Not only a crime but a tragedy […] exploring the murder of adults with disabilities by their parents
| Pages | 6-21 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14668201211200763 |
| Date | 10 February 2012 |
| Published date | 10 February 2012 |
| Author | Hilary Brown |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Sociology |
Not only a crime but a tragedy [...]
exploring the murder of adults with
disabilities by their parents
Hilary Brown
Abstract
Purpose – This paper seeks to reconcile society’s need to apply strong sanctions to parents who are
responsible for the murder of a disabled adult while also recognising the stresses presentin their lives.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews six cases in which seven disabled adults were
killed by a parent in the UK between 1999 and 2009.
Findings – The review found that these were no ordinary crimes and nor were they motivated by malice,
but occurred against a backdrop of significant mental illness and distress. In addition, two of the parents
killed themselves as well as their adult child and another attempted suicide. The explanations offeredin
court to account for the murders included a combination of caregiver stress and mercy killing and the
courts struggled to find a consistent approach.
Research limitations/implications – The review is limited to cases reported in the press and only
considers information in the public domain. The portrayal of the issues in the media is integral to the
study.The cases reported in this paper are a sub-set of a larger sample of children and adults murdered
by caregivers during this period.
Originality/value – The paper compares and contrasts some features of these high-profile cases,
commenting on the way they were addressed in the courts and making recommendations as to how the
backdrop of significant mental ill-health could be taken into account in the way families are offered
support with a view to preventing further tragedies.
Keywords Abuse, Safeguarding, Vulnerable adults, Intellectual disability,Disabilities, Carers
Paper type Research paper
This paper has been written to consider what can be learned from the occasional, but very
shocking cases in which parents of disabled adults kill their disabled sons and daughters.
It explores some ways of understanding these desperate acts, reflects on the way these
cases are framed in the media and in the criminal justice system and suggests lessons that
might be fed back into what one campaigning group called a ‘ ‘despair-proof support
system’’[1]. The paper also explores how the Safeguarding Adults systems in England and
Wales (Brown, 2009) might address these issues and build better links in order to share
information and identify early warning signals.
The cases that are described in this paper formed a subset of a sample reviewed as part of a
small study of parents who murdered their disabled sons and daughters as children as well
as when they were adult. These are cases that came into the public domain in the UK during
the ten years between 1999 and 2009. This study examined material that was already in the
public domain alongside relevant literature on child deaths and mental ill-health, particularly
of mothers who had harmed their children in these extreme circumstances. Over a ten-year
period, a total of 13 cases (14 victims) were collated, six of the cases concerned vulnerable
adults (in all there were seven adult victims as one case involved two siblings). A longer
paper detailing these cases alongside the seven cases involving children under the age of
18, is in preparation, but broadly speaking the issues seemed similar regardless of the age
of the child/adult when they died.
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Hilary Brown is a Professor
of Social Care at
Canterbury Christ Church
University, Canterbury, UK.
The author is indebted to
Jay Aylett for advice about legal
arguments and helpful
frameworks for addressing the
issues.
These cases took place against the backdrop of a raft of wider public debates about social
and health care provision and ethical dilemmas (Ward, 2001), that proceed on the basis of
what Liz Sayce (of the Disability Rights Commission) termed, ‘‘some terrible assumptions
about the quality of disabled people’s lives’’ (Sayce, 2007). It is no wonder, therefore, that
disabled people criticise lenient sentences or a lack of accountability for these deaths and
are troubled by the ease with which they are explained away (see for example Disability
Now, 2006 or ‘‘This way of life’’ blog, 2010). Meanwhile, the press present mitigating factors
in stark contrast to the way they cover other murders, often shifting the focus onto the victim
and away from the perpetrator and casting doubt on the value of the life that has been lost.
But however one tries to counter this, these are no ordinary perpetrators either. Twoof the six
parents referred to in this paper killed themselves and a third made a suicide attempt shortly
after she had killed her son. The othersdid not tr y toevade justiceor cover up their involvement
or motivation. Taken together, these acts are like the flash on a camera, briefly lighting up a
window not only onto these troubled lives but also onto the lives of many other families whose
anonymous struggles against despair go un-noted. When the rhetoric dies down, it seems as
if the families whose children died, lived lives that consisted of a never-ending struggle but
succeeded in attracting public attention only when it was too late to help.
About the cases
Table I lists the six cases in which parents were responsible for ending their adult disabled
son or daughter’s life.
The adults referred to in this paper had a range of impairments, including autistic spectrum
disorders, learning disabilities, terminal illnesses and cerebral palsy.As far as can be ‘ ‘read’’
from press reports these families were all white British. There may be other cases that did not
receive public attention or that were codified in different ways so this list may not be
exhaustive.
Although there are patterns of child killing, depending on the age of the child, on which
parent kills, and on their motivation, killing an adult son or daughter is a rare event regardless
of whether the child has a disability or continues to live within their parents’ household. There
is no word for the killing of an adult child and according to Silverman and Kennedy (1998)
only 3 per cent of sons or daughters killed by their mothers were adult. There is little in the
literature that makes sense of these desperate acts so it has been necessary to ‘‘borrow’’
from what is known about the killing of children to begin to cast light on the motivations and
circumstances of parents who have been driven to such an extreme act.
‘‘Categories’’ of child murder by a parent
Stanton et al. (2000, p. 1452) state the importance of developing an understanding of these
phenomena based on ‘‘adequate description.’’ A number of different classifications are in
use, based on cross referencing the motivation to kill and the age of the child; perhaps the
murder of an adult child should be added to this lexicon.
Murders of children by mothers seem to have been studied in more depth than those
committed by fathers and in this subset of the murders of adult sons and daughters all were
committed by mothers, which is, in itself atypical. Murders of young children, including newly
born children often represent a response to intertwined internal and external factors, so for
example, they may be influenced by hormonal imbalance, post-natal depression or
psychosis, or they may be acts that respond to societal factors such as the stigma of
illegitimacy or community rejection (Scott, 1973). Murders of older children often take place
against a backdrop of ongoing child abuse, domestic violence or volatile parental behaviour,
so they may be seen as an extension of abusive parenting that has accidentally gone too far.
Others may be committed as a form of revenge particularly against a separating or divorcing
spouse (of which honour killings may be a specific form). Sometimes a parent acts in
response to triggers presented by the child for example their crying, perceived demands or
difficult behaviours and we can hypothesise that parents of adults with disabilities might also
sometimes be presented with demands that are hard, or feel, impossible to meet.
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