|
HEALTH ETHICS TODAY
Volume
12, Number 1, Fall/November 2001
Altruistic Filicide: Bioethics or Criminology?
Dick Sobsey, Ed.D
JP Das Developmental Disabilities Centre
University of Alberta
The concept of altruistic filicide, parents killing their children "for
their own good" exists in both bioethics and criminology, yet
these two groups of experts view the phenomenon very differently. Bioethicists
view altruistic killings as rare events, explained in terms of ethical
principles and logic. Criminologists view altruistic homicides as much
more common events, explained in terms of psychopathology. While the
criminological view of altruistic filicide has been largely ignored
in bioethics, it is based on considerable research and has profound
ethical implications. It predicts that endorsement of altruistic homicide
by ethicists, the media, and the public will result in increases in
both homicidal and non-homicidal violence against children. In this
article, the consequences of the widespread social endorsement of the
killing of Tracy Latimer are considered from the perspective of criminal
psychology.
Tracy Latimer was one among about 50 children who are murdered in
Canada each year. Although her case has been presented as something
highly unusual because her father said he was motivated by love and
acted altruistically, the killing of Tracy Latimer and other so-called "altruistic
homicides" are, in fact, among the most common child murders in
Canada and around the world. In Canada, about 80% of murdered children
are murdered by one or both of their own parents and about half of
parents who kill their children express the belief that they acted
altruistically.
Resnick's (1969) classic American study of parents who killed their
children found that about 50% rationalized their actions as altruistic.
A more recent Canadian Study of 10 fathers who killed their children
also classed 50% as altruistic filicides (Marleau, Poulin, Webanck,
Roy, & Laporte, 1999). Not surprisingly, a majority of parents
who commit other forms of child abuse also rationalize their behavior
as justified (Dietrich, Berkowitz, Kadushin, & McGloin, 1990),
often as beneficial to the child. While only a few parents who kill
their children rationalize their behavior on the basis of disease or
disability, others kill their children because they want to spare them
from poverty, family breakup, discrimination, exploitation, or a wide
variety of other real and imagined social ills. In most cases, the
rationales are distorted and irrational. In some case cases, the parents
have clear psychopathology but sincerely believe their rationalizations
which are often influenced by societal attitudes and beliefs.
There is no rational basis for endorsing some of these "altruistic" killings
while condemning others. Studies of quality of life consistently demonstrate
that people with severe disabilities rate their lives as positively
as people without disabilities rate their own lives (e.g., Bach & Campagnolo,
1992). Excusing the killing of these children is no more rational than
excusing the murder of those facing poverty, the loss of a parent,
discrimination, or any of the other challenges that parents use to
rationalize filicide. Decriminalization of "compassionate" homicide
based only on illness or disability would be discriminatory without
any rational basis. Decriminalizing homicides whenever compassion or
elimination of suffering for any reason are presented as motive would
effectively decriminalize most murders of children. (approximately
10 children without disabilities are murdered for every one with a
disability.)
So-called mercy killings, in which the altruistic reason is related
to an illness, injury, or disability, make up only about 3% of child
homicides (Richards, 2000), but experts in criminal psychology suggest
that these cases hide a deeper and darker motivation. According to
criminology's most authoritative classification of homicides, "most
often, the real motivation for mercy killing has little to do with
the offender's feelings of compassion and pity for the victim" (Douglas,
Burgess, Burgess, & Ressler, 1992, p. 111). The authors, FBI profilers
and criminologists, consider the deeper motivation for mercy killing
to be a pathological need for "power and control" (p. 111).
Acts of violence typically require two factors. First, there is an
instrumental motivation, such as control or desire to be free of responsibility
for a child. Second, there must be a disinhibiting factor, such as
the belief that it is for the child's good, to release potentially
homicidal parents from normal inhibition (Sobsey, 1994). The social
endorsement of mercy killing therefore acts as a disinhibiting factor
to those who may have instrumental motivations, but might otherwise
be restrained by inhibition.
This effect is demonstrated by one of the best-accepted and supported
theories on aggression, Bandura's social learning theory (Bandura,
Ross, & Ross, 1963). It suggests that when aggression is modeled,
it is much more likely to imitated if the model's behavior is socially
endorsed and is less likely to be imitated if the model's behavior
is rapidly and severely punished.
