Filicide, despite being a tragic and enduring social problem, has received little research, policy, or program attention until recently. While it is a shocking event and hard to understand, it has been regarded as a rare occurrence and not a pressing one to overcome
Prevention has seemed almost impossible and irrelevant. However, research has improved, and new designs are accessing data on filicide deaths and producing more detailed and reliable findings. Research has forced a rethink. Filicide is not a rare event, but one that occurs regularly worldwide.This article will review the research’s progress and its contribution to prevention. In addition, it will identify areas that need further exploration. Our picture of filicide has many blank areas that require further investigation to allow us to produce evidence for robust intervention and prevention.
National Profiles
Koenraadt (2013) pointed out that filicide was a universal problem that occurred in every nation, but which showed a different face in each one. He argued that every country needed to study the problem in its own context, both to create an understanding of filicide in its own country and to develop international understanding. Research has made progress in this area and many countries, like Malaysia (Razali, Joris, Muuti, Abdullah, 2022), the USA (Finkelhor and Ormrod, 2001), Canada (Dawson, 2018), Japan (Yasumi, 2018), South Africa (Mathews and Abrahams, 2018, South Korea (Yoon, Yu, Lee, 2022), Chile (Manriquez and Fernandez Arias, 2018), England (Brandon, 2009), and Australia, (Brown, Tyson and Fernandez Arias, 2018) have carried out research establishing national profiles.
National profiles shed light on filicide in several ways. First, they provide reliable information for a particular country on incidence, on perpetrators, the factors associated with perpetrators and their victims, and how well or otherwise services are dealing with the problem. This gives a solid foundation for policy and program development. Second, they show common factors across all countries, especially factors that are associated with perpetrators, such as mental illness, their infliction of family violence (violence to intimate partner and to children), separation from their partner, illegal and legal substance abuse, poverty and low incomes, and a history of childhood abuse and of criminal behaviour. Third, when national profiles are compared, some features emerge more strongly in some countries than in others. For example, South African research (Mathews et al, 2018) shows the impact of their colonial past, which has led to current poverty and family violence, which have been associated with filicide. Malaysia’s profile (Razali et al, 2022) shows high rates of neonaticide, possibly linked to the position of single pregnant women in that culture. South Korean research (Yoon et al. 2022) shows high rates of father-perpetrated filicide associated with mental illness, and Japan’s (Kawasaki, 2023) shows a high rate of mothers as perpetrators. Australia, with a high incidence of filicide, has identified different subgroups among filicide perpetrators, one being mothers who have migrated to Australia as adults from Southeast Asia and India (Brown, Tyson, and Fernandez Arias,2024), thus highlighting the role of migration in filicide deaths. England (Brandon, 2009) has also identified subgroups, but they have constructed them differently in ways that seem related to their different socio-economic history and multi-generational poverty.
One puzzling difference that emerges between the countries is the different occurrence and emphasis placed on intimate partner violence. Many countries see it as a dominant contributing factor, most especially Australia which has given considerable governmental attention to all forms of family violence in recent years. However, the studies (Yoon, Yu, Lee, 2022) deriving data from South Korea do not identify it as a factor, nor do the Japanese (Yasumi, 2018). It is possible that intimate partner violence is not as common in some countries as in others, but it is possible that there is an absence of awareness of violence against an intimate partner in these countries, as has occurred historically elsewhere.
Fourth, many questions arise from comparisons of national profiles that are not obvious when looking just at one country’s profile: why does Australia have a relatively high incidence of filicide in comparison with other affluent countries; why does Canada have a declining rate of filicide when other countries do not; why are fathers more common as perpetrators in some countries and mothers in others but rates of each are similar elsewhere? While some of the answers to the differences lie in the differences between the countries’ socio- economic and political cultures, other answers may lie in the differences in research design, including differences in definitions, boundaries and the conceptual frameworks underpinning the design. Practicalities of finding sources may influence the studies and cause differences. The various studies draw on different databases, some on governmental national or regional databases and some on newspaper databases.
