Tuesday 28 December 2010

NEONATICIDE: Keli Lane: Sins of the mother: the tragedy of neonaticide

John Elder :  December 19, 2010
    Keli Lane outside the Sydney Supreme Court during the trial. Photo: Brendan Esposito: Keli Lane outside the Sydney Supreme Court during the trial.
     
    THE day you are born is the day you are most likely to be the victim of homicide. This cheerless statistic holds true whether you live in Stockholm or South Yarra. The perpetrator will almost certainly be your mother.
    She will most likely be under 25, unmarried, still living at home or in poor circumstances, either still at school or unemployed, emotionally immature and astonishingly secretive. She has carried you to term without telling a soul of your existence. And somehow the parents with whom she resides never suspect she is with child.
    Now that you are born, it's not depression or psychosis that moves her to murder you. Mental illness rarely plays a part in this sort of killing. Nor is she overwhelmed by the feeling that life is simply too harsh for such a defenceless little creature for whom she cares a great deal.
    This is the profile of neonaticide, the murder of a newborn in its first 24 hours of life, and a form of infanticide peculiar to industrialised countries. Most people in Australia have probably never heard of neonaticide. There is no separate provision for neonaticide in Australian law. People are either charged with manslaughter or murder, or more rarely infanticide.
    Last week, former water polo champion Keli Lane was found guilty of murdering her newborn daughter, Tegan. A majority verdict of 11 to one found that Lane had left Sydney's Auburn Hospital on September 14, 1996, killed her two-day-old baby, disposed of her body and proceeded to a friend's wedding for the evening. Tegan's body has never been found.
    Two weeks ago, in a lower-profile case, a Brisbane woman, Jem Merrilee Rose Dean, 24, was convicted of the manslaughter of her newborn. She was 19 when she arrived at a hospital complaining of cramps. She was found to be 33 weeks pregnant. Dean returned home.
    The following day she called an ambulance and told paramedics she'd given birth to a stillborn child. They found the baby submerged in an upstairs toilet, alive but brain damaged. The child lingered for 12 months but eventually died of pneumonia. Dean was sentenced to five years' jail, wholly suspended for time served. The presiding judge said Dean had a borderline intellectual impairment and believed the baby to have been stillborn.
    Because of the counter-intuitive nature of neonaticide - the breaking of such a fundamental taboo - it's difficult to believe it occurs in Australia at a rate that forensic psychiatrists and sociologists believe is underestimated and certainly under-reported.
    Over the past three years, newborn babies have been discovered under the following circumstances: face down in a toilet at an Adelaide hospitality school; in a pile of rubbish at a Perth recycling plant; in a shopping bag at a Shepparton bus stop; in the grounds of a high school in South Australia's Riverland region; wrapped in newspaper and left in the driveway of a home in a South Australian country town; on a western Sydney rubbish tip; at a Brisbane water treatment plant; and, in August this year, in a shoebox in the garden of a Sydney apartment block.
    In all but two of these cases, the mother has never been found. In each of them, the umbilical cord was still attached, and torn not cut, indicating a panicked separation of mother from child. An autopsy of the little girl found in the shoebox proved inconclusive, with no cause of death pinpointed.
    The reality, says Dr Joe Tucci, chief executive of the Australian Childhood Foundation, is that each year ''there are an unconfirmed number of very small babies that are killed and disposed of without any detection, and the rationale for doing that is the child isn't wanted''.
    Tucci says this ''dark figure'' in child homicide statistics exists for the grisly reason that ''it's easier to hide the body of a very small baby and it's very easy for a very small baby to fall through cracks in the system''.
    He says there are fewer contact points between the community and a newborn. ''If an adult is killed, there are friends and family who miss that person. He doesn't show up at work. But if a mother has carried and delivered her baby in secrecy, it's not hard to make it disappear. If we had some sense of prevalence of hidden pregnancies, we'd know which ones went to term and what happened to the babies afterwards. There is no framework to even try to research that.''
    Mairead Dolan is professor of forensic psychiatry at Monash University and assistant clinical director (research) at the Victorian Institute for Forensic Mental Health. She is co-author of a draft paper, Maternal infanticide and neonaticide in Australia: a forensic evaluation.
    Dolan says that few neonaticides are reported because bodies are never found or reported to authorities, or the cause of a death remains unknown. She also says there is an acceptance that coroners sometimes incorrectly rule a death accidental in actual homicide cases. ''It's also accepted they can be reluctant to think the worst without supporting evidence,'' she says.
    With about 10 per cent of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) cases estimated to be potential homicides and the absence of birth certificates for 2.8 per cent of children who die, Dolan, in her research paper, says official figures are often regarded as the "tip of the iceberg".
    (Last week, the British Medical Association published a paper that found the number of newborns in France killed within 24 hours of birth is at least five times higher than official statistics.)
    Tasmanian Labor senator Helen Polley, who is campaigning for the introduction of baby haven laws in Australia to counter neonaticide and child abandonment, says at least 10 babies are abandoned by their mothers every year in Australia.
    Baby haven laws have been enacted in most of the US's 50 states over the past eight years. They provide for a mother to abandon her newborn baby without fear of being charged with criminal abandonment. In the US and European experience, the abandonment usually takes place in a hospital or at a police or fire station, where special hatches have been built into the walls. There are limits to the age of the children that can be abandoned, and there are frequently provisions for the mother to be reunited under certain conditions.
    The Australian Medical Association has backed the senator's call. State community welfare departments have routinely dismissed the idea, claiming they already have services that provide for mothers at risk.
    But as Dr John Scott, associate professor at the University of New England's School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, points out: ''How can intervention occur when something is concealed? The other problem is, some sections of the population may have more opportunity to conceal than others. By nature, welfare workers tend to deal with socially disadvantaged groups, but clearly this practice occurs right across the social spectrum and there is even some evidence to indicate it may be more common among affluent groups.''
    This week, the new Minister for Community Services, Mary Wooldridge told The Sunday Age the Victorian government would consider the viability of baby haven laws as part of a broader investigation into how women who conceal their pregnancies might be accessed and cared for.
    Dolan says there is no data to support the effectiveness of baby haven laws in reducing the risk of neonaticide. It's uncertain whether the mothers who kill their babies outright are of the same mind as those who simply abandon them.
