Crime of parents killing their kids is not so uncommon
Article by: LARRY OAKES , Star Tribune Updated: July 14, 2012 - 9:55 PM
It's called filicide, and it happens with regularity across the country.
http://www.startribune.com/local/162485846.html
Resnick, who has for 40 years evaluated parents accused of killing their kids, conducted a seminal study on filicide in which he identified five types of the crime.
One type -- revenge against a spouse -- may best fit the scenario authorities laid out in the charges against Schaffhausen, 34, who was divorced from the girls' mother in January.
Resnick said one out of every 33 homicides in the United States is the killing of a child under 18 by their parent, or between 250 and 300 of the country's killings each year. In a 2005 study, he found filicide to be the third-leading cause of death of American children ages 5 to 14.
After spouses killing spouses, parents killing children is the most common variety of family homicide, according to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics study of homicides from 1976 to 2005.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2002/03/when_parents_kill.html
Adair Garcia killed five of his six children by asphyxiating them with a barbeque he'd lit in the living room.
He did it to punish his estranged wife, who had moved out a week earlier.
Contrast this with the reasons men kill their children: Most frequentlylike Garcia or Soltys
they kill because they feel they have lost control over their finances, or their families, or the relationship, or out of revenge for a perceived slight or infidelity.
The consistent idea is that women usually kill their children either because they are angry at themselves or because they want to destroy that which they created,
whereas more often than not, men kill their children to get back at a womanto take away what she most cherishes.
Why ever more fathers are killing their children: Top criminologist reveals her research into this sickening trend
By ELIZABETH YARDLEY
Though mothers are also capable of murdering their children,
the vast majority of murders - 59 of the 71 - are committed by men. I call them Family Annihilators because they cold-bloodedly plot their family's destruction.
And the reason why these apparently normal, loving men turn into ruthless killers? Family breakdown, which, of course, is also on the increase.
In seven out of ten cases, the children have been at the centre of a bitter family break-up.
However, what's extremely worrying is that there is a small minority of men who find it impossible to cope when their families break up.
But they all seem to have one thing in common. They feel that their masculinity is being threatened.
In getting divorced, they believe they are losing the one thing that makes them feel like successful men: their families.
In murdering their children, they are, in some twisted way, wresting back control not just of their children, but often of their wives, too.
Killing their children is the most shocking and dramatic way they can think of to shout to the world: 'Look how powerful I am.'
In murder, many are also seeking the ultimate revenge. They know that in killing their children they are killing the things that are most precious to their former wives.
In the second scenario as in the Stevensons' case the marriage is already over, the family has broken up and the children are living with the mother.
Far from satisfied with the outcome and filled with impotent rage, the father wants revenge.
I don't know about Stevenson's wife,
but often the trigger is that the spouse is with a new partner or is pregnant. He may have been dreaming of a reconciliation: now he has to face the reality of losing his wife for ever. *
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