Not doing a poll either as it's too flippant. But has anyone else noticed this factor coming up time and time again? And does anyone else think that this aspect of safeguarding seems to be missed - presumably because we place far too much value on the parent's perceived 'right' to have a live-in romantic partner and not enough weight on the chlld's right not to live with an unrelated adult who doesn't love them?

Hateam · 14/12/2024 06:40

Feelinglow27 · 14/12/2024 00:06

Tbh I'm just sick of fucking male violence. What the fuck is wrong with them? I feel like they're another species and want to move away to a female only island.

What with these kids, Gisele, the poor nurse who was murdered by oral rape. God they are disgusting.

There something seriously wrong going on in modern society. I will never go near a man again and I hope my daughter turns out gay. I'm just sick of it all.

Fully expect the "not all men" responses. Don't care.

Lesbian relationships are renowned for high levels of violence.

MyPithyPoster · 14/12/2024 06:44

Hateam · 14/12/2024 06:40

Lesbian relationships are renowned for high levels of violence.

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No, they are renowned for higher levels of reporting violence. And something being done about it.

Hateam · 14/12/2024 06:47

Source?

CheeseTime · 14/12/2024 06:56

Isn’t the gender breakdown the gender of the victim not the offender?

Startinganew32 · 14/12/2024 07:00

leia24 · 14/12/2024 04:19

I mean.. Beinash Batool was stepmother. Emma Tustin was a stepmother. Victoria Climbies aunt was in a mum role.
It's almost always men but unfortunately there are plenty of high profile cases of women murdering children too.

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Yes but there’s also high profile cases of biological mothers killing/harming kids or standing back and letting others do it - Constance Marten, Tracy Connelly, Veronique John, Christina Robinson.
Basically there will always be examples but overall, males in a child’s life (biological and step parents) are a higher risk to them (not just of murder but also sexual abuse) than females in their life.

Userxyd · 14/12/2024 07:02

Agree with all of this. @Feelinglow27 totally with you. Men just seem to be getting more and more violent and crazy- extremism all over the place, porn addiction, brutal to partners and children. Bring back hunter gatherers! Or mining! They need physically draining and need a purpose in life - left to their own devices they seem to create war and misery.
@CrocsNotDocs agree re funding I don't get why there's infinite provision for shared secure accommodation with catering, entertainment, guest facilities etc for the elderly but none for single mums. I know these old folks homes are private and cost a bomb but how great would this be for single mums - could make separate ones for single dads but you have to move out if you want new partner to move in so it stays a safe and well provided for housing resort. Football pitch, basketball, gaming rooms, exercise classes for the mums, homework rooms, etc etc so it's a welcoming place that supports kids and mums to get on with life. Bet it would help kids feel settled if they made them really nice and they stayed long term.

Startinganew32 · 14/12/2024 07:02

Hateam · 14/12/2024 06:40

Lesbian relationships are renowned for high levels of violence.

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Errr no they aren’t unless you go by self reporting figures. I do know that we very rarely if ever hear of women being killed by a female current or former partner whereas we constantly hear of men killing their partners (and almost never women killing men).

Amba1998 · 14/12/2024 07:03

I saw something about not mentioning you have kids on tinder or leaving it until a few dates in to mention kids as some men specifically target women to date who have children

makes me sick to my stomach

CheeseTime · 14/12/2024 07:06

Userxyd · 14/12/2024 07:02

Agree with all of this. @Feelinglow27 totally with you. Men just seem to be getting more and more violent and crazy- extremism all over the place, porn addiction, brutal to partners and children. Bring back hunter gatherers! Or mining! They need physically draining and need a purpose in life - left to their own devices they seem to create war and misery.
@CrocsNotDocs agree re funding I don't get why there's infinite provision for shared secure accommodation with catering, entertainment, guest facilities etc for the elderly but none for single mums. I know these old folks homes are private and cost a bomb but how great would this be for single mums - could make separate ones for single dads but you have to move out if you want new partner to move in so it stays a safe and well provided for housing resort. Football pitch, basketball, gaming rooms, exercise classes for the mums, homework rooms, etc etc so it's a welcoming place that supports kids and mums to get on with life. Bet it would help kids feel settled if they made them really nice and they stayed long term.

That’s a fun idea. Wouldn’t work though as some women would try and bring men in to the place. Older boys would have to be kicked out. Older girls couldn’t have boyfriends over.