    Would the baby haven laws have made a difference in the case of Keli Lane? The former water polo champion was last week found guilty of murdering her newborn daughter 14 years ago.
    The facts of the case fit the neonaticide profile almost perfectly, save for one anomaly: Lane, then a 21-year-old student living with her parents, was alleged to have left Auburn Hospital with baby Tegan two days after giving birth. Tegan was never seen again, and four hours later Keli Lane was celebrating with friends and family at a wedding. Strictly speaking, neonaticide is said to occur in the first 24 hours of life. It's also rare for a neonaticide victim to be given a name.
    However, Professor Phillip Resnick, the Cleveland forensic psychiatrist who first identified neonaticide in a landmark research paper 40 years ago, told The Sunday Age by email that the Lane case ''would fit the characteristics of neonaticide rather than the killing of an older child. I also think that the baby being given a name was related to expectations in the hospital.''
    He says secrecy in the hiding of the pregnancy, or psychological denial of the pregnancy, are diagnostic characteristics.
    In a paper published last year, Resnick found that an infant's chances of becoming a homicide victim during the first year of life are greatest if he or she is the second or later-born child of a teenage mother. This was according to an analysis of birth and death certificates by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
    In fact, Tegan was Keli Lane's second child. She gave birth to a girl in March 1995, a year before Tegan was born, at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown, and secretly gave her up for adoption. Three years after Tegan's disappearance, Lane gave birth to a third child, believed to be a boy. He was also given up for adoption. None of Lane's family or friends were aware she was pregnant with any of the children, although her water polo teammates later said in court they'd had suspicions.
    The Crown claimed Lane, daughter of a former policeman, murdered Tegan because she was desperate to pursue her sporting career unhindered by a child. Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, told the jury Lane was also desperate to get to her friend's wedding, and killed Tegan between leaving the hospital and joining her boyfriend at the ceremony.
    The key argument made by Lane's barrister, Keith Chapple, SC, was that the absence of a body provided reasonable doubt. Even if Tegan was dead, he argued, there was no way to know how she died and to what degree, if any, Lane had contributed to that death. It was a powerful argument and the jury took more than a week to decide she was guilty, by a majority verdict of 11 to one.
    Lane, 35, who at one point told a coronial inquiry that she'd never given birth to Tegan, later told police she gave her daughter to the man she believed to be her natural father, which whom she'd had a brief and secret affair. She knew him as either Andrew Norris or Morris. The man has never been found.
    Chapple also argued that Lane's alleged motive was ludicrous. ''So, it's 'Hurry up, I've got to get to a wedding and play water polo', is that it?'' he asked with a rhetorical flourish.
    It seems too callous. How can a woman throw her baby away as if it's nothing, and then immediately go dancing?
    Consider the story of American girl next door Melissa Drexler, probably the most notorious case of neonaticide on record. In June 1997, 18-year-old Drexler arrived at her New Jersey high school prom. Soon after, she delivered a baby boy in the toilet. She placed him in a garbage bag and dropped him into the sanitary receptacle. She then returned to the dance floor. The US media dubbed her the ''Prom Mom''. Drexler plea-bargained her charge down from murder to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years. She served three.
    STILL, the question remains: if these woman aren't mentally ill (and in most cases they are not), what drives them to kill their babies? Poverty and social isolation, as well as shame, panic and an iron-willed determination to keep their lives baby-free and uncomplicated, appear to be contributing factors in many instances. But the causes and psychological reasoning - what goes on in the minds of these women - is only vaguely understood.
    John Scott says it is easy to dispose of an ''object'' that we have no emotional links with. Moreover, he says, if the object threatens to block social opportunities, crime becomes a viable option.
    ''It is easier to kill animals because they are not 'human'. At what stage does an infant become 'human'? Not an easy answer here and [it] is likely to vary between individuals and cultures,'' he says in an email.
    ''Part of being human is having a social identity and part of this identity is formed from the onset of the pregnancy being made public. If this status is not made public, is it possible for a social identity to adequately develop? If this identity is less developed, it may be easier to commit the crime.''
    Scott says that social factors are strong influences on women committing neonaticide. For example, he says, rates are likely higher in some American states because of social attitudes towards unmarried pregnancy. He also suggests that ''in an age when men and women are marrying later in life to establish careers, there may be more social pressures exerted to engage in this sort of behaviour.''
    Does brain development play a part? A study by the US National Institutes of Health suggests that people under the age of 25 are more prone to risky behaviour, and their problem-solving skills are not totally developed.
    Mairead Dolan says there is some evidence of abnormal brain pathology in males who commit homicide, but this has largely been associated with impulsive aggressive or psychopathic personality pathology. She says there are no studies specifically looking at this issue in women, largely because there are significant differences in the prevalence rates of homicides across genders.
    In October, Craig Kinsley, professor of neuroscience at the University of Richmond, Virginia, was the co-author of a report that discussed the motivation to take care of a baby, and the hallmark traits of motherhood, might be less of an instinctive response and more of a result of active brain building.
    The mothers in the relevant study who most enthusiastically rated their babies as special, beautiful, ideal, perfect and so on were significantly more likely to develop bigger mid-brains than the less awestruck mothers in key areas linked to maternal motivation, rewards and the regulation of emotions.
    More controversially, Kinsley and student Haddis Tujuba are in the early stages of research that has found mothers develop a set of ''maternal neurons'' - a cluster of brain cells created during pregnancy - that operate like ''good mother'' switches in the brain.
    It appears that a certain number of these maternal neurons need to be switched on for a woman to show good mothering skills, Kinsley says. The research has so far been restricted to rodents and small mammals.
    He says the research shows that ''the mothers with a fewer number of 'maternal neurons' tended to neglect or abuse their offspring, while those animals with the lowest numbers actually savaged or killed their own young".
    Kinsley told The Sunday Age that the brain sometimes doesn't work in a way that society demands. What we regard as wrong behaviour is sometimes coldly efficient in terms of how nature works. ''To wit, an animal that kills its weakest offspring so that the remaining ones can live and have a better chance at thriving … In the end, we are a species with an ancient brain living in an age where we can ponder the whys of our behaviour.''
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/sins-of-the-mother-the-tragedy-of-neonaticide-20101218-191ee.html

