BBC headline ‘children killed by parents’

[Hearwegoagain]

Talking about the family courts. I would assume, but am prepared to be corrected, that the children in question (four cases I think) were killed by fathers exclusively.

Does anyone have the source document for the article?

Children killed by parents after court-ordered access www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48230618

@DpWm
You don’t have too. I’m simply saying in this country, in 2019, that’s just simply not true. In places around the world, yes of course there is that culture.

@Zofloramummy Did they ever find out why she did it?

You know what is sad, though - I heard a quote from a social worker about fathers being granted access after they have been violent towards a child's mother or subsequent partner. She said if you blocked every father who had ever been violent from seeing his children there would be a whole lot of fatherless children in the country.

It's my opinion that wouldn't be such a terrible thing - but of course most people don't see it that way. However it is simply not feasible to insist upon supervised contact only for violent fathers. There are simply not enough contact centres or supervising staff in the country.

I despair of male violence. BTW it is often the case even with mothers who kill their children (most common when PNP is not a factor) that they do not want the children to go into the care of their abusive ex partner, and see no other way out. I'm not saying that killing the children is an appropriate response, it's abhorrent, but see how trapped the current system makes women feel? It's abominable.

Usernumbers Your document is about (adult) children killing parents, not parents killing children.

The difference is that women kill their babies when they are infants because they have PND or similar post natal mental health issues

That is hugely minimising statement. Mothers can and do kill children by horrific abuse and neglect. Stop making excuses for them.

This article however is about children being killed during court appointed access. I would imagine the number of women in that category is small.

However it is simply not feasible to insist upon supervised contact only for violent fathers.

The point here though is insisting on supervised contact for fathers who have been violent to their family. That is feasible.

Not all men who are lairy with other men would or have hurt their children (or their partners).

Women can kill children from abuse but it’s very uncommon.

Generally mothers who kill their children are sliding into mental illness or have a child/ren with intensive needs that they cant cope with.

Another pattern is women or girls who didn’t know they were pregnant and the circumstance is shameful/traumatic in some way - and they kill their newborns, sometimes just by not getting help with the birth or leaving the baby somewhere.

No, that's (apparently) the situation. DV is so common that insising all fathers who have been violent towards a partner have supervised contact only is untenable. There are not enough contact centres.

Nothing about "lairiness" or other men (unless a same sex relationship). Taking only relationship violence into account the numbers would be too vast.

So when you said ‘She said if you blocked every father who had ever been violent’ you meant to their family not in general. Fair enough.

Da is very common it’s true. But surely the answer is more contact centres not more dead children.

Personally I think separating children from violent fathers is fundamental to breaking the cycle of abuse. Otherwise children go on to repeat the pattern - boys to become abusive and girls to be abused.

I think some of the posts about the ratio of mothers to fathers killing children refer to the larger number of children who are killed by parents overall rather than children where the Family Courts have been involved in custody battles. As posters say, the four examples given involve fathers. I can also think of the sad case of Ellie Butler who was killed by her step father after she was returned to his custody and that of her mother from her grandparents.

On a related topic, researchers in Birmingham looked at family annihilation which most often takes place after a break up. They concluded it was almost always a male crime:

www.bcu.ac.uk/news-events/news/characteristics-of-family-killers-revealed-by-first-classification-study

The problem when reporting this, and domestic abuse more generally, there will always be complaints from men who refuse to accept that it is perfectly reasonable to refer to a majority or predominantly unless it is 100%.

Just doing a quick estimation. (It's a bodge).

~6.1 million fathers with dependent children in UK
~68 thousand convictions for DV per year
~1.7 children in a family (different from overall fertility rate which includes adults without children)
~3 years, 8 months average age gap between children.

So accounting for 21 years that the average father is likely to have children under 18 in the house, that's 68k x 21 = 1.4 million.

And yes of course that will account for some DV perpetrators who are not fathers but since we're also going by DV which happened previous to the birth of the children, I don't think it's too much of a stretch.

1.4 million out of 6.1 million - Startlingly close to the 1 in 4 will be victims statistic, no? And think about the fact that somewhere around half of parents will split up, meaning contact must be arranged - and if there is a DV conviction usually social services will take the line split up or children are in danger. And many splits never make it to court for child contact, unless there is some kind of conflict - I don't think it would be a stretch to assume that somewhere in the region of 60-90% of family courts cases involve a history of DV.

And that is just successful convictions. We all know the actual rate is much higher.

But when you see it like that - isn't it obvious that courts must be blase about DV, if they see it so much? The stats that "prove" "family courts favour mums" - well yeah they bloody should in that instance. (Not really, obviously, but if a massive proportion are involving DV, then the stats absolutely should show a bias towards mothers, even if the process itself is unbiased.)