According to this theory, the widespread social perception that "altruistic
homicides" like the killing of Tracy Latimer, are the acts of
heroic and loving parents who deserve praise rather than punishment
can be expected to encourage more parents to kill their children. The
parents who could be expected to show the greatest increase are those
who identify most strongly with Robert Latimer. Nevertheless, the effects
would be expected to generalize to a much larger group of parents.
One Canadian father who killed his daughter who was not disabled did
so with the irrational fear that she might one day become severely
disabled (Marleau et al., 1999). Increased violence as a result of
the positive publicity surrounding Tracy Latimer's homicide was predicted
in 1995, but at that time, there was little data available to test
the prediction. It was this concern that led organizations representing
people with disabilities to seek intervener status in the Latimer appeals
(Disabled group seeks profile, 1995; Sobsey, 1995). The repeated trials,
appeals, and pleas for clemency beginning in November of 1994 and extending
into 2001, with thousands of related newstories, however, now provide
a much more substantial basis for analysis of the effects.
Researchers on violence have widely accepted the notion that cultural
attitudes and beliefs are powerful influences on the frequency and
nature of violence (e.g., Belsky, 1980; Sobsey, 1994; Petersilia, Foote, & Crowell,
2001). The effects of public opinion and expert statements that altruistic
filicides are sometimes justified would be expected to have the greatest
effect on parents in most similar circumstances. It could be expected
to influence homicides of children with disabilities more than other
children, filicides more than other homicides, fathers more than mothers,
and Canadians more than Americans. If widespread public approval for
altruistic filicide does produce negative consequences for children
in Canada, we might expect to see four trends since 1994 when the first
Latimer trial occurred: (1) the occurrence of one or more "copycat
homicides," (2) an increase in filicides relative to the national
homicide rate, (3) an increase in filicides by fathers relative to
filicides by mothers, and (4) these effects occurring in Canada but
not in the United States. All four have occurred since Latimer was
killed in 1993 and massive publicity was given to the case in 1994.
Three days after the first Latimer trial, Gloria Christianson alerted
Ontario Social Services that her friend Cathy Wilkieson was distraught
and talking about killing her 16-year-old son. Ryan Wilkieson also
had multiple disabilities, though less severe than Tracy Latimer's.
According to Christianson, the media coverage of the case had a profound
effect on this depressed mother. Less than two weeks later, Cathy Wilkieson
killed her son and herself in their car with carbon monoxide (Sobsey,
1995).
Although the Canadian homicide rate in general has declined to its
lowest level in 30 years, there has been significant increase in filicides
(Fedorowycz, 2000) that coincide with the positive publicity for justifying
filicides provided by the Latimer trial. Between 1994 and 1998, the
number of children under the age of 12 murdered by their parents increased
by 45% to 7.1% of all homicides in Canada (compared to 4.9% for 1974-1983).
This sharp increase followed a decreasing trend from 1974 through 1993.
A Royal Canadian Mounted Police report provides similar but slightly
different data. They report the number of Canadian children killed
by parents or guardians for each year from 1990 to 1998. From 1990
to 1993, the average number was 31.75 per year (range: 33-37). From
1994 to 1998, the average number jumped to 49.0 (range: 45 to 62/ year).
This represents an increase in filicides of 54.3% during a time when
the overall homicide rate in Canada dropped 14.5%. If we expected the
murders of children by their parents to drop along with the general
homicide rate rather than stay at the 1990-1993 rate, the effective
increase would be more than 69%. This translates to between 18 and
22 more murdered children each year between 1994 and 1998.
According to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, between 1974
and 1993 almost exactly half (50.7%) of parents who were implicated
in homicides of their children were fathers and stepfathers. Since
1994, however, the percentage of fathers and stepfathers implicated
in filicide has increased to 60.1%. Looking at these numbers from a
different perspective, mothers and stepmothers implicated in filicides
declined 4.6% comparing the years since 1994 with the 20 years before,
but fathers and step-fathers implicated in filicides increased 39.5%
for the same years.
In addition, this epidemic of filicide appears to be uniquely Canadian.