    Sunday 26 December 2010

    FILICIDE: Indiana: Latisha Ann Lawson

    An Indiana woman told police investigators she fed her 3-year-old son olive oil and vinegar until he stopped breathing and died, then wrapped his body in a blanket and hid it for more than a year, according to court documents.
    Fort Wayne police arrested Latisha Ann Lawson this week after family members reported her and her two children missing. Officers found Lawson and her 10-year-old daughter living in a house that a church had provided for them in recent weeks.
    They also found a young boy's remains inside a tote bag at the home, and a coroner on Wednesday ruled strangulation as the child's cause of death. Police are awaiting DNA test results, but have said the remains are believed to be those of Lawson's son, Jezaih King.
    Allen County coroner investigator Becky Stuttle said her office didn't try to determine when the boy died, but that the body was in a state of decomposition.
    Lawson, 31, told investigators that in November 2009 she fed Jezaih the olive oil and vinegar because she was frustrated with his temper tantrums, according to Allen County court documents. She said she then put his wrapped body in a closet at the home where she was then living, the documents say.
    Lawson remained jailed Wednesday on a felony charge of neglect of a dependent causing death. A judge scheduled a court hearing for next week after ruling Tuesday that there was probable cause for her arrest. She didn't yet have a defense attorney Wednesday.
    Lawson's daughter was taken into protective custody.
    Elisha Harris, pastor of the Oakridge Temple Church and Ministry, said Lawson had approached the church, saying she and her daughter had no place to live. He arranged for them to stay in the house that was being renovated into a shelter.
    "After some discussion, our church decided to give her a place to stay," Harris told The Journal Gazette. "We were just trying to help her from being hurt, from being out in the cold."
    Harris said he didn't remember Lawson having a bag large enough to hold a body.
    "When she came there, she just had a few bags; she didn't have nothing that big," he said. "Apparently, she must have gone back somewhere to get these other things."
    Harris said he heard from others in his congregation that Lawson was running from her family or that she wanted no part of her family.
    Bobbie Piper, who lives next to the home where Lawson was most recently staying, said she saw no signs of trouble.
    "We only knew of the daughter, we never knew about the son," she said.
    http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/22/1985564_ind-mom-says-she-hid-young-sons.html#ixzz19FZywlJB

    NEONATICIDE: France: Survey

    New light shed on mothers who kill their babies

    parisbyuntipografico.jpgIt seems to dismiss the idea that it is young, poor, unemployed single women who tend to kill their new-born babies.
    Researchers reviewed the case records of 26 courts in three regions of France that involved the death of a child in its first few days of life between 1996 and 2000 and found the cases made up almost a third (27%) of all intentional violent deaths during this period. They also seemed to show that the rate of newborn killings is actually five times higher than official statistics in France record.
    The average age of the mothers involved was 26 and a third had at least three children already. Two-thirds had not used contraception while the rest had used it irregularly for this particular pregnancy. More than half lived with the dead child's father and two thirds were employed in jobs similar to those of women in the general population. There was also no evidence that these mothers were mentally ill or had been abused as children.
    However, half of the mothers were depressed and what seemed to distinguish them were low levels of self-esteem, emotional immaturity, dependency on others and fear of abandonment.
    The authors commented: "Our findings suggest that preventative action, targeting only young, poor, unemployed and single women or women in pregnancy denial may not be appropriate."

    FILICIDE (Multiple): Spain

    A nine year old and an 11 year old were apparently killed by their own mother in Valladolid,Castilla y Leon last week.
    A 40 year old woman has been arrested.The woman was separated from the father of the children and had been suffering depression.It seems that she had given the children tablets to kill them and then she confessed what she had done to a neighbour ,who called the police.
    The woman is in the custody of the National Police but has been taken to the psychiatric ward of Hospital Clinico Universitario in Valladolid.Once she is in a better state of mind then she will give a statement before a judge.
    Initially it seems that this mother did kill her children while her state of mind was deranged.However the cause of death will now be decided by a post mortem.