So accounting for 21 years that the average father is likely to have children under 18 in the house, that's 68k x 21 = 1.4 million.

?? 68k convictions x 21 years??

What do you think that shows?

This is interesting. Significantly more men than women. About a quarter of women perpetrators were teenagers. Link with mental illness. Men having a history of violence and using violent methods. www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/findings-from-most-in-depth-study-into-uk-parents-who-kill-their-children/

I think some of the posts about the ratio of mothers to fathers killing children refer to the larger number of children who are killed by parents overall rather than children where the Family Courts have been involved in custody battles

Yes. Much of this thread shows how misleading the BBC report is.

The specific problem MPs are writing to the minister about is this: family courts are giving unsupervised contact to children in families where there is a history of domestic abuse of the partner not of the children. Because family courts prioritise children maintaining contact with both parents despite what has gone on between the parents.

But abusive partners who can no longer directly abuse their partners often go on to abuse - or even kill - their children as proxies of the ex partner and in order to still exert control over the ex partner.

This dynamic is overwhelmingly men having abused their female partners/fathers going on to abuse their children as a way to further abuse their exes. Feminists have been campaigning about it for years.

Mother's also have their children taken into care by social services if they do not leave a violent father Then in the majority of case the family court forces child contact with that same father It makes no sense

There are 68k convictions per year. Therefore over any 21 year period (that a man lives with children under 18) there will be 1.4 million convictions.

I don't mind being told my estimate is wrong, it's just what I came up with.

Sure I'd be happy with more contact centres, or just contact being denied. Either would be fine by me. There are only about 400 child contact centres in the UK at the moment, which also have to deal with parents whose children are in care having contact, not just separated parents with a history of family violence. You can't just spring thousands up overnight, so I can see why there is a reluctance to include this into that particular solution.

It takes 3/4 of the way down the article before it mentions that it's fathers doing the killing, when men committing family annihilation is a huge issue.

Covering up for other males is generally a man-thing. I'd expect that journalist and editors were men because they're clearly trying to make a huge effort to obfuscate what is going on.

Men are the domestic terrorists amongst us, not women.

Mother's also have their children taken into care by social services if they do not leave a violent father Then in the majority of case the family court forces child contact with that same father It makes no sense

Yep. Fear of removal of children in this way also prevents women contacting SS or police in the first place and drives DV further underground.

The 'access' thing is a giveaway. Most children remain with their mothers after separation until courts order otherwise.

I tried to tackle this issue in my LLM and got a very low mark. I think there's a lot of things we're just not allowed to say, despite the evidence.

Covering up for other males is generally a man-thing. I'd expect that journalist and editors were men because they're clearly trying to make a huge effort to obfuscate what is going on.

By Emma Ailes and Jessica Furst
BBC Victoria Derbyshire programme

Wrong in this case.

It was just a bit of an odd equation.

I don’t dispute that the problem of domestic abuse is so widespread that 400 contact centres would not cover it. But it seems to me that separating violent men from their offspring is fairly crucial.

In the us the statistics are 40% mother's and father's are about 57%, of course this is only in the us but it's not just father's.

Any source data for that?

Mother's also have their children taken into care by social services if they do not leave a violent father Then in the majority of case the family court forces child contact with that same father It makes no sense

^^ This.

Quite a lot of comparative legal research has been conducted on this and across the board they've found it's the socially constructed notions of 'mothers' and 'fathers' that are influencing decision
makers in these cases.

Mothers are seen as inherently obstructive, difficult 'over-protective' and petty. Fathers are seen as 'strong' 'fighting for their kids' 'making amends for past mistakes' even if those past mistake include documented violence towards partners and children. They don't tend to have to show much other than a willingness to say the right things - or have the 'right things' projected on to them by Cafcass etc.

With mothers it's the opposite way round - they start off 'in the wrong' for blocking access, even for legitimate safety reasons and it's very hard to fight back against those structural misperceptions.

Of course where child protection cases are concerned a mother who isn't seen as over-protective towards her children could also risk losing them. Talk about a rock and a hard place!

They also found that where children themselves expressed negative feelings about seeing a violent father, Cafcass or the equivalent tended to look to the mother to work with them to change the child's view, as it was seen as erroneous rather than being understood as a reflection of the child's feelings.

As one research team concluded - the family court system is the last bastion of the father as 'head of the household' - unquestionable in his benign concern for his children (no matter his violent tendencies). Basically the family courts were found to be reconstructing the 1950s nuclear family post-separation.

To an extent in England and Wales the legal system has now changed slightly in terms of court protocol regarding interim contact where domestic violence is alleged etc. Slow progress though Women's Aid are pushing hard for positive change.

Very interesting RuffleCrow