I have often wistfully thought about communes for women!

BeardofHagrid · 14/12/2024 07:07

A man will see another man’s child as a biological threat to their status.

Notcontent · 14/12/2024 07:09

catscalledbeanz · 14/12/2024 00:22

In a way the "evil stepmother" trope is almost trolling the reality. Because it's not often women or step mothers. It's step men. But there aren't many pop culture references to the evil step dad. Whereas the evil stepmother is a trope.

I do think there are lots of issues with stepmothers too - resentment etc - but they don’t tend to kill.

Jostuki · 14/12/2024 07:23

The murder of Star Hobson springs to mind.

The trial related to the case of Star Hobson took place at a similar time to the one related to the murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, another young child who was abused and killed by carers. Several parallels were noted between the cases such as both children being killed by their parent's new partner, having extended family who tried to help them and being of known concern to the authorities.

LaPam · 14/12/2024 07:24

ASimpleLampoon · 14/12/2024 06:17

If you're talking about Sara Sheriff then the other thing they have in common is that Family Court gave contact \custody to the abuser so went on to kill them.

But homeschool is being blamed because the Children's Commissioner for England has it in for SEND children and their families

This.

On the idea that it is better to have a dad than not dad in the picture, many children are neglected, abused and killed by their own dad s during contact mandated by court.

We do not need to avoid new men after we have kids, what we need to do is to stop this stupid cycle where women stay in abusive relationships for the sake of the kids, therefore often turning their very own children into future abusers or victims as a result.

Single mothers do not need to stay single to protect their kids, but if their boundaries are flimsy… they should access help like counselling or training like the Freedom Programme to stop themselves being attracted to or easy pray of another abuser. I understand, however, that access to these services is not often available so yes… if your mum stayed in an abusive relationship, your marriage became one and you have no access to help to stop this cycle, then yes, by all means, stay single.

NC10125 · 14/12/2024 07:25

Worldinyourhands · 14/12/2024 00:20

That's true. Social workers are woefully under-resourced. (I also from experience with a family member don't think they're always the best trained or most competent - probably goes back to the lack of resources and desperation for staff.) And to be clear I also don't think there's any need to investigate every single step family or anything like that. I don't believe most step families are a great set up for the kids involved but I don't think they're dangerous. But this link on all these child murder stories in the news is just so troubling. Don't you think as a society we could push a stronger message of 'focus on your kids, not on your next bf'? We have such a culture of 'you do you, live your life'. Even on here, which is not particularly step-parent friendly, you see people being encouraged to do what makes them happy rather than put the kids first.

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I think that we need to push for a culture of “take responsibility for your kids”

I’m a single parent, and I know a lot of other single parents. The two most common reasons that people introduce and then blend families quickly, in my experience are:

Financial - if you are really poorly off, struggling to work and raise kids, can’t afford childcare, other parent paying minimal support etc and someone offers for you to move into their house it’s very hard to justify saying no when materially it will give your kids a better life. If you have a supportive co parent who bears a decent proportion of the costs of raising your joint children then you don’t end up in this position.

Romantic - if you are a lone parent and have very little outside help then your choices are either have no romantic relationships or introduce the person you’re dating to your kids. If you’ve got a reasonable custody split with a loving, involved co parent then you can date apart from the children for a long time.

Lets normalise both parents taking care of their children after a split.

echt · 14/12/2024 07:25

BeardofHagrid · 14/12/2024 07:07

A man will see another man’s child as a biological threat to their status.

In much the same way that a new top male lion in a pride will kill every single cub as none of them are his.

LaPam · 14/12/2024 07:30

And also, bear in mind that there are more children living in abusive homes with both parents than in abusive homes where the parents have split. It is just that there is not much research done on children abused under the roof of a family home. I suspect this is because abuse is easier to hide under a layer of “respectability”, when one parent keeps silent and even helps to hide the abuse to protect their status as a family.

LaPam · 14/12/2024 07:34

Startinganew32 · 14/12/2024 07:02

Errr no they aren’t unless you go by self reporting figures. I do know that we very rarely if ever hear of women being killed by a female current or former partner whereas we constantly hear of men killing their partners (and almost never women killing men).

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Bingo!

What the hell? Sexual orientation has nothing to do with abuse. Healthy and unhealthy relationships can happen regardless of individual preferences.

