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HEALTH ETHICS TODAY
Altruistic Filicide: Bioethics or Criminology? Dick Sobsey, Ed.D 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 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.
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Updated September 2, 2010
Health Ethics Today