    FILICIDE: England: Shayna Bharuchi cuts out the heart of her daughter, four, as she listens to recording of Koran in ritual killing'

    A mother has been arrested after a four year old girl was found stabbed to death with her heart and other organs cut out and strewn around her flat.
    The 35-year-old woman was allegedly sitting in a her kitchen chanting verses of the Koran as her daughter's disembowelled corpse lay next to her.
    The little girl's heart and other organs were found in different rooms around the flat in Clapton, east London.
     Shayna Bharuchi, 35, was allegedly sitting in a her kitchen chanting verses of the Koran as her daughter Nusayba's disembowelled corpse lay next to her.
    The woman, believed to be from Somalia, had her MP3 on full blast as she listened to the Muslim holy book.
    The mother, who is understood to have two teenage children of 14 and 16, has since been sectioned under the Mental Health Act and is in a secure unit as police yesterday continued to guard the third-floor premises on the estate.
    The gruesome scene was discovered by the girl's father, Jerome Negney, when he arrived home to the flat on Thursday to find his partner clutching a kitchen knife.
    The man, believed to be a Muslim convert, dialled 999 and paramedics pronounced the girl dead at the scene.  Police said next of kin have been informed.
    One elderly neighbour said last night: 'Nobody knew her very well but the children seemed very nice. However I used to be awoken by terrible screaming of a woman's voice in the middle of the night which was a regular occurence.
    'Sometimes the screams would last for about 10 minutes.'

    Another neighbour, who lives in the downstairs flat and asked not to be named, said: 'I was feeding my daughter her lunch at about 3pm and suddenly heard horrific screaming. It is shocking and so upsetting.'
    He said the couple have lived in the flat for about a year.
    A post-mortem examination will take place on Saturday at Poplar mortuary in east London.
    The Metropolitan Police's Child Abuse Investigation Command is leading the murder inquiry. They are not believed to be looking for anybody else.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339665/Mother-cuts-heart-daughter-4-listens-recording-Koran-ritual-killing.html#ixzz19FCBJLK6

    FILICIDE (multiple): Wales: Melanie Stevens

    THE father of one of two children suffocated by their mother before she hanged herself has paid tribute to the “beautiful little boys”.
    Nicholas Smith, the father of two-year-old Izaak Stevens, described his son and five-year-old brother Phillip as “lovers of trains, footballs, cars, puddles and tickles”.
    The boys were found in their bedroom at the family home in Trawsfynydd, North Wales, with mother Melanie Stevens, 36, on Sunday evening, after concerned relatives raised the alarm.
    It’s not yet clear why Ms Stevens smothered the children before killing herself, but investigations are ongoing.
    Ms Stevens also had three older children aged 16, 14 and 12, with ex-husband Peter Akister, who has called the deaths “terrible”.
    In a statement released through North Wales Police, Mr Smith said: “Izaak and Pip (Phillip). Two such beautiful boys, lovers of trains, footballs, cars, puddles and tickles.
    “Izaak and Pip absorbed all the love they were given from all who knew them and returned it a million times over.”
    Tributes have also been left on social networking website Facebook as well as at the family’s T Capel home in Trawsfynydd.
    On Facebook Catherine Kate Egginton wrote: “See you later honey.
    “Hope your pain is all gone and my dad’s up there if you need anything.”
    Another tribute read: “Rest in peace Melanie, alongside your two boys. Trawsfynydd, Gwynedd, has been shocked by this. With the angels now.”
    On Tuesday Gwynedd Council announced its Local Safeguarding Children Board would be mounting its own investigation into the deaths. The body will be probing whether any lessons can be learnt from the deaths. Investigations are held where a child is the victim of serious abuse, is killed or commits suicide.
    Ms Stevens had lived in Trawsfynydd for about 18 months, after moving from nearby Blaenau Ffestiniog.
    Detective Chief Inspector John Hanson has said Ms Stevens’ death was not being treated as suspicious and forensic examinations were ongoing at the property.
    North Wales Police also has family liaison officers working with other family members affected by the tragedy.
    In his tribute to the boys, Mr Smith continued: “They will never lose their innocent joy at the wonders of the world around them, they will forever be two beautiful little boys.”
    Another Facebook message read: “The whole of North Wales is shocked by this.”
    The incident is one of several over the past decade or so in which parents have murdered their children in North Wales before taking their own life.
    In 2003 Keith Young gassed himself and his four sons Joshua, seven, Thomas, six, Callum, five, and Daniel, three, in a car on the Horseshoe Pass.
    And five years later in 2008 martial arts expert Brian Philcox, 52, gassed himself, daughter Amy, seven, and her brother Owen, three, in a farm truck near Llanrwst.
    Cardiff University criminologist professor Michael Levi said parents kill their children out of a sense of desperation when they “can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel”.
    He said: “People just sometimes get exhausted and can’t face up to their situation.
    “But a lot of people feel that way and don’t kill themselves and their children.”
    Professor Levi said explanations in these kinds of cases can vary from relationship to financial problems.
    “There’s always a reason why people do it, but taken together it’s just a sense that you can’t cope.
    “It’s depression in a sense that you look forward, but can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.”
    Local Trawsfynydd councillor Thomas Griffith Ellis said the sombre atmosphere that has pervaded the village since the deaths remains.
    “It’s quite depressing. The little children were murdered and all the people want to say how sad it is that such a thing has happened.
    “People are confused as to why she might have done it because you don’t hear of a woman committing suicide in this way very often.”
    Ms Stevens’ mother Pauline, who lives in the West Midlands, has so far declined to comment on the tragedy.
    The father of Phillip, who was a pupil at Ysgol Edmwnd Prys, Gellilydan, three miles away, has not been identified.
    Further light may not now be shed on why Ms Stevens, who locals characterised as a loving mother, murdered her children until an inquest is held next year.
    http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/12/23/izaak-and-pip-two-such-beautiful-boys-lovers-of-trains-footballs-cars-puddles-and-tickles-91466-27873686/#ixzz19F0sdox3

