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Australia has a 'particular problem' with filicide, but experts say we're failing to find solutions - ABCNews - Hayley Gleeson -
The murder-suicide of Katie Perinovic and her three children shocked the country in January.
Cases of parents killing their children are often described as "senseless" and "incomprehensible", yet evidence suggests filicide may be more common in Australia than many of us would like to think, with one child killed by a mother, father or stepparent almost every fortnight.
Key points:
· 45 children were killed by parents in Victoria in 11 years to 2020, new data shows
· The lack of public awareness can make it difficult for parents at risk to know where to get help
· Experts say Australia must urgently establish a national database to better track filicides
But for all the attention some child homicides attract, relatively little is known about what leads parents to kill children or why Australia's filicide rate has remained stubbornly high — higher, for instance, than rates in similar countries like Canada.
Women and men also make up similar proportions of filicide offenders, according to the most recent national research, in stark contrast with trends in other kinds of domestic homicide, which are overwhelmingly committed by men.
Now, new data released by the Coroners Court of Victoria shows 45 children were killed by parents in that state in the 11 years to 2020: 15 by mothers, 11 by fathers and 11 by stepfathers. The figures show the 45 victims were killed in 37 separate incidents between 2010 and 2020, though the data — drawn from open and closed criminal and coronial investigations — is subject to reclassification as further information comes to light.
It comes just weeks after the shocking murder-suicide of three children by their mother in Melbourne, a tragedy some experts are hoping will spark a national conversation about how filicide can be better tracked and in some cases prevented.
"The best we can understand is about five to six children a year are killed by a parent or stepparent in Victoria alone, and the national data tells us about one child is killed ... about every two weeks. To me, those figures say that this is an issue we should be talking about much more," said Liana Buchanan, Victoria's principal commissioner for children and young people.
"The situations in which children are killed vary — there is no single pattern or type of perpetrator — and so the complexity, I think, sometimes serves to make it harder for media, communities, government and society at large to really understand and focus on this issue."
Crucially, that lack of focus "means we don't put the right effort into addressing filicide", Ms Buchanan said. "We haven't traditionally put effort into understanding it, into compiling the evidence, into interrogating the data and the information available."
Filicide is 'an issue we should be talking about much more', says Liana Buchanan
Help can be 'very hard to get'
According to Monash University emeritus professor, Thea Brown, the lack of public awareness and discussion of filicide can also make it difficult for parents who may be struggling and at risk to know where to get help.
In the weeks since Melbourne physiotherapist Katie Perinovic's murder-suicide in Tullamarine, Professor Brown said several women had contacted her via the Monash Deakin Filicide Research Hub website to share their experiences. Some recalled distressing or prolonged periods where they wanted to kill themselves and or their children while struggling to cope with depression or psychiatric issues, she said, but mainstream helplines didn't seem to understand their problems, or they couldn't afford support.
"Almost all were saying that they'd tried but failed to get help," she said. "And by implication they were saying it's quite likely [Mrs Perinovic] failed, too — that if her experience was similar to theirs, help was very hard to get."
One problem is that there are no specific support services or helplines for people who are feeling as if they might harm their children, Professor Brown said.
"For example, Lifeline and Beyond Blue advertise phone lines for ... depression, but there's nowhere for people to ring and say, 'I'm feeling very depressed and I think I'm going to ... kill my children'," she said. "But people do articulate that, so considering they articulate it, if there was somewhere they could go, that would be the first part of an emergency response."
One of just a handful of filicide researchers in Australia, Professor Brown has led two of the most comprehensive studies so far:
* a 10-year study of filicide in Victoria published in 2014, and
* a 12-year national study in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Criminology, published in 2019.
Using data from the National Homicide Monitoring Project, the national study found a child is killed by a parent every fortnight, on average, and that unlike rates of domestic homicide and homicide overall, which have dropped, Australia's filicide rate has remained relatively stable — and appears to be higher than similar countries like Canada and England.
