Another family annihilator

[Sunnywithachanceofshowers]

Two children murdered by their father

I can't begin to understand why someone would kill their children.

'there's little fundamental difference between killing a child a month before or after it's birth.'

Men's aberrant behaviour is accepted, deliberately hidden and supported all the time, MsHighwater Jimmy Saville .

The fact is that many more men do this than women. Just because women do it too does not mean that this isn't a gendered crime.

Read the article - didn't see 'tragedy' being used to describe it - see 'killed' used a couple of times.

Abigail, you still have to explain the women who do it and brushing it aside as mental illness (= excusable) while denying that the same could have any role when the perpetrator is a man doesn't work for me.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-126639

Could the man who has done this have not suffered from the same?

I accept that it is mainly men but there are women who do it aswell.

Sorry about that,i'll try the other one.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-12663965

It is a recognised phenomenon and yes, it is predominately men who kill their children (and sometimes their partners/ex partners) then themselves, or at least attempt to.

Thing is, every time a case like this comes up, on the interwebs, in the newspaper opinion pages, over the water cooler and at the school gates, discussions emerge which seem to take a tone as if nothing like this has ever happened before (even if it did just last month, when they were last talking about a similar case.)

If you do a search for the work of Professor Jack Levin, you'll follow a trail of extensive evidence on the subject of "Family Annihilators," building up a pretty accurate picture of the factors that precede many of these murders.

This article from the Quarterly journal of the Domestic Violence Resource Centre in Australia explains some of the common features of these cases. I'd encourage folks to have a full read of the article. Here are some brief key points from it.

Common perceptions are that he must be mentally ill and/or have an extensive history of physical violence against the children. The community would like to believe that these men are unique, that the problem lies within a few pathological individuals. It is certainly easier to believe that than to admit we may be living in a society which still allows men to see women and children as their (disposable) property . . .

^In the absence of any diagnosis with which to explain the horrific actions, these deaths are almost always portrayed ? particularly
by those defending the killer ? as spontaneous, tragic moments of distress.

The father is alleged to have been suddenly pushed over the brink with despair, and to have acted impulsively. However research shows that this is not the case at all.^

^Akin to a provocation defence, these fathers usually argue that they were driven to their crimes by their partner?s behaviour. . . News headlines sensationalise the killers? excuses, such as: ??sordid affair and the husband driven to murder?; ?Sex obsession of mother blamed for murder of innocent
child? . . . Explanations offered by relatives and friends of the men often suggest the woman caused her children?s deaths . . . ^

I find the reporting of these cases in the media to be fascinating and disturbing. They seem to follow a formula, a script designed to justify the act in some way and portray the mother (even if she is also killed) as culpable for the father's action.

The article I've linked to also cites research showing that when mothers kill, the media and collective social response is very different. They are mostly seen as evil, or at best as mentally very sick and deranged. However, when fathers kill, the media bend over backwards and sideways to portray them as just ordinary guys, even loving, caring, devoted husbands and fathers.

Aaaarrrggghhh - italics failure above. Sorry!

And yet it is called Deadly Dads.
Are there studies titled Murderous Mums?

I am obviously no expert but i would consider the use of language in that link.
Some Dads may be deadly but i know two women,one in particular who speaks to her son so cruelly and emotionally abuses him,i have heard her and reported her to ss but nothing ever seems to change,almost as though they either can't be bothered or they don't believe us.

Thanks Kritiq for that post. I agree with you about the reporting too. Gavin de Becker is good on that in "the Gift of Fear".

Drj'scat, please don't go from a thread just because Uppercut is on it.

Great post, KRITIQ (as per usual )

Echo - look beyond the title to the contents and follow up the references if you can.

No one is saying all mothers are ideal, or that they can't be cruel or emotionally abusive to their children. But, that's not actually the topic being discussed on this thread, prompted by the murder (of children) and subsequent suicide (of the father) in Hampshire at the weekend.

KRITIQ, I think it is, actually. I, at least, was trying to question the assertion that it is necessarily a different thing when women do this type of thing from when men do it. I don't know whether your link does this but I'd be interested to read a study that explores this type of act, regardless of the sex of the perpetrator, in an effort to understand the role of gender (among other factors).

I read it. It doesn't.

There's plenty of stuff out there. I was trying to find an article I linked to a few months ago, when there was a similar discussion about a similar case. It was a fairly dry and dull research report on the incidence of "murder suicide," which found that where one of the murder victims was an adult, it was almost always the current or former female partner of the perpetrator, not the other way round, and often also the man's children.