    FILICIDE: Texas: Elizabeth Johnson

    The mother of missing baby Gabriel is heard in newly released telephone recordings describing how she suffocated her son until he turned blue, stuffed him in his diaper bag and threw him in the trash.
    The audio recordings come nearly a year after Gabriel was last seen on Dec. 26, 2009 with his mother, Elizabeth Johnson, in San Antonio, Texas.
    Johnson, who is currently jailed in Arizona on kidnapping and child abuse charges that she has pleaded not guilty to, has long insisted that her 8-month-old son Gabriel is alive and that she handed him over to another couple in a San Antonio park.
    But in the recordings released late last week by the Tempe Police Department, Johnson tells a different story.
    "Gabriel is in the dumpster, I killed him this morning," Johnson is heard telling Logan McQueary, Gabriel's father, on Dec. 27.
    http://abcnews.go.com/US/baby-gabriels-mom-admits-killing-son-audio-recordings/story?id=12440607&tqkw=&tqshow=GMA

    NEONATICIDE: Review

    Media reports of women killing their newborn babies always rocket to the top of websites' most-read lists. The prospect of moms killing newborns is so grotesque it's as if everyone is wondering the same thing: who are these mad mommies?
    Turns out they're not necessarily the psychotic nut jobs we think they are. Low maternal self-esteem and emotional immaturity are behind many of the killings, according to new research published online in the fetal and neonatal edition of the Archives of Disease in Childhood, a journal of the British Medical Association. (More on Time.com: A Baby is Born, His Mother Dies; Read About It on Facebook)
    “The public perception comes from tabloids,” says Anne Tursz, research director at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Paris, where the study was based. “The fact is that the international literature on neonaticide is very limited.”
    Tursz and researcher Jon Cook looked at case records from 26 French courts that involved the death of a child within the first day of life between 1996 and 2000. The cases had come to trial by 2007 and included maternal psychiatric assessments, which Tursz and Cook used to develop a profile of the sort of woman who commits neonaticide, killing her newborn within 24 hours of birth.
    The stereotype is that of a young, poor, unemployed, single woman. Yet when the researchers analyzed the 17 court cases in which the women had been identified, they learned that the average age of women who murdered their babies was 26. None displayed obvious symptoms of mental illness, and none had reported being abused as a child. A third had at least three children already; two-thirds had not used birth control to try to prevent a pregnancy. More than half the women lived with the dead infant's father, and most were employed. (More on Time.comIn Zahra Baker's Case, Postpartum Depression Exacted a Heavy Toll)
    Not surprisingly, all the women had hidden their pregnancies, and most gave birth in secret, all by themselves. Almost half the women were depressed. Mostly, though, they were scared.
    “They were terrified of being left by their husband [or the father],” says Torsz, who points out that although the study focused on French women, there's no reason why the findings wouldn't apply to women in other countries, too.
    "Feeling very much alone, and for nearly half of them, depressed, [these women] probably did not have complete control over their lives or their sexuality," write the authors. "Neonaticide thus appears as a solution when an unwanted pregnancy risks creating a family scandal, or the loss of one's partner or a satisfying lifestyle. (More on Time.com10-Year-Old in Spain Is Not the First or Youngest Child Mom)
    "Our findings suggest that preventive action, targeting only young, poor, unemployed and single women, or women in pregnancy denial, may not be appropriate," they add.
    Neonaticide thankfully doesn't happen often, but it actually occurs more frequently than you'd think, according to the researchers, who found that it is five times more common than estimates reflect.
    Of the 80 deaths determined to be intentional, the researchers found, 27 — a third — involved babies killed during their first day of life.
    The authors noted a "sizeable underestimate" in the official estimates of such killings; while statistics reported neonaticides at 0.39 per 100,000 births for the same regions over the same period, court data indicated a more accurate number was 2.1 per 100,000, or five times higher.


    Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2010/12/22/what-kind-of-mom-kills-her-baby-its-not-who-you-might-think/#ixzz19EuIz7zA

    FILICIDE (Multiple): Australia: Mum loses appeal over gassing murder

    Christine Flatley : December 23, 2010
      AAP
      A woman who gassed her children to death in the family car has lost an appeal against her conviction for murder.
      The 43-year-old woman, who cannot be identified, was found guilty after a trial in the Supreme Court in Brisbane earlier this year of murdering her six-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter at their home at Sandstone Point, near Bribie Island.
      She was also found guilty of the attempted murder of her 16-year-old son, and was sentenced to life in jail.
      During the trial, the Brisbane court was told the mother decided to kill herself and the children as an act of revenge towards her ex-husband.
      She had been angry, the court was told, after being issued with a Family Court order stating they would spend Christmas Day with their dad.
      The mother gave the children crushed sleeping tablets before putting them in the back seat of the car, attaching a garden hose to the exhaust, and switching on the ignition.
      The bodies of the children, who died from carbon monoxide poisoning, were found on November 22, 2002.
      The woman took her case to the Court of Appeal in Brisbane in November, arguing her conviction was unsound because she was suffering from diminished responsibility at the time.
      Her lawyer, Michael Byrne QC, also argued that information given to the jury about how one of the psychiatrists came to be involved in the case could have been prejudicial.
      He said the correct verdict should have been one of manslaughter, which should carry with it a sentence of between eight and 12 years' jail.
      However the crown argued the evidence about the woman's state of mind at the time supported a conviction for murder.
      In a written judgment handed down on Thursday, the Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the appeal.
      In his reasons Justice Hugh Fraser said the evidence about the psychiatrist could not have contributed to a miscarriage of justice.
      Justice Fraser also found the verdict was sound because the woman had not proved she was unable to control her actions.\
      http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/mum-loses-appeal-over-gassing-murder-20101223-1963o.html