Consensus and Absence of Consensus
Research has now resolved some of the earlier debates. Resolving such debates allows intervention and prevention to move ahead.
Perpetrators
There is no longer debate as to who the perpetrators are. Research covering total populations of deaths studied over many years in many countries has revealed a constant set of perpetrators. They are mothers, fathers, and stepfathers, (disproportionately represented), with mother and fathers or mothers and stepfathers acting together on occasions.
Less frequent perpetrators are stepmothers, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, but they can be involved.
Contributing Factors
In addition, research has advanced on the causal or contributing factors associated with perpetrators. The earliest view, a one-cause view (Resnick, 1969) that singled out mental illness, has been abandoned in favour of a multi-cause view that a constellation of factors frames the event. Stroud (2008) originated this theory, and it underlies most research currently. However, an absence of consensus exists as to how the constellation might work, namely how do the factors interrelate. Some English research illustrates a clash in views as to the interrelationship of factors. Dobash and Dobash (2018), leading researchers on filicide, support the notion of a constellation of factors but argue that intimate partner violence dominates all others. However, Pritchard’s team (Pritchard, Williams, and Fernandez Arias, 2018), while also supporting the theory of constellation, sees mental illness as the factor dominating and leading to the others.
Another picture of the dynamics has been proposed by Johnson and Sachmann (2018). They identify many contributing factors that they see as beginning in the perpetrator’s childhood, then continuing to occur and build up, with each factor taking the perpetrator closer to the ultimate event. Stroud (2008) painted a similar picture, and she too saw the dynamic as building up to the final event. While Stroud identified a tipping point, other research (Buiten, 2022) has been unable to discover one. Examining subgroups within the total population of perpetrators has shown some relationships between contributing factors. Examining a group of Australian separated fathers, it was seen that intimate partner violence and abuse of the children in the partnership led to the mothers leaving the men to stop the abuse. However, when the abuse continued after separation, the mothers took further action, and the fathers killed the child or children (Brown et al, 2024).
Another view is one of cause rather than of contribution. Buiten (2022) argues that gender inequality underlies men’s violence against their female partners and their children. She places little emphasis on associated factors like mental illness and does not subscribe to the constellation of factors theory. At the same time, she describes herself as being at a loss to understand or explain mothers who kill their child or children, and does not consider the role that a constellation of factors, including male violence, may have played in such deaths. In a study of filicide deaths in Victoria from 2010 to 2019 (Brown et al, 2022), some 36% of female perpetrators were victims of intimate partner violence, which likely contributed to their depressive mental illnesses.
The Role of the Services
Once ignored in discussions of filicide, health and welfare services are now seen as central factors contributing to success and failure in prevention. Research in several countries has shown that the presence of general health and welfare services lowers the incidence of filicide, but it is not known how they achieve this impact (Brown et al., 2018; Manriquez and Fernandez, 2018).
The largest body of research on perpetrators’ contact with services shows service failures. Stroud (2008) thought her discussions with perpetrators suggested a disconnection between perpetrators and services, with perpetrators believing they could not make themselves understood to the services, causing the services to respond in inappropriate ways. Some research (Brown et al, 2022) that broke perpetrators down into the groups of mothers, fathers, and stepfathers showed a more complex interplay between the perpetrator and the service. Mothers behaved similar to Stroud’s findings. When using services, they raised problems in their care of the child that were noted by the professionals but not seen by them as indications of serious troubles. Mothers then tried other services and failed again, or just drifted away, unnoticed by the service and not followed up. Fathers did not approach services as mothers did. They were contacted by services, mostly by Child Protection or police. They avoided the contact and eluded the service. Many of the fathers were violent. Stepfathers were even more elusive, and their existence was not always known. Engaging with these parents required specialised knowledge of filicide, which the services did not have.