I thought the observation in the article linked above was also interesting - how the media tend to portray women who kill their children as either as evil, deviants or as extremely mentally deranged. However, they seem intent on depicting fathers who kill as "just ordinary Joes."

If I find the other article, I will post a link. I seem to recall it also pointed out that women who kill their children tended to have documented histories of mental ill health. Health care practitioners, social services or other "authorities" were often aware of this and often there is criticism of their failure to act swiftly to protect the children from what were identifiable risks resulting from the mental decline of the mother.

With men, it is more rare for them to be a documented history of mental ill health. Sometimes friends or family will speak of them being under stress or feeling depressed, but rarely serious enough for anyone to think there would be any risk to the children. Most often, the act is described as something "uncharacteristic" and "out of the blue," when that's not the case with women who kill their children.

I think it's important to try and understand the different factors in these cases, to try and pinpoint what and when something could be done at an early stage to identify those at risk and act to prevent it. That applies to men OR women who kill their children or others. But, evidence points to the two phenomenons being very different - which suggests different actions are required. Assuming they are "just the same," won't prevent further deaths, nor will tutting, handwringing and "I can't understand why anyone would do this."

I don't know if people think I'm weird thinking this, but if a parent is completely intent on killing their children, why can they not find a less violent method? What haunts me with these events is that one child would have taken the first knife wound and the other child probably witnessed this and knew they were next. To put them through such terror in their final moments .

Fair point, KRITIQ, though I'm trying not to assume that they are "just the same" but nor am I assuming that they must be different. Even the bit about the different mental health picture deserves scrutiny. Is it not possible that men with "issues" are more likely to be criminalised while females are more likely to be medicalised?

Yes justbogoff it is horrible to imagine isn't it. I really can't think of an appropriately vile word to describe this man.

Did anyone hear the piece about this on Radio 4 this morning, round about 8am? Interview with academic - something along the lines of "you can't identify men who will do this, so the best thing to do is to encourage parents to give each other as much access to the children as possible".

I agree with the difficulty of forestalling such acts, but I'm perturbed by the second part. Give a violent man what he wants ie. as much unsupervised access as he likes to his children, as the only way to avoid these things?

It seems like a variant of the old feminist discussion as a way of rape being a way to keep all women in fear - family annihalation as a way of keeping all mothers in fear.

And yes, there's female violence as well, blah blah. I'm interested in the specific phenomenon of men killing children as revenge for having their access restricted.

nickname - that is deeply frightening.

Maybe, instead of focussing on adult men and women who're already parents, we should be looking at children growing up and working out how best to bring them up so they will never feel they can do this? Or so they never end up feeling it's the only way out? I'm probably being simplistic, but there is an issue of failure to respect human life in any suicide/murder situation - either you're so ground down you're no longer looking at your own life as something worth saving, or you're looking at someone else's life that way.

I don't agree with SGM about women-only raising of children (even as a concept to float about), but I can see why we might want to focus on how children are raised. Which brings us back to the quotation nickname gives, which seems to be suggesting that if a person has a violent, scary partner, they should indulge that partner with contact with their children, just in case that partner decides to kill the children?!

No. That partner should be shut out of their lives.

Not scientific, obviously, but to answer those who are arguing that it's not a gender-based crime.

Whenever a man kills his children and himself, attention ALWAYS focuses on his relationship with his wife - as it does again in this case - and in every single case that's been in the news in the last few years.

Whenever a woman kills her children (and the only one I can recall recently is the woman in Wandsworth about six months ago) - then the first question is always about her mental health. I recall a lot of speculation about PND with the Wandsworth woman.

Interestingly, you don't see - in either case - people rushing to condemn. They want to explain how it could have happened, probably to reassure themselves that it couldn't happen in their family. But, with men, they always assume it's the wife's behaviour that drove him to 'crack' but with women, they're assumed to have gone mad all by themselves.

It's just an observation - and I'd be happy to be disproved - but this latest case has so far gone according to the script......

Nickname, it sounds like the "academic" you heard hasn't done much study of the subject as there is ample evidence out there about what predisposes some men to kill in this way (see Jack Levin above.) Unfortunately, it sounds like he's completely bought into the popular idea that mothers "provoke" men to kill - thus the answer is to pretty well do whatever it is that the men want. Did he not see the irony that children are often killed during agreed access visits?

I think there is much more as a society that we and our authorities can do to prevent parents (whether fathers or mothers) killing their children, by recognising that the contexts are different, but that there ARE often quite glaring signs that something could happen. But, something is stopping the authorities putting the knowledge we DO have into action.

Not sure how recent you want, Treats, but there was Theresa Riggi. (She tried to kill herself after killing her children but failed.)