      Monday 20 December 2010

      FILICIDE (multiple): Wales: Melanie Stevens

      Monday, 20 December 2010
      A woman is believed to have killed two of her children before taking her own life.
      Mother-of-five Melanie Stephens, 36, is thought to have suffocated Philip, five, and two-year-old Isaac and then hanged herself at their home in north Wales.
      Police forced their way into the property in Trawsfynydd, Gwynedd, at around 8pm last night after frantic relatives were unable to get in.
      A North Wales Police spokeswoman said: "Inside the property police discovered the bodies of an adult and two young children. At this early stage it is not possible to state how the occupants died.
      "The coroner and next of kin have been informed."
      A Home Office pathologist is conducting post-mortem examinations to establish the cause of deaths, although police say they are not treating them as suspicious.
      Ms Stephens had lived at the house in Chapel Street for about two years, having moved from the nearby town of Blaenau Ffestiniog.
      Philip, known as Pip, attended primary school at Ysgol Edmwnd Prys.
      Her three older children are thought to live with their father.
      Residents in the village, which has about 700 residents, said the family seemed "happy and pleasant".
      A neighbour, who did not want to be named, said: "Obviously everybody in the village is shocked. But nobody knows yet what caused this tragedy.
      "I didn't know her very well because she wasn't from the village and I don't think she had many family here.
      "But you would see her in the street and she would always say hello. They were a very pleasant family and seemed very happy. It's a terribly sad thing."
      Gwynedd councillor Thomas Griffith Ellis said: "The death of a mother and young children is a terrible thing but at Christmas it is even more shocking.
      "I didn't know the woman but she lived on the main street next to the chapel, so I would see her coming and going to the shops.
      "She always said hello as she passed but never stopped to chat.
      "I don't know what has happened, there's been no suggestion why such a terrible thing has happened to a family."

      Saturday 18 December 2010

      FILICIDE (multiple): Ontario: Elaine Campione

      Barrie, Ontario resident Elaine Campione drowned her two daughters, Serena, 3 and Sophia, 1, in the bathtub.  She confessed all to police and told them that her motivation was “hatred for and revenge against” her ex-husband, Leo.
      So, back in November, a jury convicted her of first-degree murder.  She’s now looking at 25 years behind bars.
      So, what’s so unusual about that other than the horrific nature of her crime?  Well, what’s so unusual is the conduct of the trial judge Alfred Stong post-verdict.
      He said, “It is more than disconcerting to think that if Campione had not been so abused, so used and discarded as a person, her two daughters could still be alive…” Judge Stong was determined that even if it is Campione that gets locked up, Canadians would know that the real villain, morally speaking, is Leo Campione, the father of the dead girls (even though his alleged abusiveness was entirely based on his wife’s allegations and never proved), and it is actually the “discarded” Elaine Campione who is the victim.
      Judge Stong felt such personal animus against the grieving father that he wanted to deny Mr. Campione and his parents their opportunity to read a victim-impact statement, standard practice even with mandatory- sentencing cases. He only relented under strong pressure from the prosecutor, who reminded the judge that the murdered girls had been “an extremely important part of [Mr. Campione's] life.”
      The judge’s attitude is shameful. But what can you expect from someone who has been trained – literally, judges take structured learning programs steeped in feminist myths and misandric conspiracy theories – that women are never abusive or violent unless they have been driven to it by an abusive male. Judge Stong just could not get it into his head – he alluded to the “unimaginable facts of this case” – that a woman could kill her children without a motivation involving a controlling male that somehow drove her to the act.
      What had Leo Campione done that was so heinous as to force his wife to destroy their two little girls?  Apparently he’d divorced her.  She claimed some non-specific form of abuse, but no evidence beyond her word was ever produced to back up her claims.
      And yet that was all Judge Stong needed to all but convict, not the girls’ admitted killer, but their distraught father.  The only thing more remarkable than this judge’s hatred for his own sex is how prevalent his attitude is.  As Kay points out, it’s literally taught to judges, but my guess is that’s overkill; my guess is that they’d learn it without being formally taught.  That’s because the notion that women are witless tools of men is all around us.  Some days we breathe it like air.
      Much of our concept of domestic violence (of which Judge Stong’s attitude is but one tiny offshoot) is based on exactly that.  According to that concept, men are taught from an early age to be violent toward women and to do so to control them; men’s violence toward women is winked at and “flies under the radar” of public policy and comment; women aren’t violent toward men, or, if they are, it’s OK because of the men’s bad behavior; therefore women who are violent need not be treated or punished for their behavior, but men, whether violent or not, must be.  So police are taught to arrest the man when there’s a DV complaint irrespective of the facts of the case.
      Now, next to none of that reflects the actual realities of domestic violence.  What it reflects is the reality of radical feminist ideology about the sexes - that women don’t harm men or children.  You can read that any day of the week several times a day.
      And what the Campione case shows, as have many others, is that that ideology, so divorced from known facts and rationality, has consequences.  Of course the intention behind the ideology was that it have consequences for men.  Those radical feminists have never made a secret of their desire to get as many men as possible separated from their wives, lovers and children and into prison if at all possible.
      Whatever you may think of those motivations, the Campione case shows the even darker side of society’s dogged determination to excuse female violence.  Leo Campione is, after all, alive; it’s his kids who aren’t.
      You see, Elaine Campione and her dangerous personality were well known to child welfare agencies, but they deemed her a “safe parent” anyway and two small children paid the ultimate price.
      In the United States, mothers do twice as much abuse and neglect of children each year as do fathers.  Those figures from the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services remain the same year after year.  But when fathers’ rights advocates try to get even a semblance of equality in parenting time, they’re met with the cry “fathers are violent” from the anti-father crowd.  That claim is then dutifully swallowed hook, line and sinker by policy-makers.  You can’t make this stuff up.  Truly you can’t.
      Kay adds,
      Everyone involved in this fiasco should be locked up in a room and forced to review the case of Zachary Turner, the thirteen-month old baby who was drugged and drowned in Newfoundland in 2003 by his psychotic mother, Shirley, while she was out on bail for the third time on charges of murdering Zachary’s father. And after that forced to review the case of Toronto baby Jordan Heikamp, who in 2001 was starved to death by his mother under the blind eyes of the Catholic Children’s Aid Society (no jail time) and Toronto baby Sara Cao, abused to death in 2001 by her mother Elizabeth. Christie Blatchford, who covered that case, said the mother (again no jail time) “was treated by the system, and in the main by the media, as a pitiful [woman], worthy of sympathy…”
      Little Sophia and Serena Campione did not have to die. They were allowed to die because of a belief system that denies the truth of human nature. Both men and women are capable of aggression.
      http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=11496