"I think what we need to be talking about is that we do have a particular problem with filicide in Australia," Professor Brown said. "But there has been a failure to acknowledge the problem, and a failure to work towards solutions.
"I think as citizens, we're extremely well-defended against recognising these deaths — we don't really want to know about them."
"I think as citizens, we're extremely well-defended against recognising these deaths — we don't really want to know about them," says Thea Brown
'The national database needs overhauling'
The national study examined 238 incidents involving 284 children killed between 2000 and 2012, finding the majority of victims — 67 per cent — were younger than five, with more boys killed than girls. Strikingly, however, men and women made up similar proportions of offenders, though slightly more perpetrators overall — 52 per cent — were men.
Children were most commonly killed by custodial mothers (133 victims), followed by custodial fathers (82 victims) and stepfathers (41 victims), while 28 victims were killed by non-custodial parents, all but one of whom were fathers.
The study also confirmed previous research showing perpetrators share multiple risk factors like -
* domestic violence,
* mental illness and
* parental separation,
but that the "significance" of those factors differs between them.
Mothers "are more likely to have more prominent features of mental illness, to have been victims of domestic violence, and parental separation," Professor Brown said, while fathers are more likely to have perpetrated domestic violence, have a history of drug abuse, a criminal history and parental separation.
Among stepfathers, whom Professor Brown describes as "proportionally the most dangerous group, you get a much higher incidence of domestic violence and drug abuse, and a much higher incidence of criminal history", she said. "So you can see you get a constellation of factors that interact with each other that make the person" — and their children — "more vulnerable."
Still, Professor Brown said the national study does not paint as comprehensive a picture of filicide as is needed, partly because the National Homicide Monitoring Project — the only national database of homicides, victims and perpetrators — has "tight parameters" for collecting data.
Among her concerns is that unlike state coroners offices it doesn't collect detailed information on some of the circumstances behind filicides, including parental separation and families' interactions with community services.
"The national database needs overhauling badly," she said. "There's an awful lot you'd like to see in the national database that is just not there."
New study to examine perpetrator dynamics
To that end, ANROWS, the national organisation researching violence against women and children, is currently working on a project with the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network aiming to develop a national minimum filicide dataset — though they're still unsure whether it would track all filicides or only those with a history of domestic violence.
"Filicide is one of the most common forms of domestic and family violence-related homicide after intimate partner homicides, and accordingly the Network commenced scoping the development of a national filicide dataset to contribute to risk assessment and policy development in this area," said ANROWS chief executive Heather Nancarrow.
The Network's members have access to a range of information relating to domestic and family violence-related deaths including filicides, Ms Nancarrow said — for example, coroners' and police reports and records from services perpetrators have engaged with.
She said ANROWS is hoping the data protocols being developed — which will determine which filicides should be included and whether the data is available — will be completed by March 2022.
In the meantime, the lack of a robust enough national database is why Professor Brown and her colleagues Danielle Tyson and Paula Fernandez Arias are now embarking on a new study of filicides using data from the Coroners Court of Victoria.
"We're trying to see more clearly what the dynamics are — particularly escalation dynamics, how things might get worse for perpetrators over time," she said of the cases she's examining from a 10-year period through 2020. "We're also trying to understand more about what help these people did or didn't get."
Such details, she added, are critical not only for deepening understanding of why parents kill children, but whether some filicides could be prevented.
"There are often indications," said Professor Brown, whose previous research in Victoria found a lack of support services may be another risk factor among filicide perpetrators. "We found in many cases ... the perpetrator had also given warning; they had told friends or relatives what they were going to do," she said.
"But no one, including professional services, believes it's going to happen, and they don't really know what to do with that person's statement."
WHAT IS THE USE
OF
ANROWS 'et al'
GATHERING WELTERS OF
DATA RE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND FILICIDES, IF NO ONE IS GOING TO DEPLOY THAT DATA
TO MATERIALLY REDUCE FURTHER HOMICIDES, IN PARTICULAR FILICIDES, FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE