FILICIDE

Introduction

Filicide is the intended act of parents killing their children. The act is also regarded as an offence since it amounts to murder. It appears to very unnatural for a parent to end the life of his child. As much as this appears to be inhumane and unimaginable, there are some parents who kill their offspring. Many researchers and scholars have associated these tragedies as being caused by domestic violence among workers and as the extreme result of such domestic violence. According to Jill Proudfoot of the Auckland Safer Homes, the threats are a common happening in relationships and it is the use of such threats that keeps a woman in a given relationship . This means that not all the parents who do this act have mental problems.

Filicide and Society

The question is how could a parent go further to killing his or her child? In fact many people have come to agree that filicide has become a common occurrence. In 2012 there was a similar reaction when Aaron Schaffhausen was apprehended and accused of the offence of cutting the throats of his daughters at River Falls, Wiz .

According to many people in the public, the answer is always the reason that such parents are either crazy or incapacitated. But that may not always be the case with all the killings. Dr. Phillip Resnick says that some are psychotic and they lack the command to reason and evaluate what is real and what is not.

The social development ministry of New Zealand found that (2002 and 2006) in the every three instances where the parent killed his or her child, one out of the three was a case whereby a parent had deliberately killed their child. The research also revealed that approximately four children died every year due to the injuries that they had suffere...

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...d from Greek myth. In the myth, Medea murders her child so as to inflict suffering to her husband, Jason who is alleged to be having an affair.

There are other causes that are independent of the above; a good example is probably the famous case of Susan Smith who was accused in 1994 of drowning all her two children in the lake . In her hearing, she pleaded insanity but she was sentenced to life imprisonment when the court found out that she had murdered her children because her boyfriend did not want children and she wanted to be with him.

Conclusion

According to the experts, sometimes the parents usually don’t know what they are doing. it is also clear that the focus to evade such tragedy is to focus on the prevention which can be done through family and friends being there for parents. This would then enable a parent deal maturely with the stress by getting help.