While filicides rose contrary to the general drop in Canadian Homicides,
the American filicide rate dropped along with other forms of homicide.
As a result, the most recent figures report that 80% of children murdered
in Canada were killed by their own parents, while the equivalent figure
is 55% for the United States (Fox & Zawitz, 2001). Similarly, in
our own database of 1255 cases of homicide involving victims with developmental
disabilities, we found that for cases 1993 and earlier Canada had proportionally
fewer cases of children with disabilities killed by their parents than
the United States. Since 1994, however, Canadian cases are proportionally
greater than those from the United States. While the Canadian population
is less than 10% that of the United States, Canada has produced 15.5%
of the homicides of children with disabilities since 1994.
Finally, it is interesting that researchers (Marleau, et al. 1999)
now report altruism as a motive in 50% of Canadian paternal filicides.
While Resnick reported that half of filicides were "altruistic" decades
ago, his study suggested that this motive was much more common in mothers
and that only 35% of paternal filicides were altruistic. While many
factors make a comparison of the two studies difficult, this may indicate
a recent increase in Canadian fathers committing "altruistic filicides."
If this connection is confirmed by additional research, any continuing
show of support for the "altruism" of Mr. Latimer or other
parents who kill their children can only be expected to result in more
deaths of Canadian children. Ethicists and others who act as experts
and leaders of public opinion need to consider this risk; endorsement
of altruistic homicide may be responsible for some part of increasing
numbers of children killed by parents. Some ethicists argue that even
if endorsing Mr. Latimer's "altruistic" homicide leads to
more killing, he should not be punished in order to protect others.
Mr. Latimer has the widespread support of Canadians. Approximately
170 have volunteered to sacrifice a month of their lives to secure
his freedom. Of course, their sacrifice is symbolic since there is
no mechanism for sentences to be served by proxy. The murders of 20
or so Canadian children each year that now appear to be associated
with the endorsement of altruistic filicide, however, are not symbolic.
We have a responsibility to examine this phenomenon carefully before
we put any more children at risk.
References
Bach, J. R. & Campagnolo, D. I. (1992). Psychosocial adjustment
of post-poliomyelitis ventilator assisted individuals. Archives of
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 73, 934-939.
Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Vicarious reinforcement
and imitative learning. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,
67, 601-607.
Belsky, J. (1980). Child maltreatment: An ecological integration.
American Psychologist, 35(4), 320-335.
Daly, M.L. (2000). The killing of Canadian children by parent(s) or
guardian(s) [revised 2000]. Ottawa: National Police Services and Missing
Children's Registry, Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Dietrich, D., Berkowitz, L., Kadushin, A., & McGloin, J. (1990).
Some factors influencing abusers' justification of their child abuse.
Child Abuse & Neglect, 14, 337 -345.
(1995, November 10). Disabled group seeks profile in father's retrial:
Pro-Latimer press bias cited over claimed mercy killing. Vancouver-Sun,
p. A8.
Fedorowycz, O. (2000). Homicide in Canada - 1999. Ottawa: Justice
Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics.
Douglas, J.E., Burgess, A.W., Burgess, A.G., & Reseller, R.K.
(1992). Crime classification manual: A standard system for investigating
and classifying violent crimes. San Francisco: Josses-Bass.
Fox, JA, & Zawitz, M.W. (2001). Homicide trends in the United
States. (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics)
Retrieved August 1, 2001, from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/homtrnd.htm#contents
Marleau, J. D., Poulin, B., Webanck, T., Roy, R., & Laporte, L.
(1999). Paternal filicide: A study of 10 men. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry,
44(1), 57-63.
Petersilia, J., Foote, J., & Crowell, N.A. (Eds.). (2001). Crime
victims with developmental disabilities: Report of the National Research
Council, Committee on Law and Justice. Washington, DC: National Academy
Press.
Resnick, P.J. (1969). Child murder by parents: A psychiatric review
of filicide. American Journal of Psychiatry, 126, 325-334.
Richards, C.E. (2000). The loss of innocents: Child killers and their
victims. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources.
Sobsey, D. (1994). Violence and abuse in the lives of people with
disabilities. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
Sobsey, D. (1995), The media and Robert Latimer. ARCH-Type, 13(3),
8-22.
Contents
.
|
