Filicide-Suicide

The Killing of Children in the Context of Separation, Divorce and Custody Disputes

K. O'Hagan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137024329
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kriminologie

O'Hagan explores the phenomenon of filicide, a deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own son or daughter. Examining over 120 cases of filicide in the UK, this book identifies relationship and family patterns in which situations may rapidly deteriorate, and children may become the ultimate weapon in disputes between partners.

Part I
Filicide: Its Principal Features and Catastrophic Effects

1

Oh my God … I made a mistake …

Introduction

Children die in many different ways at the hands of their parents. For the general public, and for future researchers and administrators, they then become statistics. Statistics tell you nothing about what a child endured or experienced preceding the killing; and very little about the perpetrator or the circumstances leading up to the death. Yet it is these factors that may leave indelible memories and provoke powerful emotions in the lives of family members, neighbours and friends. Without such factors, the bare statistics, accumulated over time, are unlikely to move us, or enlighten us about a deepening tragedy in family life. More importantly, such factors may also contain lessons, enabling professionals to minimize the risks of similar killings in the future. In this book, the narrative will often pause on statistics, probing what they do not tell us as much as what they do. The second chapter will give details of the book’s contents, but this first chapter is different: it will focus almost entirely on three cases. They belong to that category of filicide in which the method of killing is drowning. This is a relatively short chapter, but it has numerous objectives: (i) to quickly transport the reader into the core painful realities of filicide; (ii) to describe the events leading up to one particular killing; (iii) to highlight the exploitation, abuse and suffering endured by all the children; (iv) to question generally held assumptions about the mental health of perpetrators, particularly revolving around the motivational delusions attributable to them; and, finally, (v) even though the book will make its own contribution to the ‘statistical field’, and encourage workers to familiarize themselves with all relevant research findings, this chapter will expose the limitations of statistics. Subsequent chapters will contribute in pursuit all of these objectives.

When something more than killing is required

Drowning is commonly chosen by parents as a method of killing their children. Andrea Yates (O’Malley, 2005), perhaps the most infamous name in maternal filicide history, managed to drown all of her five children. The bathroom is frequently the location of the killing, particularly for very young children. They are simply held under water for a long enough period. It doesn’t require a great deal of physical strength to hold a young child’s head under the water. Resistance is easily overcome. There is little or no noise. There is usually no unsightly bruising or blood.

Within that broader segment of filicide by drowning, however, there is a sub-category in which the drowning is a more explosive culminating point of a sequence of events, than a mere killing. The perpetrator, mother or father, may actually perceive that sequence of events to be more symbolically important than the actual drowning itself. This book is fundamentally about filicide killings in the UK, but these powerful and symbolic drowning incidents take place all over the world. Here are a number of them which have occurred during the past couple of decades:

• In Co. Wexford, Ireland, a 40-year-old father stabbed his wife to death. He then plied his two sons, aged 10 and 6, with alcohol, strapped them into the car and drove at speed off a pier into the sea.

• In South Carolina, USA, a 25-year-old mother released the handbrake of her car on a steep incline which went down into a deep lake. Her two children, aged 3 and 1, were sleeping on the back seat.

• In Victoria, Australia, a 36-year-old father drove the car containing his three children, aged 10, 7 and 2, into a dam. The father escaped.

• In the Midlands, UK, a 42-year-old father drove his car with his two children, aged 6 and 5, into a river. The father and the oldest child escaped.

• In Humberside, a 28-year-old mother clutched her 2-year-old daughter and leapt from the Humber Bridge, one of the most notorious suicide locations in the UK.

• In New York State, a 25-year-old mother drove the car containing her four children, aged 10, 5, 2 and 11 months, into the Hudson River. The oldest child escaped.

• In Denmark, a father threw himself and his 1-year-old daughter over a bridge, after a furious row with his wife. Both died.

• In Lancashire, a 33-year-old mother sedated her husband with sleeping tablets, rendering him unconscious, then strapped her two children, aged 7 and 3, into her car, and drove it into the murky sea at a nearby dockland.

The common factor in these eight cases is conflict in the relationship between father and mother at the time of the killings. The conflict may have been generated or was exacerbated by other factors, such as separation, custody and access disputes, domestic violence, mental illness, or extra-marital affairs. The killings appear to have been a final symbolic act that was intended to, and was certain to, end the conflict and ensure a lasting sense of devastation in the bereaved parent.

