Why do parents kill their children? The facts about filicide in Australia

A six-month-old baby was killed earlier this week in what is suspected to be a murder-suicide. Police are investigating whether the child was killed by his father after their bodies were found in a car on the Sunshine Coast.

According to a report on the filicide published by the Australian Institute of Criminology this week, at least one Australian child is killed by a parent every two weeks. Filicide is a general term referring to the killing of a child by a parent or parent equivalent – which includes in Australia the custodial parent, non-custodial parents and step-parents.

The report shows that between 2000-01 and 2011-12, 238 filicide cases were recorded in Australia and that 260 offenders were involved. Men accounted for 52% (124) of offenders and women 48% (114).

As shown in the graph below, the crime rate for filicide among men has declined in Australia in recent years, while the rate for women has increased.

Filicides account for about 10% of all homicides (murders) in Australia. In comparison, a 2014 US study of approximately 94,000 filicide cases found that these murders accounted for 15% of murders during that period.

Between 2002-03 and 2011-12, children accounted for 21% of victims of domestic homicide, the second most common group after intimate partners. The AIC study showed that 96% of filicide victims were aged 0 to 17 years.

The role of the genus in filicides

Filicide is a subclbadification of homicides in the home. The others are the intimate partner, the parricide (murder of a parent) and the caring brother (murder of a brother or sister). Filicide differs from other sub-clbadifications by the nature of the offender's bad.

When other sub-clbadifications are generally committed at higher levels by men, offender bad is also split into filicide. A 2015 AIC report on spousal homicides revealed that between 2002-03 and 2011-12, 77% of homicides committed by intimate partners, 80% of parricides and 89% of siblings had been committed by men.

This non-badist trend follows the pattern of other child abuse behaviors. A 2018 child abuse study found that women accounted for just over half of those responsible for child abuse.

However, in this context, women were more likely to be responsible for negligence, while offenders were responsible for physical, emotional and badual abuse. With regard to filicide, the recent report found that the killing method varied between the bades, with men being more likely to use more violent methods.

Why are they doing this?

We often see the filicide as the fact of a perverse person. I spent many years examining the concept of evil and I concluded that generally a perverse act could be committed by a rather ordinary person.

In general, I found that one or more of the three emotional elements were needed in the law to allow us to speak badly. These are: the perceived nonsense of the act, the perceived innocence of the victim and the uniqueness of the act. The filicide contains all three.

It is useful to try to understand why people can commit a filicide. To seek understanding is not the same as to tolerate, and the reasons do not seem rational. In a 2016 article, psychiatry professor Phillip Resnick identified five main motivations for filicide, described in the table below.

We could possibly rank one of the worst cases of filicide in Australia in the first category. In 2014, Raina Mersane Ina Thaiday stabbed seven of her biological children and a niece to death. She was finally declared unfit to stand trial due to a psychotic episode triggered by an undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time of the murders.

What are the triggers for filicide

All the studies mentioned in this article have found significant rates of mental health problems among filicide writers. A 2013 study in the United Kingdom, which examined filicides in England and Wales between 1997 and 2006, found that 40% of filicide offenders had a registered mental illness. The young age of the offender was also a factor.

Other risk factors include the break-up of acrimonious relationships and parental conflict after separation. Alcohol, drug use, criminal history, history of domestic violence and suicidal tendencies increase the risk of delinquency.

Preventing filicide is difficult because the cause of the offense and the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim vary. In terms of basic responses, improved case management, inter-agency cooperation and communication were suggested as starting points for identifying and preventing potential filicide.

At the end of the day, children are the most vulnerable victims, and as a society we have a duty to make sure we do everything in our power to protect them.

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