      FILICIDE: Nelly Vaequez-Salazar

      A Waukegan woman,who initially pleaded innocent to first degree murder charges for stabbing her 6 year old daughter to death ,has had change of heart and pleaded guilty.
      Nelly Varquez-Salazar, the 27 year old mother,was anticipated to reiterate psychological instability as her defense for murdering her child has decided to change her plea to guilty right before her schedule to go to court hearing and face Lake County Circuit Judge John Phillips.
      According to police investigation,Vazquez-Salazar had stabbed her little girl,Evelyn Vazquez,11 times in the neck, face and arms on April 7, 2008. Officers further revealed, Varquez-Salazar’s reason for stabbing her daughter to death,as the little was “possessed” by a demon who had tried to kill her.
      Prosecutors told the (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald that the suspect will be facing a maximum of 30 years in prison when she returns to court Jan. 31 for sentencing.
      http://www.citystatetimes.com/1573/a-waukegan-mother-change-plea-of-innocence-to-guilty-for-stabbing-6-year-old-daughter/

      FILICIDE: Tennessee

      -- Beth Warren: 529-2383
      Infant deaths in Memphis and Tennessee due to abuse or neglect declined in 2009, a federal study indicates.
      Police reports and the federal study released Thursday found that 14 children died from abuse or neglect in 2008 -- more than double the previous year. That number dipped to eight in 2009, said Memphis police Sgt. Karen Rudolph.
      Nationally, the death toll rose slightly from 1,720 to 1,770, according to the federal report.
      There isn't any research to explain spikes in child abuse and neglect deaths, said Jennifer Nichols, chief prosecutor of the Shelby County District Attorney's Office Special Victims Unit.
      Locally and nationally, children in the most danger are those under age 4, an age group that accounts for 80 percent of last year's deaths, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration For Children and Families.
      The most common perpetrator -- the mother.
      Nationally, mothers were most likely to kill their children, twice as likely as fathers, according to the administration's findings.
      Mothers, often the primary caregivers, can be stressed and sleep-deprived at a time when newborns tend to cry a lot.
      And many families don't have a strong support system to allow them to take a break or catch up on sleep.
      Frequent crying, difficulty with potty training and outbursts are common excuses given by parents and caregivers who kill their children, prosecutors said.
      "Those are very common triggers for child mistreatment," said Dr. Helen Morrow, chief medical officer for the Shelby County Health Department.
      Morrow, chairman of the Shelby County Child Fatality Review Team, said infants born prematurely and children with disabilities can be at a greater risk.
      "They can be even more challenging to care for," and if abused, "they're a little less resilient," Morrow said.
      The number of abuse and neglect deaths dropped in Tennessee from 55 in 2008 to 46 last year, the federal report shows. That's a 16 percent decline, but the state still ranks in the top 10 nationally, at No. 7.
      Beryl Wight, a spokeswoman for the Memphis Child Advocacy Center, said she remembers a somber ceremony last year when three children died within a short period of time.
      Two brothers, ages 2 and 3, died in an October 2009 fire. Memphis police said their mother left them home alone. A month later, a 16-month-old Germantown boy was beaten to death. The father was charged with second-degree murder.
      The Child Advocacy Center flew three flags to remind the community of each victim.
      Child advocates, prosecutors and social workers have united to protect children through the National Coalition to End Child Abuse Deaths. They believe the national death toll is closer to 2,500 annually.
      Shelby County experts agree the number has to be higher than official figures because of unsolved cases.
      "We have deaths that we strongly suspect are due to abuse or neglect, but we can't prove it," Morrow said of the deaths her team reviews.
      "We're all left very frustrated."
      http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/dec/17/infant-deaths-from-violence-02/

