Gina Davidson: Law change can cut child deaths

Published on Wednesday 25 August 2010 14:09

AT THE same time as the world seemed to go mad on Tuesday trying to trace the woman who threw a kitten into a wheelie bin (a horrific act of cruelty admittedly), quietly and with as little fuss as possible a mother appeared in an ad hoc Sheriff Court in Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary charged with the murder of her three children.

She made no plea and is now in hospital under an assessment order. Doctors have 28 days to assess her mental condition before her trial resumes.

Whether she is guilty or not, the very idea of a mother allegedly killing her children is abhorrent to society. It goes against nature; the instinctive response is of horror and a questioning disbelief.

Yet the killing of children by their parents is much more common than such astounded reactions would imply. About 10 per cent of all the murders in Britain each year are child killings. Despite the fear of "stranger danger", in an average year 75 children will be murdered, the vast majority by their own parents or step-parents.

So far this year, as well as the alleged murders in Edinburgh, there have been the cases of the mother in County Durham who took her dead son to a police station after apparently strangling and stabbing him; 18-month-old Nereya and two-year-old Phoebe of Fordingbridge, Hants, who were smothered by their father Andrew Case before he killed himself and their mother; police are still investigating whether Catherine Madden of Bognor Regis killed her daughter Keira, four, before jumping off a cliff and Lianne Smith has confessed to the murder of her children, Rebecca, five, and Daniel, 11 months. She smothered them in a Spanish hotel room after their father had been extradited to Britain on paedophile charges.

Since the days of Medea, parents have killed their children, yet every time such a thing occurs the question is asked: how could a parent breach that sacred trust? Special repulsion is held for mothers who take the life of the person they carried in their womb, but the answer cannot surely be that they are just either mad or bad.

There is an entire body of psychiatric literature devoted to the phenomenon. Fathers, it seems, resort to such terrible actions because of mental collapse, or as a desire for revenge after bitter divorce and custody battles.

Thirdly, a father may well see it as an altruistic act. If he can no longer maintain the facade of being a strong head of the household, if his business is collapsing or he's in financial trouble, then - to his mind - it almost becomes the right thing to do to spare the family from the ignominy of suffering his shortcomings.

Mothers who kill, though, are divided into six groupings by psychologists. There are young mothers who deny their pregnancy and commit "neonaticide", then there are mothers who attempt to kill themselves and their children again as some kind of twisted altruism. There are neglectful mothers who actively or passively let their children die, abusive mothers who inadvertently kill their children while disciplining them, and abused women who kill their children due to coercion or their own domestic victimisation. Then there are those who are suffer a psychotic episode perhaps triggered by a long battle with depression.

Apart from the cases where mental collapse is the point where it all goes wrong, the majority of child murders appear to stem from anger in the wake of divorce and custody battles. Surely little more evidence is needed then to make the case of moving towards shared parenting as the first outcome of any family split, rather than the mother gets the kids and the dad pays?

More parental equality in custody outcomes may well help to ease the intense emotional pain and anger that many parents are left with, which can boil over into filicide.

Blessed relief

THE Catholic Church is concerned that the tram in Princes Street will detract from the Pope's passage along the thoroughfare next month and block the view of the Popemobile.

Let's just hope that image doesn't become the ultimate sign that the Edinburgh tram is on a road to nowhere. In fact, perhaps Pope Benedict could do us all a favour and give it a drive-by Papal blessing.

It might be the only thing that gets the whole project back on track.

Bags of fun in TV classics

GIVEN the reality TV Z-listers who'll be out in force this weekend at the Television Festival, it's no wonder that comedian Toby Hadoke's reminiscences at the Underbelly about the glory days of TV has been a hit.

A child of The Clangers era, he has a rose-tinted view of television in the time before remote controls, when one channel was on all night as no-one could be bothered to change it.

However, it does seem that good children's television never dies, it just moves to Nickelodeon. My six-year-old son was recently in fits of laughter watching Bagpuss, proving the saggy old cloth cat has still got what it takes.