LaPam · 14/12/2024 07:37

samarrange · 14/12/2024 00:52

As usual, this comes down to relative and absolute risk. The relative risk posed by a step-parent, new live-in partner, etc, might well be higher than that of the natural parent. But the absolute risk posed by either is still tiny.

Put another way: If a child is murdered, there's probably a higher chance that it was the step-parent (etc) who did it than the natural parent. But very few children are murdered at all in the UK. In fact the amount of national coverage that almost every case gets is testament to that. Yes, of course every murder of a child is one too many. But preventing all of them would require taking 80% of children away from their mothers "just in case", because we're not very good at predicting who will murder their child.

Why does this matter? Because as a society we have decided that attempting to deal with relative risks is a slippery slope that leads to discrimination.

If you look at the statistics for any rare crime, and divide the population up into small enough chunks, you can guarantee that you will find that some ethnic or social group commits more of that particular crime (relative risk). But that doesn't mean that even people from that group are actually especially likely to commit that crime (absolute risk) - it just means that they are a bit more likely to be the perpetrators if the crime is committed. Posh white men are more likely to commit fraud in the City, but most posh white men don't commit fraud, and it would be unfair for the police to pick up the first posh white man they come across when they hear of a case of fraud.

So the police and politicians have decided to concentrate on absolute risk, which avoids all the awkwardness of profiling. Hence why we hear things like "Crime is down 8% year-on-year", which is great if you were not a victim of crime this year, but doesn't help much if you were.

The OP may very will be right, that a disproportionate amount of the violence against kids is being perpetrated by step-parents (etc). But that doesn't tell us anything about whether we can do anything to fix the problem by somehow targeting men who start relationships with single mothers. The vast majority of those men will not harm their new step-kids; there are probably people reading this post who are in that position and know that their new partner is not a threat. What we can do is try to make people generally more aware of the warning signs of a bad partner, through education. But with 70 million people, occasionally some bad things are going to happen, and to some extent that's the price of living in a free society where we don't point the finger of suspicion at someone based on their circumstances or demographics.

Hear, hear.

MyrtlethePurpleTurtle · 14/12/2024 07:37

Misknit · 14/12/2024 00:08

Recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) regarding Child Homocide.
Key Statistics:

Total homicides: Between April 2022 and May 2023, 48 children under 16 in England and Wales were victims of homicide. This is slightly lower than the average of 52 homicides over the previous ten years.

Perpetrators:

Parent or step-parent: 17
Other family, friend, or acquaintance: 9
Stranger: 4 (One victim was Lilia Valutyte, 9 years old, killed in Lincolnshire by a 22-year-old man with schizophrenia.)
No suspect charged (as of March 30, 2023): 18 cases (will decrease over time as charges are brought)

Gender:

Male: 29
Female: 19

Age:

Under 1 year old: 17
1 - 4 years old: 11
5 - 15 years old: 20

Thank you for posting statistics

burntheleaves · 14/12/2024 07:37

Sara sharif, Arthur Labinjo Hughes and Harvey Borrington are some recent high profile cases of stepmothers involved in the murdering children
I'm not saying it's not more often men.

Userxyd · 14/12/2024 07:37

Misknit · 14/12/2024 00:08

Recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) regarding Child Homocide.
Key Statistics:

Total homicides: Between April 2022 and May 2023, 48 children under 16 in England and Wales were victims of homicide. This is slightly lower than the average of 52 homicides over the previous ten years.

Perpetrators:

Parent or step-parent: 17
Other family, friend, or acquaintance: 9
Stranger: 4 (One victim was Lilia Valutyte, 9 years old, killed in Lincolnshire by a 22-year-old man with schizophrenia.)
No suspect charged (as of March 30, 2023): 18 cases (will decrease over time as charges are brought)

Gender:

Male: 29
Female: 19

Age:

Under 1 year old: 17
1 - 4 years old: 11
5 - 15 years old: 20

So in 56% of solved child murder cases it was a step parent/new partner.
That's mental - it looks like c. 12% kids are raised in step families and c. 25% kids are raised in single parent families, with c. 62% in married/cohabiting families.
The data is really unclearly labelled though and it doesn't specify biological parents so this could be all wrong.
Anyway there's millions of step families or single parent families all with new partner potential at any point - it's for both parents to manage the risk of who is spending time with their kids.
Sara Sharif case was unusual in that her biological father did it, although I guess he was a nutcase and sadly so was her mum so neither were properly bonded and protective of her. So awful when she sounded such a sweet mother hen to the smaller children at her school too.
But biological fathers often lose touch with kids after splitting up and so many don't pay CM for them which leaves single mothers financially struggling (not to mention MH given the pressure raising kids alone) and more open to new partners who can help with bills.
Back to the single mom family resorts! Add counsellors, fully vetted babysitters, a nursery, after school clubs, music and sports, a spa....

