Why so many similar stories of affluent british men murdering their families?

[Mummyof287]

Horrible to hear about the poor headteacher who was murdered along with her poor innocent little girl yesterday by the one person they should have been loved and protected by the most.

This story sounds so familiar to others.High powered successful affluent couple, man/father suddenly goes crazy and turns on his family murdering them and often himself.

I just wonder why this keeps happening.So very sad :(

I think there is a lot of financial and emotional control going on behind the scenes in many of these situations. I also think “successful” women feel the pressure to keep up the facade of having it all, the wonderful family, devoted husband etc so even when there’s abuse happening they won’t reveal it. Been there, lived it and got the T shirt unfortunately.

Middle class news - the public care about families like this. Poor blokes killing oter poor blokes or kids from deprived communities knifing each other not so much.

These events are often reported as shocking and out of character but they're not really. Middle class people are much less likely to have state intervention, including social services and abuse that might be spotted in a working class family isn't in a middle class family. The family can throw money at things to cover up eg a nanny to get the kids to school, sending the kids away to boarding school. They might use private health care and education which is less likely to have a dialogue with other services than state schools or GPs so things go unnoticed. Neighbour's less likely to call police because they live in a detached house rather than a flat with paper thin walls.

It all boils down to perpetrators wanting to control their partner and children, no matter how wealthy they are

This

Women’s refuges are so busy all the time because of male violence

😭

Mainly because the bastards can get away with it. It's just the media finds out about it a lot faster than in years gone by.

Sadly that doesn't make much difference, they still seem to be able to get away with everything whether the media finds out or not. Then corrupt police and politicians make it all go away.

Nothing will ever change.

OP, you are right that there is hidden domestic abuse going on in these cases and it is a case of newspaper reporters not understanding DV and also the fact that these families can appear completely 'normal' from the outside. These men are so good at putting on a completely different persona in public: They are charming, upright, humble and down to earth in the public arena. They volunteer, hold high-ranking positions, appear easy-going and manage the family image, portraying to others that their family life is great, or they may make subtle comments to others to suggest to others that it is their wife who is 'difficult', yet in the privacy of their home they bully their wife and children and gaslight their wife into thinking she is the problem. I know because I've lived through this and my ex is still considered a fantastic guy and a great dad by our community, while I am consoling my children and picking up the pieces of their trauma. As soon as you start opening up to women about this you begin to get to know this is not as rare as you would like it to be. A man who can kill his wife and/or kids is not a good man who suddenly snaps! If he is able to kill he is able to lie, deceive and harm in a multitude of other, psychologically scarring ways, and has been doing so for years on end. He gets to a point of murder because his sense of entitlement to control his family has grown over the years.

Here are some points taken from recent articles on domestic violence:

Domestic violence can be indiscernible to those outside of the relationship since “Perpetrators often create a charming public persona, making it difficult for victims to seek help and be believed”. (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/car.2611)

Domestic violence includes coercive control, a gendered behaviour that is overwhelmingly male-perpetrated. (academic.oup.com/book/44707/chapter-abstract/378972050)

The impact of coercive control is cumulative rather than incident-specific; it involves a collection or pattern of behaviours. One such behaviour is manipulation of systems, eg. legal, school or community systems. Coercive control can include isolation and discrediting of the targeted partner. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35621362/)

"Performances of ‘admirable’ fathering were often targeted at professionals and wider communities (e.g. school staff, other parents), and could occur alongside fathers/father figures stalking, harassing and/or attacking ex-partners and children when out of the public eye.” (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35621362/)

The press are more likely to report it when its affluent people, they generally report the house price also.

@3487642l my experience is precisely this.

I agree it's about control. I wonder if it's also related to fragile egos.

