TRANSCRIPT
Filicide or the deliberate act of parents or parental figures killing their children is a tragic crime that experts say has not been adequately studied or addressed in Australia.
Despite a fall in the numbers of other forms of domestic homicide, filicide rates have held steady at around 20 cases per year.
Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety has released a landmark report, in partnership with the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network, examining instances of filicide from 2010 to 2018 within the context of domestic and family violence.
CEO Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine says Australia can and should be doing better at keeping vulnerable children safe.
“One of the things we found was that almost half the children killed by a parent were under two-years-old. So we're talking about children that they're most vulnerable in terms of their requirements for trust and care from parents, but we're also thinking about where are people coming into contact with these children in a way that might be able to help keep them safe.”
While a crime like filicide may seem unthinkable to most Australians, the new report shows that these killings rarely occur in a vacuum and are often rooted in more common cycles of abuse.
Despite about eight out of ten of cases containing child abuse, the report found none of the filicide offenders had prior convictions for offences against their children.
One of the key indicators of filicide identified in the report is a history of domestic and family violence which made up 76 per cent of the 113 cases of filicide reported from 2010 to 2018.
40 per cent of filicide perpetrators across the eight years were women but in instances related to family violence that went down to 32 per cent.
Dr Boyd-Caine says, while women can make up a significant percentage of perpetrators, filicide often occurs in the context of intimate partner violence which is disproportionately perpetuated by men.
“So in this report, two thirds of the perpetrators of filicide, of people who killed their children, were men. Now that means that a high proportion of the perpetrators were women. But what the data also shows is that in that context, most of those women were themselves experiencing family violence. So we're talking about children being killed in a context where intimate partner violence is part of what's happening at home.”
Dr Denise Buiton is a Senior Lecturer in social Justice & sociology at the University of Notre Dame Australia and has researched filicide extensively.
She says women's relatively high representation in cases of filicide compared to other forms of violence can partially be a result of some mental health factors as well as responses to unwanted pregnancies.
“Women are most likely to be those who commit neonaticide. So that's from unwanted pregnancies, for example. And often those are the cases that don't get reported on in the media, but certainly counts as part of those statistics. When it comes to older children though, filicide as a result of a child being unwanted is more likely to be a case of stepfathers. And things like spousal revenge is far more likely to kill children as an act of revenge or to punish a spouse or partner or former partner that's far more likely to be male offenders.”
However, she says the focus on the motivations of the parents can play into culture wars and other conversations that obscure the experiences of the child victims.
“I think there's a tendency to think of domestic and family violence as a primarily adult issue and children are not always regarded as victim survivors in their own right. For example, in the case of Jennifer and Jack Edwards, who were shot by their father, if you read through the coronial reports, it's really quite astonishing how the children's own experiences of violence, their fear of their father, their feeling of wanting to completely separate from him and have nothing to do with him because they feared him was just kind of dismissed by so many adults in authority or assumed to be the mother's interference in their points of view or a play at child custody.”
The filicide report found that most families had been in contact with at least one service prior to the filicide, including general health and child protection services.
The report recommends these, along with mental health and drug and alcohol-related support services, be fully funded to address some of the root triggers of the crime.
One of the ways to address household violence before it reaches a more tragic outcome like filicide can be having the skills to identify different kinds of abuse.
Dr Boyd-Caine says their research shows some migrants communities have been less able to recognise emotional abuse or financial abuse as forms of family violence.
“When we looked at people born in countries whose main language was not English, we saw, for example, that there's a good understanding about family violence in the context of serious and physical violence, but often less understanding about the way that family violence can occur in non-physical forms. So emotional abuse, financial abuse, the controlling behaviors that, in fact, the evidence tells us are really core and present elements of family violence. So there's a gap in understanding there that we need to really address.”
The new report also shows First Nations children make up 26 per cent of children killed by parental figures despite representing less than six per cent of the child population.
21 per cent of these victims were killed by a non-Indigenous parent.
Culturally-specific services like the 24-hour call-service 13YARN say they are ready and able to listen to concerns of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island young people in times of crisis.
National Manager Marjorie Anderson says the service is confidential and all operators have a deep personal understanding of the Indigenous experience.
“Because blackfellas are on the end of the line, they understand intergenerational trauma, they understand the complexities of communities and lateral violence and factions within communities. They understand families, they understand that Aboriginal families are much bigger families than non-Aboriginal families. So you get the help you need straight away. You're not in crisis having to educate somebody so you can get the help you need.”
Another key service that all young people can access across Australia if they're feeling unsafe is the Kids Helpline where children can call or access an online chat service in times of unease or crisis.
Tony Fitzgerald, virtual services manager at the Kids Helpline, says their lines are open and their counselors are happy to help address any crisis big or small.
“We're open for anyone. So a young person doesn't need to have any particular reason to call us and to connect with one of our counselors. There's no issue that's too big or too small. Obviously we have our own reporting threshold, so if our counselors identify that a young person is at risk of immediate harm or someone else is at risk of immediate harm, then we need to make some decisions about how and where we report that. But we'll always involve the young person in a conversation about what we need to do and why we need to do it.”
Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine says the best thing you can do if you suspect your family member or loved ones is experiencing forms of family and domestic violence is to listen and make them feel safe.
“There's clear evidence that many people experiencing domestic and family violence will never tell anyone about it. So the most important thing we can all do is make sure that we're not judgmental, make sure that we provide an open ear and are able to ask if someone is safe and ask what they need when they tell us they're not safe.”
If in need of emergency counselling, people aged five to 25 can call the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.
And for culturally appropriate Indigenous support call 13 YARN or 13 92 76.
