THEY AREN'T VIOLENT. Analysis revealed that the six adolescents who
fit the profile of the severely abused child had approached life fairly
passively until the homicide. Five thought of themselves as strong and in
control of events. Their friends were typically nice kids, and they were
relatively uninvolved in criminal behavior prior to the shootings.
THEY ARE ABUSED. Child maltreatment, particularly verbal and
psychological abuse, was readily apparent in these six cases; severe
psychological abuse was present in five. The one girl, in addition to
being physically, verbally, and psychologically abused by her father, was
also sexually abused and raped by him as well. Six youths had been
emotionally and physically neglected by their parents. Two had virtually
no supervision at all because both of their parents were alcoholics. None
of the six had been protected from harm by their parents. At least one of
the youths had been medically neglected. Contrary to popular wisdom,
teenagers experience all types of abuse and neglect at higher rates than
young children, according to the Second National Incidence Study of Child
Abuse and Neglect.
THEIR PARENTS ARE MOST LIKELY SUBSTANCE ABUSERS. In all six cases
there was alcoholism or heavy drinking in the home. There was strong
evidence that each of the five fathers slain was an alcoholic. Three used
drugs; one smoked marijuana and the other two used tranquilizers. One of
the mothers murdered was also an alcoholic. Among the surviving spouses,
chemical addiction was also common. Only one of them had reportedly never
been an abuser, though her husband was an alcoholic. Two of the surviving
mothers had been addicted to Valium for years as a way of coping with an
abusive husband.
THEY ARE ISOLATED. These families tend to be relatively isolated
because of problems in the home. The six teenagers had fewer outlets than
other youths because they were expected to assume responsibilities
typically performed by parents, such as cooking, cleaning, and taking
care of younger children. One, too young to be a licensed driver, even
drove his brother to school every day. These children were isolated not
merely by the burden of chores but by a burden of shame. They knew their
family was not the Brady Bunch. And parents had often not been hospitable
to friends they had brought home.
Over the course of the years, the youths had made attempts to get
help--from teachers, relatives, or even the non-abusing adult in the
house--but they were either ignored or unsuccessful. Increasingly, the
children's goals centered on escaping the family either through running
away or suicide. Over time they felt increasingly overwhelmed by the home
environment, which continued to deteriorate and diminished whatever
support had been available. Then, already stressed to the limit, their
inability to cope eventually led them to lose control or to contemplate
murder in response to some new overt or perceived threat.
THEY KILL ONLY WHEN THEY FEEL THERE IS NO ONE TO HELP THEM. Just
prior to the murder, life had become increasingly intolerable. In the
four cases where only the abusive father was killed, the mother was not
living at home at the time. In one case, the common-law stepmother did
the same thing the boy's mother had done several years before: She walked
out. That was one month before the homicide. In a second case, the mother
was chronically ill and had been hospitalized for several weeks at the
time of the murder. In each of the two other cases, the mother had
divorced her husband on the grounds of physical and psychological abuse,
and then allowed the children to live with the father more than a
thousand miles away. One boy killed his father within a year of being
left alone with him; the girl in the other case killed her father within
16 months of his common-law wife's departure.
THEY "BLOCK OUT" THE MURDER, NOT REVEL IN IT. Five out of the six
cases clearly suggested that the children were in a dissociative state at
the time of the killing; there was an alteration in consciousness that
left the memory of the murder not integrated into awareness. These youths
do not deny the murder took place or that they were responsible for it,
but they have gaps in their memory of the event, "blackouts," and a sense
that events were somehow unreal or dream-like during the homicide or
immediately afterward. In one case, the youth did not remember the
homicide; in another, dissociation left only part of the memory of the
shooting intact. He remembered the sequence this way: terror from a
threat from his abusive father, flashback view of his father beating his
mother, then standing over the father's bloody body. He has no memory at
all of firing the shots that killed his father, although he assumed he
did it.
THEY SEE NO OTHER CHOICE. The youths killed a parent or parents in
response to a perception of being trapped. In two of the five cases in
which there was severe physical abuse, both were reacting to a perceived
threat of imminent death or serious physical injury. In the three others,
the children were experiencing terror and horror even though death and
physical injury were not imminent. Interestingly, in these cases, the
victims were defenseless: two were shot as they lay sleeping, the third
as he sat watching television, his back to his son.
Tags:
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matricide,
mother father,
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son and daughter,
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tabloid television,
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undercurrent
