Heyya Whaleshark,
Here's an addendum to JD:
Unarresting the Arrested:FBI Profiler John Douglas on the case against Amanda Knox & Raffaele So
September 28, 2011
http://www.groundreport.com/Business/Unarresting-the-Arrested-FBI-Profiler-John-Douglas_1/2941619
"Criminal Behavioral Profiling has also proved to be a useful tool in exonerating the wrongly accused or convicted, of which Douglas also dedicates his time.
Probably the most well-known of these was the JonBenét Ramsey case. The case is notable for both its longevity and the media interest it generated. The media and local law enforcement agencies considered the girl's parents and brother to be suspects. Douglas was the first to publicly proclaim their innocence, long before DNA legally exonerated them. He was vilified not only in the press, but by his colleagues as well."
"This is like the Ramsey case. DNA eliminated the family as suspects. The family did not do it. Besides, I saw what'd been done to the child (JonBenet Ramsey), how she was sexually assaulted. Parents kill, they do. But not these parents. Not in the way, and method that child was killed. They're not the type to kill their daughter.
Again, 'they're not the type'... sighhhh.
Thanks to KK for finding this and posted on other forum:
[ame="http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10027"]http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10027[/ame]
DENVER AND THE WEST
Parents who kill their kids not always insane, expert says
By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
POSTED: 05/27/2011 01:00:00 AM MDT
UPDATED: 05/27/2011 08:18:15 AM MDT
People tend to believe that any parent who kills a child especially a mother must be crazy, but a leading expert on the crime says it isn't true.
"The view that parents who deliberately kill their children are 'mad or bad' is too simple," said Dr. Phillip Resnick, director of forensic psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Mental illness is a big factor, he said, but so is desperation.
[snip]
Researchers estimate 250 to 300 children are murdered by their parents each year in the U.S.
"Historically, one out of 33 homicides is a parent killing a child younger than 18," Resnick said.
Five types of filicide
Filicide, the deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own child, is the third-leading cause of death in American children ages 5 to 14, Resnick found in a 2005 study.
Those bleak statistics are echoed in FBI Uniform Crime Reports indicating the murder of sons and daughters accounted for 3.1 percent of the 90,869 homicides in the U.S. from 1995 through 2000.
In a 40-year career, Resnick said, he has identified five main types of filicide, which vary according to parent gender.
The first is "altruism." When severe stress, depression, mental illness or claim of mental illness is involved in a case, a mother likely will explain her motive was unselfish the child was killed to prevent suffering.
"The woman is still trying to be a good mother but no longer knows what to do," Resnick said.
While only one of 23 suicide attempts is successful in the U.S., Resnick said, one-fourth of women who kill their children also kill themselves.
A woman often sees the child as an extension of herself, Resnick said, and the line between a mother's suicide and the murder of her child can be blurred.
"But it's harder to kill yourself than your children," Resnick said.
A second circumstance of filicide is an acutely psychotic parent who has lost touch with reality.
[snip]
The third type of filicide involves fatal battering. Resnick said this accounts for 80 percent of homicides of children younger than 1.
A fourth type of filicide is that a parent doesn't want the child or feels incapable of caring for it. Some believe the child is endangering or preventing another, more valued relationship. Other parents are unprepared and overwhelmed by the needs of a baby.
"You were more likely to be killed by your parents on the day you were born than any other day," Resnick said.
"The child was unwanted" is the motive given in 85 percent of homicides of newborns, Resnick said.
[snip]
Revenge against spouse
A fifth type is revenge against a spouse for infidelity or other perceived failing. Custody disputes sometimes trigger killings.
Researchers find that men who kill often feel they have lost control of their finances, families and relationships. They often kill in retaliation for something their wives or lovers have done.
Homicide is the leading cause of death in children 4 and younger. Of children murdered before the age of 5, 61 percent were killed by parents, Resnick found.
Friends of the family killed 30 percent of the children, according to a 1999 U.S. Department of Justice study. Other family members killed about 8 percent of the victims.
Filicides are hands-on murders. A 1988 Justice Department study found that while 61 percent of murder defendants used a gun, only 20 percent of parents who killed children used one. Children are beaten, shaken, drowned, smothered, poisoned and stabbed.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that women are likely to dispose of their children's bodies in ways suggestive of returning them to the womb swaddled in blankets, wrapped in plastic, submerged in water.
Women, who committed only 13 percent of all violent crimes in the U.S. from 1995 to 2000, committed about half of all filicides, according to the FBI crime statistics.
[snip]
However, the Colorado Child Fatality Prevention System 2010 Annual Report included a comprehensive review of the 82 child homicides that occurred between 2004 and 2006.
They found that eight of the deaths were murder-suicide cases in which an adult killed one or more children and then committed suicide.
Most homicides, 59.8 percent, occurred among children under age 5. The perpetrator was the child's primary caregiver in 56.1 percent of the cases.
[snip] ___
Maybe J. Douglas needs to revise his criminal profile type for parents who kill their children....
