Rethinking Filicide

The Relevance of Long‐Term Antecedents in Assessing the Risk of Familicide‐Suicide Following Separation

“…Familicide‐suicide incorporates the triple taboos of murder, suicide and child killing, and has always presented a puzzle to researchers attempting to understand the offence, and to practitioners attempting to assess risk with a view to prevention. Previously, understanding of this offence has been limited by researchers adopting, primarily, either a focus on perpetrators and their motivation, or on victims and their circumstances (Sidebotham, ). Through this research, a picture is now beginning to emerge which has the potential to provide a better understanding, and through this, to enhance screening and optimise prevention strategies.…”

Driving Improvements in Child Protection and Safeguarding Practice

“…The papers build on a previous editorial and themed issue (Brown and Tyson, ; Sidebotham, ) and continue Child Abuse Review's efforts to advance wider understanding of the nature and circumstances of child maltreatment fatalities. In particular, we have previously highlighted the need for ‘a wider [conceptual] framework of perpetrator characteristics, and an ecological understanding of the child's world’, including ‘factors in the wider family and environment; and the provision of public and other services to the child and family’ (Sidebotham, , p. 306) The first paper by Sabine Amon from the University of Vienna, Austria, and colleagues (2020) makes an important contribution. Their study analyses the psychological, clinical and criminal characteristics of neonaticide focusing on court cases and their verdicts in Austria and Finland.…”

Filicide: Recasting Research and Intervention

“…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 () 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, ).…”

“…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, , p. 305). Moreover, it is one where the presentation and profile vary from one culture and country to another.…”