Userxyd · 14/12/2024 07:39

Based on 2021 census data- www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/datasets/stepfamiliesblendedfamiliesanddependentchildrencensus2021

hazelnutvanillalatte · 14/12/2024 07:39

catscalledbeanz · 14/12/2024 00:22

In a way the "evil stepmother" trope is almost trolling the reality. Because it's not often women or step mothers. It's step men. But there aren't many pop culture references to the evil step dad. Whereas the evil stepmother is a trope.

This definitely exists too and it's more likely to be less extreme violence and more emotional abuse/neglect, envy of the SC and wanting to push them out of 'her family,' and for financial reasons. And it would have been the much more common scenario at the time these stories/tropes were created.

Startinganew32 · 14/12/2024 07:39

Userxyd · 14/12/2024 07:37

So in 56% of solved child murder cases it was a step parent/new partner.
That's mental - it looks like c. 12% kids are raised in step families and c. 25% kids are raised in single parent families, with c. 62% in married/cohabiting families.
The data is really unclearly labelled though and it doesn't specify biological parents so this could be all wrong.
Anyway there's millions of step families or single parent families all with new partner potential at any point - it's for both parents to manage the risk of who is spending time with their kids.
Sara Sharif case was unusual in that her biological father did it, although I guess he was a nutcase and sadly so was her mum so neither were properly bonded and protective of her. So awful when she sounded such a sweet mother hen to the smaller children at her school too.
But biological fathers often lose touch with kids after splitting up and so many don't pay CM for them which leaves single mothers financially struggling (not to mention MH given the pressure raising kids alone) and more open to new partners who can help with bills.
Back to the single mom family resorts! Add counsellors, fully vetted babysitters, a nursery, after school clubs, music and sports, a spa....

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those stats conflate step parent with parent though? So they don’t show what you say.

MyrtlethePurpleTurtle · 14/12/2024 07:40

samarrange · 14/12/2024 00:52

As usual, this comes down to relative and absolute risk. The relative risk posed by a step-parent, new live-in partner, etc, might well be higher than that of the natural parent. But the absolute risk posed by either is still tiny.

Put another way: If a child is murdered, there's probably a higher chance that it was the step-parent (etc) who did it than the natural parent. But very few children are murdered at all in the UK. In fact the amount of national coverage that almost every case gets is testament to that. Yes, of course every murder of a child is one too many. But preventing all of them would require taking 80% of children away from their mothers "just in case", because we're not very good at predicting who will murder their child.

Why does this matter? Because as a society we have decided that attempting to deal with relative risks is a slippery slope that leads to discrimination.

If you look at the statistics for any rare crime, and divide the population up into small enough chunks, you can guarantee that you will find that some ethnic or social group commits more of that particular crime (relative risk). But that doesn't mean that even people from that group are actually especially likely to commit that crime (absolute risk) - it just means that they are a bit more likely to be the perpetrators if the crime is committed. Posh white men are more likely to commit fraud in the City, but most posh white men don't commit fraud, and it would be unfair for the police to pick up the first posh white man they come across when they hear of a case of fraud.

So the police and politicians have decided to concentrate on absolute risk, which avoids all the awkwardness of profiling. Hence why we hear things like "Crime is down 8% year-on-year", which is great if you were not a victim of crime this year, but doesn't help much if you were.

The OP may very will be right, that a disproportionate amount of the violence against kids is being perpetrated by step-parents (etc). But that doesn't tell us anything about whether we can do anything to fix the problem by somehow targeting men who start relationships with single mothers. The vast majority of those men will not harm their new step-kids; there are probably people reading this post who are in that position and know that their new partner is not a threat. What we can do is try to make people generally more aware of the warning signs of a bad partner, through education. But with 70 million people, occasionally some bad things are going to happen, and to some extent that's the price of living in a free society where we don't point the finger of suspicion at someone based on their circumstances or demographics.

Fantastic post!