Filicide and Parental Separation and Divorce

Abstract

This paper discusses the findings of a ten‐year study of filicide in Victoria, Australia, using the data from selected case files held in the Victorian coroner's office for the period 2000–09. The study sought to examine whether separation is a factor in filicide cases, as well as the role of other factors, such as domestic violence and mental illness. Also, the study sought to identify whether filicide perpetrators had contact with support services, including family and friends, general practitioners, mental health services and child protection services, in order to ascertain how these services might more appropriately identify those families most at risk prior to the filicide. The study found that while separation was a factor identified in a significant number of cases, more cases analysed showed evidence of mental illness, mainly depression. These findings suggest the need for improved strategies in preventing filicide by identifying risk factors and improving service responses for victims prior to these tragic events. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Messages: Filicide is uncommon but does occur. Perpetrators fall into three main groups and a different scenario is associated with each group. Associated (risk) factors were found to be mental illness (especially depression), separation, domestic violence and substance abuse. Any client/patient with mental illness and partner separation should be probed for thoughts of harm. Engagement with services is a protective factor.

Are we in this Together? Post‐Separation Co‐Parenting of Fathers with and without a History of Domestic Violence

“…This form of child maltreatment can compromise child development directly, via the traumatic impacts of exposure to DV, as well as indirectly, by negatively impacting mothers' parenting and the co‐parenting relationship (Evans et al, ; Levendosky and Graham‐Bermann, ). For children of parents who separate, the negative impact of a domestically violent father can extend post‐separation: a long history of research has demonstrated that in the post‐separation period, mothers and children are at risk for continued and/or increasing violence at the hands of abusive ex‐partners/fathers (Brown et al, ; Hotton, ).…”

Learning To Listen: To Young People, Parents, Perpetrators

“…Holt's findings highlight how ongoing contact between fathers and children following separation can facilitate ongoing domestic violence and can be used by abusive fathers to continue to exert control over their ex‐partners, and the distress and sense of powerlessness felt by children caught in the middle of this. At its extreme, the ongoing control exerted by fathers post‐separation may rarely result in filicide, an issue explored previously in our themed issue on filicide (Brown et al ., ; Jaffe et al ., ; Sachmann and Harris Johnson, ). Nevertheless, the fathers themselves often reported a deep sense of loss.…”

Filicide: Recasting Research and Intervention

“…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 (), 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.…”