Yep... and mine. And the daft people I came across in cafcas and in liaison centres pre court cases, 15 years ago, were taken in by these charming middle class males as well. It makes my blood boil. (I can remember two daft elderly women turning their nose up at me because I refused to sit and watch a patronising video with my ex of 7 years previous, about 'the harm arguing parents could do to their kids', while they took away my 3 month old breastfeeding baby (not his) who I didn't want anywhere near him! Defies belief. They were very impressed by him.) I hope things have moved on... but I fear not. These men are convincing and the general public don't really realise it happens with strong, professional women...

Because people think having money makes you safe.

But it doesn't not always.

Yes cafcass were continually charmed by my ex. His superficial charm was somehow far more compelling than the police reports, medical notes, disclosures from my son to teachers and the fact my son refused to go to his dad's.

This is the 2 women murdered a week by their partners.

as it has been said by previous posters in this thread, domestic homicide happens way too frequently, but the cases where victims or perpetrators were middle class or wealthy tend to get more media coverage.

I research DVA as part of my job. domestic abuse happens across the spectrum of social class. However, poverty is a risk factor. One of the reasons for that is that in poor families it tends to be harder for the victim of abuse to leave the relationship, for financial reasons.

I also think that perpetrators who are middle class or wealthy feel they have “more to lose” by having police involved, so the abuse is most often emotional, financial or coercive control as opposed to physical - this is just my interpretation of the reasons though, rather than research data.

one of the cases I read that stuck with me was that of a woman who wanted to separate from her abusive partner but had to rely on him to look after their young child, so she declined a non-molestation order.
she was killed in the child’s presence. (This case and these details are in the public domain, that’s where I read about it)

we need a complete overhaul of society including fighting against violent porn (or really, any porn), misogynistic content in culture (yes, including old songs like “Delilah”) and access to firearms outside of a work context, to name just a few things.

In the days following Emma"s murder I put a post on our work intranet about the local DV services with the victim being the one at the fore.

It suddenly then dawned on me that statistically one or more of my male colleagues were a current or past abuser. Given my line of work it is 'easy' to other the abusers and think that none of my colleagues are like that but the truth is they are. If I am honest it is a deeply worrying and horrible thought and my instinct is telling me to ignore it. That is how they get away with it, they aren't the same in public.

Yep. That's the reality.

It's not a new thing. It's always been happening

it's not always about abusive misogyny.
sometimes when a man suffering from a depressive mental illness and is experiencing suicidal thoughts, among the turmoil of their messed up brain the "but how would my wife and kids cope without me if I die?" gets answered with the horrible solution that it would be kinder not to put them through that by taking them too. Obviously irrational and only would make sense in a psychotic mind, and still misogynistic as seeing his wife as without her own desires and agency, but more the victims of a tragic mental illness than an evil abuser.

Do you have any evidence for this? I know mental illness is often used as an excuse but it's very rarely the actual case.

Jane Monckton Smith's book In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder is a very important read, IMO.

@3487642l my experience is precisely this.

Mine too.

Jane Monckton Smith's book In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder is a very important read, IMO.

I've had that sat on my Google Books wishlist for a while, so this has prompted me to buy it finally. I first came across her on one of the murder series on Netflix and she seemed really interesting, another one was Nazir Afzal and his book The Prosecutor, he made great impact on prosecutions of those involved in VAWG.

Goodness that sounds awful for you! Took away asin removed from your care??

@marly24

Men just don't like being second fiddle to women because society tells them they have a God given right to be better than us.

I'm a nurse and loads of my female colleagues, including me, have separated or divorced their male partners since the lockdowns. When I got married my job was seen as lower status than exDH's and was certainly less well paid, which is the metric by which this society measures worth.

During lockdown he was furloughed and my profession was lauded to the hilt - I was essential and heroic and he was stuck in the house with the kids. It wasn't the start of our problems but it certainly made things a lot nastier and there was a marked increase in his putdowns and his attention seeking behaviour. I've heard this story again and again from my colleagues.

The murders are the extreme end of this spectrum - sad, jealous men who instead of building themselves up when they feel inadequate seek to tear the women around them down because in their mind we have no right or business trying to put ourselves above them.