The Role of the Media
Very recent research has examined the role of the media, and it has been seen as contributing to widespread misunderstanding of filicide and being an obstacle to prevention. Most countries’ media, newspapers, and television news report filicide deaths that last for some days. Their initial reporting suggests families without troubles living quiet suburban lives. As investigations proceed, they move to a less superficial picture. Nevertheless, as Hateley (2023) has argued, the media simplifies the picture. They present the deaths as inevitable, and this stops consideration of strategies for prevention. Furthermore, she maintains, they dismiss the child and their pain and suffering. Buiten (2022) agrees that the child’s experiences are downplayed and in favour of the experiences and background of the perpetrators. Both agree that the media is an active player that misrepresents the dynamics of filicide and plays a role in hindering prevention.
Strategies of Intervention and Prevention
There is still little research on strategies of intervention and prevention with individuals or with the wider community. While almost no research tackles national cultural factors contributing to the problem, there is research on contributing factors associated with perpetrators and on perpetrators’ contacts with services that suggests some directions for intervention and prevention from professionals and service organisations.
The research identifying the details of constellations of associated factors for the major groups of perpetrators has been placed in a red flag warning framework for individual practitioners to use in risk assessment (Brown et al, 2022). Once a red flag warning is determined the professional must intervene vigorously. The research suggests intervention needs to go beyond ensuring the child is immediately safe but must progress to tackling the many problems the perpetrator has. The perpetrator needs to be linked tightly to relevant other services and to be followed up, making sure they attend the required services, and that they engage and stay engaged with them; the families should remain with support and under surveillance for some time. If they drop out, they need to be pursued. Timing is important as the most recent research (Brown et al, 2022) pointed to a very short period, often between the perpetrator being referred for assistance and their killing of the child.
The service organisations that research (Brown et al, 2022) informs us that most likely to encounter perpetrators, such as hospitals, mental health services, GP practices, maternal and child health centres, and child protection services, have not yet integrated knowledge of filicide into their organizational policies and processes. They need to prepare their professionals with knowledge of filicide and place such knowledge into their risk assessment procedures and into their directions for professional intervention. In their defence, such knowledge is new and only now emerging. While it can be argued that these families are only a few, it is also true that they are a substantial proportion of children’s deaths, especially of the deaths of very young children.
Such knowledge needs to go beyond professionals and service organisations and extend to the wider community. Research (Brown et al, 2022) has shown the role friends and family play. Perpetrators have been found to confide their intentions to friends and family. Often, friends and family do nothing, not knowing if and how they should act. They confide they were alarmed, but did not realise how serious the situation was, and, with so little helpful knowledge publicised about filicide, their inactivity is understandable. At the same time, referrals to specialised services came mostly from friends, family, and neighbours, usually expressing concern about domestic violence. If the wider community knew more, they would be more able to recognize danger and communicate it to services.
The Future
Reviewing the progress on research, policy and programs development in filicide shows that research has been slow, lacking in a direction linked to prevention and without cumulative gains from organised knowledge building. However, where research has taken place, even with many studies unrelated to each other, research has been channelled into intervention and prevention.
Better planning of research is required so as maximise its contribution.
Most significantly, every country should develop a national database. Such databases need to be made consistent across all nations with common definitions, common boundaries, and common factors to include. Factors can be added where nations want to study what seem to be features special to that country, but no factors used across the databases should be omitted. Ideally, they should draw from common sources, but that may not be possible due to the absence of some sources in some countries. Such databases must be compiled annually to study trends over time and be open to bona fide researchers. They are the backbone of a knowledge bank for prevention strategies.
Filicide research centres need to be established in every country to pursue the many questions still unanswered, questions that relate to the country they are in and to other countries. What questions should be given priority is difficult to determine, as much is still unknown. There are questions about the dynamics within constellations that, if answered, might shape better interventions. There are questions as to whether services might engage potential perpetrators and intervene before the child’s death. There are questions as to how and why a potential perpetrator moves from thinking of filicide to carrying it out. There are questions about the role of family violence (intimate partner violence and abuse of children in the family). There are questions about the differences between perpetrators, mothers, fathers, and stepfathers relating to the contributing factors for each group and how they carry out the deaths. There is almost no research on filicide deaths caused by parents acting jointly. There are questions about culture and religion. There is little research on some of the different types of filicides, like neonaticide, familicide, and murder suicide.
The questions go on and on.
