Annals of Filicide
An Alabama man is accused of killing his four young children. What causes parents to murder their young?
In the annals of crime, this one appeared particularly horrific: Lam Luong, a 37-year-old shrimp fisherman, accused of throwing his four young children, two boys and two girls, all under the age of 3, off a bridge near Mobile, Ala. to their deaths. No bodies have been found, and though prosecutors say Luong has confessed to killing his children, Luong's attorney says the confession was coerce and that his client gave the kids to a woman who disappeared with them. While the case is being resolved, it serves as a reminder of many high-profile instances in which parents have been accused of killing their kids.
Dr. Paul Appelbaum is a professor of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and the author of "The Clinical Handbook of Psychiatry and the Law." He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Raina Kelley about why parents kill their kids and the motivational differences when mothers and fathers commit these types of crimes. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: What would lead a father to kill to his kids?
Paul Appelbaum: There's relatively limited research on men who kill their children. What we do know about the behavior is that broadly, these men tend to fall into one of two categories: One, fathers with a serious mental illness such as depression or psychosis who are led by their illnesses. A severely depressed father may believe that he's a poor provider, condemning his children to a life of poverty and unhappiness, so he feels like the killing is an altruistic act to save them from a miserable life. And it is very likely that the father will commit suicide after he kills his kids. One thing you can say about the Luong case is that he should be watched very carefully for suicidal impulses. Psychosis, such as schizophrenia, psychotic depression or a bipolar psychotic disorder, can lead to the delusion that he has been ordered by God to kill his children. So in a psychotic way, the father is still doing this for the sake of their children.
The second group is associated with the physical abuse of children. Those tend to be situations where the father loses it. There's typically a pattern of previous abuse, and this one time it goes too far, perhaps farther than the father intended.
In cases where parents kill kids, what are the possibilities for a defense based on the presence of a mental illness?
In contrast to popular belief, well under 1 percent of cases involve even the consideration of insanity, and when such a plea is used, it's unsuccessful three out of four times. And the more horrific a crime, the less likely it is that it will work.
For the most part, a jury is making a determination whether or not it's fair to punish a person for a particular crime. The more horrific a crime, the less likely it is that a jury will find any excuse that mitigates it. Andrea Yates is a very big exception to that rule. After her first trial, there was an enormous amount of publicity and a lot of public education regarding postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis and that was what enabled the jury to find her not guilty by reason of insanity in the death of her children.
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Posted By: justis @ 07/02/2008 9:55:34 AM
Comment: According to a recent study by the Violence Policy Center based on information from Jan-June of 2007 estimated 9 murder-suicides per week in the US.
http://www.vpc.org/studies/amroul2008.pdf
Medical studies estimate that between 1,000 and 1,500 deaths per year in the United States are the result of murder-suicide.3 This VPC analysis reveals that in the first half of 2007: There were 554 murder-suicide deaths, of which 234 were suicides and 320 were homicides. Using these figures, nine murder-suicide events occurred in the United States each week during the study period. Of the 234 suicides, 218 were male, 11 were female, and five were of unidentified gender. Of the 320 homicides, 227 victims were female and 74 victims were male, and 19 were of an unidentified sex. Forty-five of the homicide victims were children and teens less than 18 years of age. Forty-four children and teens less than 18 years of age were survivors who witnessed some aspect of the murder-suicide. By doubling the total number of fatalities during the six-month period for a yearly estimate, there were an estimated 1,108 murder-suicide deaths in 2007. This is within the standard range of estimates for murder-suicides.
Nine states had 10 or more murder-suicides in the six-month period of the study. In order, these states were: Florida (24), Texas (24), California (17), Pennsylvania (14), Arizona (12), Georgia (12), New York (11), North Carolina (10), and Ohio (10).
Most murderers in murder-suicides are male In this study, 95 percent of the offenders were male. Other studies analyzing murder-suicide have found that most perpetrators of murder-suicide are male???more than 90 percent in recent studies of the United States.5 Another study which only looked at murder-suicides involving couples noted that more than 90 percent were perpetrated by men.6 This is consistent with homicides in general, in which 89 percent of homicides are committed by male offenders.7 However, most homicides involve male victims killed by male offenders (65 percent), whereas a male victim being specifically targeted by a male offender in a murder-suicide is relatively rare. Most murder-suicides involve an intimate partner The most prevalent type of murder-suicide was between two intimate partners, with the man killing his wife or girlfriend. Such events are commonly the result of a breakdown in the relationship. The average age difference between the offender and primary victim was 6.0 years. Overall, the age difference ranged from none to 23 years. (Other studies on fatal violence for spouses have found that there is a greater risk of homicide victimization as the age difference between the husband and wife increases.9) In this study, 73 percent of all murder-suicides involved an intimate partner. Of these, 94 percent were females killed by their intimate partners.
Posted By: justis @ 07/02/2008 9:27:34 AM
Comment: This article barely touched on a huge problem. There is an epidemic of domestic violence related murders and murder-suicides. A large part of this is due to the facts that women (and some men) are being denied protection, both for themselves and especially for their children. Lawyers and psychologists are profiteering off of quacked out, pseudo-scientific theories like "parental alienation" that force, even order these protective parents to interact with these violent control freaks. Father's rights activists bizarrely claim that the cure for all these deaths is MORE access. WRONG! In fact, DEAD WRONG!!! The cure is zero contact as these murders could not happen if the victims weren't in the physical custody of the perpetrator.
Instead of providing protection to the victims of domestic abuse, efforts are being directed at the protecting the perpetrator???s rights to access their children (because there is lots of money to be made from this). Children are NOT personal property, they are human beings and need to be treated as such, with a right to be protected. These are some of the biggest human rights violations in the world, and they are going on in the US. We all need to protest this and do something about it. There needs to be outrage over the victim's deaths, instead of sympathy for the killer!!!
Posted By: xroads1997 @ 01/20/2008 8:23:08 PM
Comment: I am a father, my daughter is 3 1/2. i was there when she was born, She has been with me everyday since.
her safety and well being is hard-wired into my brain, when i see or hear about this stuff in the news, it makes me both extremly sad and angry... and more to wanted to just hold my daughter close to me.
I know about depression, and thats no excuse for what he did