Psychological profiling is more bearable than unspeakable suffering

Whenever these types of ‘sensational’ filicide killings take place, drowning or otherwise, they are the subject of much media attention. Numerous ‘experts’ are called upon to comment. These experts are invariably asked: how could a parent be driven to the point of doing something like this? The experts have never met the parent, and know nothing about him or her, but that does not prevent them offering theories, explanations and psychological profiles of ‘typical’ filicide perpetrators. What is conspicuously lacking in these post-mortem analyses is any reference to or any attempt to discover precisely what the children were experiencing in the moments, hours or days leading up to their deaths; it is their killers who are the sole object of interest, for the media and public alike. For family and friends, the children are an unimaginable loss, the source of much trauma and anguish. But for the public at large and the media serving it, they are mere appendages in the tragedy. They will soon graduate though (or be relegated depending on one’s point of view) to the role of statistics. Unlike the children seared into our collective consciousness, such as Victoria Climbié, Baby P and Jasmine Beckford, the filicide victims of marital break-ups are then quickly forgotten about.

There are reasons why these filicide victims are forgotten about, which will be explored in later chapters, but suffice to say at this point that their experiences are often as brutal, nightmarish and destructive as anything endured by those iconic victims in the literature of child abuse. In one sense at least, they endure far more: they are the ultimate pawns, the victims of blatant parental exploitation that has no parallel in any other area of family and childcare work. Worst of all, they are sometimes old enough to realize what is being done to them; they actually see, hear and understand how and why they are being exploited, and they are left in no doubt whatsoever about the intentions of the killer before he or she perpetrates the final act.

Here is the real-life story of one of those children, her sibling and her parents. It is based upon (i) the three-week-long trial of the father, which was given extensive coverage in press, radio, television and the internet; (ii) eye-witness accounts of the killing and the events immediately preceding it; (iii) the judge’s summing up; and (iv) a serious case review by the local safeguarding children’s board. Fictitious names have been given to all individuals involved, and some material facts have been altered.

Case study 1

The parents of 5-year-old Gillian Rogers and her 6-year-old brother Michael had long separated but the issue of the father’s access to the children remained unresolved. Mr Rogers wanted more access. Mrs Rogers, who had custody, did not want him to have any more access.

Contrasting fortunes

The dispute had been ongoing for two to three years. During that time, there was a marked contrast in the fortunes of both parents. Mrs Rogers’ situation had stabilised quickly after the separation. She remained in the marital home, had a job, and was well integrated within the community and the school which the children attended. Mr Roger’s situation deteriorated rapidly. He was a self-employed mechanic, who lost his workshop (and therefore his job) through debt. He also had to leave his rented accommodation, which compelled him to return to the home of his former wife and three older children. His health deteriorated too, and he was prescribed anti-depressants. He was increasingly reliant on alcohol.

Premeditation

On the day before the incident, Gillian and Michael stayed overnight with their father in the home of his former wife, Sandra. The three older children by that first marriage were there too. The oldest, Karen, was aged 20. Mr Rogers spoke to Karen about his predicament. He said to her at one point that he might go to prison, and he asked Karen would she look after her stepbrother Michael and her stepsister Gillian if that indeed happened. Karen would later testify in court that she interpreted these strange words as meaning he intended to do harm to the children’s mother.

On the following morning, Mr and Mrs Rogers had a ferocious argument over the telephone. Mrs Rogers was angrily complaining about the children not being at school. Mr Rogers retorted that the children were never going to school again, and that they were going with him. He told Mrs Rogers to step outside of her home, that he was on his way to her house, and that she would have ten seconds to say goodbye to her children. He told her that she would never see them again.

Even though both children were made aware on numerous occasions of the unhappy state of affairs in the parental relationship, this telephone conversation must have increased their fears and anxieties considerably. We know the children heard it, because Michael said so, in a hand-written letter he wrote of his own volition, 12 months later, to the judge presiding over his father’s trial. He was aged 7 then.

The children needed reassurance. They needed comforting. What they got was an enraged and determined father incapable of responding to their needs. He quickly bundled the children into the car and sped towards the home of their mother. He was consumed and driven by the goal which he had publicly pronounced only minutes before: their mother was to have a final sighting of her children, and then she would never see them again.

