Sim, Janice --- "When Parents Kill Children: Understanding Filicide by Thea Brown, Danielle Tyson and Paula Fernandez Arias (eds.)" [2018] CICrimJust 13; (2018) 30(1) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 71

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Review

When Parents Kill Children: Understanding Filicide by Thea Brown, Danielle Tyson and Paula Fernandez Arias (eds.), Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 267 pages (ISBN 978-3-319-63096-0)

Janice Sim^[1]*

Introduction

When Parents Kill Children: Understanding Filicide presents international data on filicide from Australia, the United Kingdom (‘UK’), the Republic of Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Chile, South America and Japan. Three core themes emerge from the diverse contributions in the first two parts of the book: the undercurrents of male violence in societies; familial socioeconomic conditions; and the prevalence and devastating impact of mental illness.

The undercurrents of male violence in societies

The theme emerging from the data across the countries canvassed by the book is that male violence underlies most filicides. Fathers kill children within the context of intimate partner violence, domestic violence (Brown et al., p. 155; Manriquez & Arias, p. 40; Dawson, p. 19; David & Jaffe, p. 187), fatal child abuse (Dobash & Dobash, p. 82), marital separation or relationship breakdown (Dobash & Dobash, p. 91; Dawson, p. 21; Brown et al., p. 153; Johnson & Sachmann, p. 131), and mental illness (Brown et al., p. 154; Manriquez & Arias, p. 40). Yet there are exceptions to the overwhelming dominance of male violence in filicides. For example, Yasumi (p. 70) points out that in Japan in the period 1994–2013 mothers (39.2%) and fathers (38.6%) were equally responsible in fatal child abuse cases (491 out of a total of 1574 filicide cases), and that of 241 multiple filicide cases, mothers (64.7%) more than fathers (24.5%) were the perpetrators.

The undercurrents of male violence are prominent in countries with violent histories. Manriquez and Arias report that majority of filicides in Chile occur in the context of ‘patriarchal terrorism’ (p. 39). Matthews and Abrahams draw on South Africa as an example in which violence against children occurs against the backdrop of its history of apartheid. Generations of children grow up in the absence of at least one biological parent (usually the father), their childhood shaped by external influences (such as gang culture) and wider social and financial pressures (such as punitive parenting) (p. 49). The context of violence in South Africa is represented by its high rates of infanticide and neonaticide (p. 56).

Domestic violence and parental separations as precursors to filicide are also consistent across countries. Parental estrangements perpetuate feelings of male entitlement to power and violence (p. 21), particularly in situations where the male perpetrator (the father) feels threated that his domination of (p. 21), and belief in his power over, his wife and children (Sim 2009) are eroding. The theme of male violence reveals the vulnerability of children caught in the patriarchal roots of violence, of which they do not ask to be part.

Familial socioeconomic conditions

Familial socioeconomic conditions as part of the complex set of family circumstances in filicide cases are discussed not only in relation to South Africa, but also to Japan (p. 73) and Canada (p. 186). While Pritchard et al. (pp. 108, 113) recognise that socioeconomic circumstances can compound mental illnesses, which lead to filicide as well as fatal child abuse and neglect, the link between these two factors requires further research. For immigrant families in Canada, David and Jaffe point out that migration, acculturative stress coupled with domestic violence, cultural conflict and language barriers leave families more vulnerable because of their marginalised status and challenges to their access to services (pp. 184–7). The consequence, as pointed out by Yasumi (p. 74), in societies like Japan, where suicide rates are tied to socioeconomic adversity, is a significant and corresponding effect on filicides and filicide-suicides.

Findings of the potential for adverse socioeconomic conditions to impact on family violence underscore the need to support disadvantaged families to seek services including education, housing and professional and medical support (Sim 2012).

Mental illness

The prevalence of mental illness in many societies, including Chile, Australia, the UK and the United States, cannot be underestimated. As Brown et al. (2018) summarise, research in Australia and elsewhere (Pritchard et al., p. 107) has shown the link between poor mental health and perpetrators of filicide (usually mothers) (p. 154). Parental illness can have a devastating impact on children growing up, which makes early intervention and long-term support crucial (Pritchard et al., p. 116). The intricate and subtle correlation between mental health and socioeconomic conditions means that prevention and intervention measures must incorporate holistic and integrative approaches that engage and support families (Sim 2012, p. 472) in order to safeguard children from foreseeable risks of endangerment. The need for support is not unique to families where parents live with mental illness. A study in Arizona indicates that children with special care needs are at higher risk of filicide (p. 175) and, as such, require as much engagement and support (if not more) as families with mental illness.

