Killing your children to hurt your partner: A South African perspective on the motivations for revenge filicide
Date
2022-10-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Abstract
The aim of the study was to investigate the offence characteristics
and motivations for revenge filicides. Revenge
filicide is an act where one parent kills their own offspring
for retribution to hurt and upset the other parent. The cases
of 20 revenge filicide murderers (14 male and six female)
were analysed to determine the motivations and offence
characteristics of revenge filicide offenders. It is the first
South African study to highlight the motivations and associated
characteristics in revenge filicides. Themes such as a
loss of social identity due to rejection; extreme rage type
anger; external locus of control; sadism; a desire to cause
pain and a need to inflict harm are highlighted in this article.
The initial emotional response may escalate from mild anger
to a level of narcissistic rage which eventually culminates
in the murdering of the child to punish and hurt the other
parent and to restore control.
Description
CITATION: Moen, M., & Bezuidenhout, C. (2022). Killing your children to hurt your partner: A South African perspective on the motivations for revenge filicide. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 1–15. doi.10.1002/jip.1603.
The original publication is available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
The original publication is available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
Keywords
Anger, Child murder, Narcissistic rage, Parent kills child, Rage, Revenge filicide
Citation
Moen, M., & Bezuidenhout, C. (2022). Killing your children to hurt your partner: A South African perspective on the motivations for revenge filicide. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 1–15. doi.10.1002/jip.1603.