Filicide: Recasting Research and Intervention

Abstract

Child Abuse ReviewVolume 23, Issue 2 p. 75-78 EditorialFree Access Filicide: Recasting Research and Intervention First published: 16 April 2014 https://doi.org/10.1002/car.2328Citations: 10AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat This themed issue of Child Abuse Review includes a number of articles based on papers presented at the Addressing Filicide: Inaugural International Conference for Cross National Dialogue, held 30–31 May 2013, at the Monash University Prato Centre within the heart of medieval Prato in Italy. The first of its kind, the conference aimed to bring together researchers, policy experts and service providers (governmental and non-governmental) from different countries to create an opportunity for a cross-country and interdisciplinary dialogue on filicide. A total of 53 delegates attended the conference from Australia, Malaysia, South Africa, Canada, the USA, Chile, Columbia, El Salvador, England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, The Netherlands and Austria. The delegates represented the disciplines of social work, psychology, paediatrics, psychiatry, medical general practice, nursing, criminology and law. ‘An opportunity for a cross-country and interdisciplinary dialogue on filicide’ By focusing on filicide, the conference convenors hoped to offer a critical platform from which to build and expand the existing knowledge base on filicide. Through cross-country comparisons and interdisciplinary knowledge sharing, it was hoped that the conference would contribute to better-aligning research with policy and programme development for the prevention of the tragic deaths of vulnerable children. Following the conference, Peter Sidebotham (2013) took up the challenge in his Child Abuse Review editorial and spoke of the need to advance understanding of filicide beyond the past focus on the classification of perpetrators and their motives. He drew attention to a new conceptual framework for analysis and knowledge building that he and colleagues had designed, a framework that began with the child and their death and radiated out to the family, the perpetrator and the community's service provision (Sidebotham et al., 2011). He noted, as did Professor Frans Koenraadt in his final words at the conference, that filicide is not a uniform social problem. Rather it ‘encompasses and overlaps with a heterogeneity of circumstances, characteristics and motives that result in fatal harm to children’ (Sidebotham, 2013, p. 305). Moreover, it is one where the presentation and profile vary from one culture and country to another. ‘A framework that began with the child and their death and radiated out to the family, the perpetrator and the community's service provision’ We suggest that the model proposed by Sidebotham and colleagues be extended further to allow for international comparisons that could lead us back to local solutions. We think the model could be extended by reconceptualising the ‘service provision and need’ domain as ‘needs, social programmes and services’, and by adding three more domains, social policies, social conditions and the integration of conditions, policies and programmes, and services (Table 1). Table 1. Proposed extension of the filicide and fatal maltreatment model Domain Factors to consider Needs/social programmes/services Health and welfare services for children and families, especially for children and parents with mental health, partnership separation, domestic violence, substance abuse, and child protection and gambling problems Social policies Availability and access to health and welfare services such as contraception, abortion, general medical practitioners, care of babies, young children and their parents, income support, especially for parents of dependent children, and family formation and separation Social conditions (local and national) Economic wellbeing, eco-geographic disparities, income disparities, population levels, structure (age/culture and ethnicity) and location, employment and employment flexibility, civil disruption, and levels of violence to adults and children Integration of conditions, policies and programmes within and across the health and welfare sectors The conference's 34 papers covered a diversity of perspectives and a number of these perspectives are represented in this themed issue. One paper, from Thea Brown, Danielle Tyson and Paula Fernandez Arias (2014), picks up a dominant strand of the conference, namely, recent incidence studies. Such studies covered large numbers of deaths and examined the deaths retrospectively using reliable sources, such as coroners' offices. The studies investigated the extent of the problem in their region or country, the nature of the problem (the types of deaths, a profile of the victims, the families and the perpetrators), the family's engagement with community health and welfare services and the psychological and social characteristics of the families. This paper not only identifies the issues in the locality that it covers, but lays the foundations for establishing the wider or more universal issues for international concern. ‘A dominant strand of the conference, namely, recent incidence studies’ Another major perspective from the conference is covered by articles discussing the work of governmental inquiries into deaths and maltreatment and child death review committees, the latter being a more recent form of review at local, state and national levels. Both types of inquiries are directed at improved intervention in the sense of learning from past mistakes. Helen Buckley and Caroline O'Nolan (2014) examine the processes of implementing recommendations from such inquiries in Ireland, while Margarita Frederico and colleagues (2014) present a study commissioned by one such inquiry, the Victoria (Australia) Child Death Review, into the deaths of 16 children known to the Victorian child protection service. Sharon Vincent (2014) presents a six-country comparison of child death review committee processes and her work provides a context for that of Buckley and O'Nolan and Frederico and colleagues (2014), as well as being a support for some of their conclusions. Using the strength of her six-country comparison, Vincent argues for improved data collection (the standardisation and aggregation of data) and for further knowledge development based on a public health model. Appropriately, a book review by Sean Byrne (2014) of Vincent's book, Preventing Child Deaths: Learning from Review on her inter-country comparative research of child death review mechanisms, is included in this issue. Byrne comments on the exhaustive amount of data that the author has amassed on child death review processes and on the potential that the author sees in these processes for the reduction of child deaths. ‘Both types of inquiries are directed at improved intervention in the sense of learning from past mistakes’ Other papers in this issue look at filicides carried out in