Nothing to lose, or maybe just bluster

Mrs Rogers had done what he demanded: she was waiting on the pavement outside her door. She felt powerless, helpless and afraid, just like thousands of other parents caught up in bitter acrimonious custody disputes often feel, when the ‘other’ parent has the children. But Mrs Rogers knew better than anyone else that her predicament was much worse; that the stakes had got much higher. The acrimony between her and Mr Rogers had intensified alarmingly. She was acutely aware of her husband’s burdens and misfortunes; his bankruptcy, homelessness and debt; his sense of humiliation in having to depend upon the generosity of his former wife, and of his increasing dependency on prescription pills and alcohol. Perhaps she thought as she waited anxiously on the pavement, that in his misery and in his rage and threats, he felt that he had nothing to lose. These were all sound reasons for her to be very scared indeed.

Conversely, however, she might have thought (and hoped) that it was all bluster and drama; that he was meaning to frighten and hurt her, but that he would not so deliberately and so callously hurt their children. He had after all threatened the children before, 15 months ago to be precise. She told the court about this. It was during another of their rows about contact with the children. She said Mr Rogers told her that if he couldn’t have the kids, then she certainly wasn’t going to have them. That had frightened her enough to call the police (the police had been called to the home on many occasions). The threat never materialised. Surely then, she may also have thought, he would not carry out this latest more explicit threat, particularly when he had advertised it so dramatically during the telephone call. Surely he wouldn’t do anything rash, so publicly, on the street.

The children’s nightmare begins

Mr Rogers’ car pulled up sharply outside his former family home. The children could now see their mother standing on the pavement, a welcome sight. They had been frightened by the telephone row between their parents, and by their father’s consequential rage and the manner by which he had unceremoniously bundled them into the car, and then his near-reckless speed. This ‘welcome’ sight of their mother, however, did not alleviate them of their distress. Like any 5- and 6-year-old, they instantly recognised in her face something akin to the fear and anxiety they had both just experienced themselves. This was indeed their mother, but without the big smile and the open arms. They had never seen her so tense before, so visibly scared, preoccupied not with welcoming them home, but staring at the face of the father who had yelled at her that this was the nearest they would ever get to returning home. They were not permitted to get out of the car. Their mother wasn’t given the opportunity to get into it. They remained locked in, in the back. Their distress increased markedly, and Mrs Rogers’ fears for her children intensified.

A witness at the scene testified, as did Mrs Rogers herself that Mr Rogers pulled up only for seconds, to afford her, as he had threatened, nothing more than a final fleeting glimpse of her two children. She begged to have her kids back, but Mr Rogers kept saying ‘No!’ The other witness then heard him say: ‘They’re going to die.’

A blinding hatred

Instead of sitting in their classrooms chatting and joking with their friends, as they normally would have been doing around this time, Gillian and Michael were being systematically terrorized. The emotional and psychological abuse being inflicted upon them was of a nature and intensity that, even had they been rescued at that particular moment, they would have been severely traumatized. They had just heard their father say that they were going to die, and the horribleness of those words was wholly compatible with his behaviour, with the expressions on his face, the tone of his voice, and above all the hatred in his eyes. Amazingly, he had said they were going to die, but he never once looked at them. He was utterly oblivious to them and the suffering he was causing them. He only had eyes for the woman he was tormenting.

Mrs Rogers recalled for the court what she described as vile contortions in Mr Rogers’ face as he sat in the ‘driving’ seat, watching her, in effect mocking her helplessness. She vaguely recalled his use of the word ‘river’ somewhere in among his tirades and his threats.

A futile attempt to save them

It was that word ‘river’ that made Mrs Rogers dive at the door handle of the car. She knew now that he was deadly serious. She knew how he was going to kill her children. She could see the children as he had intended, the terror in their eyes, their faces separated by a cold car window. And she could hear them screaming. She could not for another second bear the crushing, insufferable sense of her own powerlessness.

Her fingers never reached the door handle. He sped off, towards a nearby field and the river; he drove so fast that another witness who was in the field at the time believed he must have floored the accelerator. He clearly wanted to ensure maximum lift-off from the banks of the river. He wanted the car to be submerged completely, with his children trapped in it.

Losing power and control

Mr Rogers left a number of ‘suicide’ notes in the car. One of these blamed his wife, and boasted that the children were with him now. If it was his intention to die with his children, as this typical suicide note suggested, his efforts failed abysmally. He could well have chosen a more effective means of suicide and murder, one that did not pose the risk of pain or any great inconvenience to him personally. He could also have chosen a means whereby he controlled events, at least until the dastardly deed was over. Mr Rogers, however, chose a method that was fraught with uncert...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Filicide: Its Principal Features and Catastrophic Effects
• Part II A Study of 224 Filicide Killings, 1994–2012
• Part III Dispelling the Myths, Working Towards Prevention
• Postscript
• References
• Index