Intervention and prevention

The third part of the book distinguishes this book from its predecessors in filicide literature by going beyond the traditional focus on characteristics and situational circumstances of the filicidal event (Brown et al. 2018, p. xiv). This section is unique in the way it examines issues related to the ‘before’ (prevention and intervention) and ‘after’ (trauma) of filicide. The book highlights the dire need to consider the importance of interactivity of external service services (such as health providers, police and social professionals) with the family (Sim 2015, p. 90) in terms of risk assessment, prevention and intervention measures.

In Chapter 11, Cavanagh succinctly acknowledges that there are opportunities to identify risks of child endangerment or the ‘signs of danger’ (p. 202). Although parents sometimes disguise the injuries inflicted on the children to circumvent risk identification (Sim 2015), parents often share their thoughts with professionals, family and friends (Johnson 2005). It is thus paramount for social and medical professionals to ‘look beyond’ the parental version of events (Sim 2015, p. 86). A greater level of engagement not only reduces social isolation (Sim 2012). It also allows medical and social professionals to build holistic approaches based on a layered understanding of the family situation, to make intervention decisions based on an objective assessment constructed on evidence, instead of solely relying on the parent’s account (Lock & Fraser 2013; Sim 2015).

Cavanagh pointed out in the Australian Luke Batty case that child protection services ‘closed the case based on the mother saying the father loved his son’ (p. 211). This representation is similar to that of the parents in the cases of Daniel Pelka and Peter Connelly in the UK, where the image of the loving or ‘caring’ parent presented to the police, medical and social workers concealed ongoing abuses (Sim 2015, p. 85). Such dysfunctional representations allow for serious risks to the child to be downplayed or reconstructed by the perpetrator and professionals in favour of accepting other explanations for the injuries (Sim 2015, p. 86). The fact that child protection services in the Luke Batty case did not speak to the father indicates that an objective assessment was not undertaken.

Chapters 12 and 13 examine the perspectives of family members affected by the filicide, which is often overlooked in filicide literature. These moving accounts drive home the message that the criminal justice system, paradoxically, adds to the pain of traumatic bereavement (p. 255). In the Irish context, Butler (p. 233), who speaks from her personal experience, presents a powerful and compelling argument for legislative change to Ireland’s current mental health approach to one that should incorporate the views, safety, wellbeing and impact of family members.

Conclusion

This book offers myriad perspectives: the number of countries canvassed and different methodological approaches used reveal some culture specific underlying causes and allow for comparisons between research findings. However, researchers should be careful not to homogenise the Australian data (Cavanagh, p. 210). Contrary to the Victorian study (Brown et al. 2014), data in New South Wales found that, prior to 2006, the majority of children who were killed as a result of abuse, neglect, murder or other suspicious circumstances were known to state agencies at the time of death (Sim 2009, p. 244, 2012).

Conceptualising and placing familial interactions within larger socioeconomic and cultural contexts offer a broad overview of the contexts in which filicide occurs. The book’s focus on affirming empirical foundations with quantitative methods could, in addition, examine social work perspectives to build a more nuanced understanding of interventions. Further research can build on what the book has done by looking at building interactions between the family and external services to suggest strategies for prevention. Having said this, the book’s exposition of international data makes this collection unique and indispensable to academics, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers in the areas of child protection, homicide (or filicide) studies, law, criminology, social welfare, mental health, critical and social theories.

References

Johnson, C 2005, Come with daddy: child murder-suicide after family breakdown, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley.

Lock, R & Fraser, N 2013, ‘Coventry safeguarding children board serious case review re Daniel Pelka: overview report’, Coventry LSCB.

Sim, J 2009, ‘Loving fathers? Implications of state intervention’, University of Tasmania Law Review vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 242–64.

Sim, J 2012, ‘Bridging the gap: thinking beyond the state in child protection’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 469–75.

Sim, J 2015, ‘Invisible children, dying to save others: a discussion of three fatal abuse cases and the prevention of future deaths’, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 79–94.

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^* Lecturer and Griffith University Law Futures Centre Associate Member, Griffith University School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Gold Coast Campus, Parklands Drive, Southport Qld 4[1]25, Australia. Email: [e-mail].