Spouse Revenge Filicide
or Retaliatory Filicide or Most Heinous
Category of Filicide
"Filicide is the killing of a
child by their mother, father or step-parent. About
25 children are killed by a parent/s or step-parent every year in Australia, or one
child almost every two weeks."
Annexure B1 -
Filicide
definitions and categories.
One of the most
influential classifications of child murder was created by
Phillip Resnick MD,
a Professor of Psychiatry at Cleveland, OH .when
in 1969 he published a ground breaking book
'Child
murder by parents: A psychiatric review of filicide'.
It
reviewed 131 cases of child murder
by both men and
women that were discussed in psychiatric literature dating from 1751 to
1967.
Phillip Resnick developed
the below five categories
of filicide to account for the motives driving parents
or step-parents to kill their child or their
children.
Below is an extract from
When parents kill - ABC News - Hayley Gleeson -
22 March
2021
"Phillip Resnick developed
the below Five
Categories to account for the motives driving parents to kill their
children:
·
Altruistic
filicide: A parent
kills a child because they believe it’s in the child’s best interest, e.g. to
relieve the suffering of a disabled or unwell child, or because the parent is
planning on suiciding and does not want to leave them “parentless”.
·
Acutely
psychotic filicide: A
parent who is experiencing psychosis kills the child with no other rational
motive.
·
Unwanted child
filicide: The parent
kills the child because they’re unwanted or considered a burden, or perhaps
because their partner does not want children.
·
Accidental or
child maltreatment filicide:
The parent unintentionally kills the child as a result of abuse or overzealous
discipline.
·
Spouse revenge
filicide (or
‘Retaliatory
filicide’): The parent
or step-parent kills the child/ren to enact revenge on their spouse, in a deliberate attempt to
make them suffer, perhaps after infidelity or separation."
Fathers, step-fathers (and former male partners of women with children from a
prior relationship) commit
approx. half (say 12 filicides annually) of the 24 circa filicide murders
annually
in recent years across
Australia. Approx 33% of those 12 circa filicides (say 4 filicides
annually across Australia)
fall within
Phillip Resnick's
category of
Spouse Revenge
Filicide
where
a
parent
or step-parent
(or former male partners of a woman with children from a
prior relationship)
executes a child, or children, to enact revenge on their spouse in
a deliberate attempt to make their spouse suffer.
The two primary reasons
for Spouse Revenge Filicide are:
(a) rejection by one
of the parents of the other parent, step-parent or former male partner; and
(b) the custodial
parent denying the non-custodial parent fortnightly weekend visitation rights or
similar access rights.