particular patterns, or by particular perpetrators, as in the article by Mark Sachmann and Carolyn Johnson (2014) on familicide and the paper by Peter Jaffe, one of the conference's keynote speakers, and colleagues (2014) on paternal filicide. These articles reinforce the point made by Stroud (2008), the opening keynote speaker, that the causes and context of filicide are complex and not amenable to simple explanations. Stroud's view suggests that while information for intervention must be drawn from investigations of all types of filicides, it must also be taken from investigations of smaller special groups, such as those described by Sachmann and Johnson (2014) and Jaffe and colleagues (2014), that can offer more detail. All papers in this issue, pursue the question as to whether filicide deaths can be anticipated and prevented. Jaffe and colleagues (2014) suggest that there are signs pointing to the likely death of a child and argue that the focus on the adults in the family obscures the danger to the children, a conclusion confirmed by Una Butler (personal communication to the organisers of Addressing Filicide: Inaugural International Conference for Cross National Dialogue, 30–31 May 2013, Prato, Italy) in the account of her family tragedy described below. ‘Other papers in this issue look at filicides carried out in particular patterns, or by particular perpetrators’ Many of the papers identify risk factors, such as mental illness, domestic violence, substance abuse and parental separation, often in combination. Wider societal risk factors are not often raised in the papers and to date there is no international matrix of risk factors located at the individual, family, community and national levels. ‘Many of the papers identify risk factors, such as mental illness, domestic violence, substance abuse and parental separation, often in combination’ Several papers, such as those by Buckley and O'Nolan (2014), Frederico and colleagues (2014) and Jaffe and colleagues (2014), propose service system-wide changes, and the articles that identified potential causal factors of mental illness, separation and divorce, domestic violence and substance abuse support their views. If these are the individual and family factors associated with filicide, addressing them with the families will involve many services and service sectors. Thus, the proposal of integrating the services not only within individual sectors but also across the health and welfare service sectors is supported by all the papers in the issue. Una Butler, the only person attending the conference who had experienced filicide, wrote to the conference organisers in the days following the conference about the loss of her husband and children as a result of his murder of the children and his suicide while severely depressed and receiving psychiatric treatment. She comments on the poor response of local services to her family's needs, ‘My husband had suffered with his mental health; he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder in 2000 following an accident at work. He seemed to overcome this illness until 2009 when he suffered with a bad bout of depression. I believe had I been involved in his treatment that the medical professionals [family doctor, psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse] would have had a greater insight into his behaviour……..When a person is suffering from a mental illness and is living with other people, most importantly children, [the illness] not only affects the person…but everyone who is living with them ……I was amazed at the conference in Prato, that there were so many [people] around the world researching filicide in their countries. I was delighted to see that and hear their presentations. There were a lot of very gruesome details about some cases of filicide, which I found hard to take emotionally. There were statistics from other [than Ireland] countries and [these cases were] a statistic …but …..my awful loss is more than a statistic to me.We will never know how many children's lives are going to be saved by research into filicide but without any doubt there will definitely be some children's lives saved.’ Personal communication, reproduced only by permission of Una Butler (2013) ‘We will never know how many children's lives are going to be saved by research into filicide but without any doubt there will definitely be some children's lives saved.’ All the articles in this special issue seek to fulfil Una Butler's aim: That children's lives will be saved by more research leading to prevention and improved responses from services. References Brown T, Tyson D, Arias PF. 2014. Filicide and parental separation and divorce. Child Abuse Review 23: 79– 88. DOI: 10.1002/car.2327 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Buckley H, O'Nolan C. 2014. Child death reviews: Developing CLEAR recommendations. Child Abuse Review 23: 89– 103. DOI: 10.1002/car.2323 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Butler U. 2013. Personal Communication to the Organisers of Addressing Filicide: Inaugural International Conference for Cross National Dialogue 30-31st May, Prato, Italy. Google Scholar Byrne S. 2014. Book review of Preventing Child Deaths: Learning from Review by Sharon Vincent, Dunedin Academic Press, Edinburgh, 2013. Child Abuse Review 23: 154. DOI: 10.1002/car.2319 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Frederico M, Jackson A, Dwyer J. 2014. Child protection and cross-sector practice: An analysis of child death reviews to inform practice when multiple parental risk factors are present. Child Abuse Review 23: 104– 115. DOI: 10.1002/car.2321 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Jaffe P, Campbell M, Olszowy L, Hamilton LHA. 2014. Paternal filicide in the context of domestic violence: Challenges in risk assessment and risk management for community and justice professionals. Child Abuse Review 23: 142– 153. DOI: 10.1002/car.2315 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Sachmann MD, Johnson CMH. 2014. The relevance of long-term antecedents in assessing risk of familicide-suicide following separation. Child Abuse Review 23: 130– 141. DOI: 10.1002/car.2317 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Sidebotham P. 2013. Editorial: Rethinking Filicide. Child Abuse Review 22: 305– 310. DOI: 10.1002/car.2303 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Sidebotham P, Bailey S, Belderson P, Brandon M. 2011. Fatal child maltreatment in England, 2005–2009. Child Abuse & Neglect 35: 299– 306. CrossrefPubMedWeb of Science®Google Scholar Stroud J. 2008. A psychosocial analysis of child homicide. Critical Social Policy 284(4): 482– 505. CrossrefWeb of Science®Google Scholar Vincent S. 2014. Child death review processes: A six-country comparison. Child Abuse Review 23: 116– 129. DOI: 10.1002/car.2276 Wiley Online LibraryWeb of Science®Google Scholar Citing Literature Volume23, Issue2Special Issue: Themed issue on FilicideMarch/April 2014Pages 75-78 ReferencesRelatedInformation