      INFANTICIDE: Australia: Keli Lane

      Margaret Scheikowski : December 13, 2010
      Seconds after a Sydney jury found she had murdered her newborn baby, Keli Lane screamed "oh no" and collapsed with a thud on the dock floor.
      Her anguished cry was echoed by her sobbing mother, Sandra Lane, while many of the obviously distressed jurors had tears in their eyes.
      Almost everyone in the crowded NSW Supreme Court room seemed affected by the raw emotion before Justice Anthony Whealy adjourned the case so Lane could get medical help.
      The 35-year-old former water polo champion had denied murdering two-day old Tegan Lane on September 14, 1996 after they left Auburn hospital.
      She claimed she handed the infant over to the baby's father but, despite nationwide searches, police found no trace of him or Tegan.
      She was accused of murdering the infant and secretly adopting out two other babies so as not to dent her "golden girl" reputation.
      The jury of six women and six men had been deliberating for a week without a verdict, when the judge gave them the option of a majority 11-one decision on Monday afternoon.
      Earlier, he had delayed calling them into court to answer questions after being told "some emotion is being experienced in the jury room".
      When the court resumed after the verdict and Lane's collapse, she looked shell-shocked but sat quietly in the dock beside her solicitor, who had her arm around her.
      For the first time since the trial began in August, Lane did not stand up when the jurors returned to court to be discharged by the judge.
      Justice Whealy refused to continue her bail, saying he had "great sympathy" for Lane but it would be "a very unfair result" to grant bail. This was because it could give her false hope as the crime she had been found guilty of carried a substantial sentence.
      Lane also was found guilty of three counts of making a false statement on oath in relation to documents dealing with her adopting out the two other babies.
      Outside court, John Borovnik - the Department of Community Services worker who first reported Tegan missing - said justice had been done.
      "Tegan never had a voice, it's in memory of Tegan," he said.
      Mr Borovnik said all Lane could come up with was a statement saying Tegan was alive and happy.
      "If she is alive and well, where is she?" he asked.
      Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC contended Lane secretly hid her three pregnancies and births as she had not wanted to be saddled with the responsibility of children. As well as being motivated by her Olympic ambitions, her career and social life, Lane had "an overwhelming fear of rejection" by family and friends if they knew of her pregnancies. Mr Tedeschi maintained Lane had never intended taking any of her babies home but wanted a "permanent" solution.
      While he could not say how she murdered Tegan or how she disposed of her body, Mr Tedeschi urged jurors to reject "pigs might fly" theories about the infant's fate.
      Her claim about handing Tegan over to the infant's father, a secret short-term lover, and the man's live-in partner was "inherently unbelievable".
      In his directions to the jurors, Justice Whealy said they must acquit Lane if there was a reasonable possibility Tegan was alive or she was handed over to someone else.
      But he also said if they were satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Lane, by a deliberate act caused the death of Tegan and it was done with intent to kill her, she should be found guilty.
      http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/lane-collapses-at-murder-guilty-verdict-20101213-18uus.html

      INFANTICIDE: Australia: Keli Lane

      December 19, 2010
      John Elder on the women who throw their babies away.
        Tegan Lane was not the average victim of neonaticide. She was given a name.
        THE day you are born is the day you are most likely to be the victim of homicide. This cheerless statistic holds true whether you live in Stockholm or Silverwater. The perpetrator will almost certainly be your mother.
        She will most likely be under 25, unmarried, still living at home or in poor circumstances, still at school or unemployed, emotionally immature and astonishingly secretive. She has carried you to term without telling a soul of your existence. And somehow the parents with whom she resides never suspect she is with child.
        Now that you are born, it's not depression or psychosis that moves her to murder you – mental illness rarely plays a part. Nor is she overwhelmed by the feeling that life is simply too harsh for such a defenceless little creature for whom she cares a great deal.
        There is rarely great violence in the manner of the killing. She may simply abandon you to the elements. The only intense feeling she has is the desire to see you gone. She may even deny that you exist at all.
        This is the profile of neonaticide, the murder of a newborn in its first 24 hours of life. Most people in Australia have probably never heard the term. There is no separate provision for it in Australian law. People are charged with manslaughter, murder or, more rarely, infanticide.
        Last week former water polo champion Keli Lane was found guilty of murdering her newborn daughter Tegan. A majority verdict of 11 to one found that Lane had left Auburn Hospital on September 14, 1996, killed her two-day-old baby, disposed of her body and proceeded to a friend's wedding. Tegan's body has never been found.
        Two weeks ago, in a lower-profile case, Brisbane woman Jem Merrilee Rose Dean, 24, was convicted of the manslaughter of her newborn. She was 19 when she arrived at a hospital complaining of cramps. She was found to be 33 weeks pregnant.
        Dean returned home. The following day she called an ambulance and told paramedics she'd given birth to a stillborn child. They found the baby submerged in a toilet, alive but brain damaged. The child lingered for 12 months but died of pneumonia.
        Dean was sentenced to five years in jail, wholly suspended for time served. The presiding judge said Dean had a borderline intellectual impairment and believed the baby to have been stillborn.
        Because of the counter-intuitive nature of neonaticide – the breaking of such a fundamental taboo — it's difficult to believe it occurs in Australia at a rate forensic psychiatrists and sociologists believe is underestimated and certainly under-reported.
        In the past three years, newborn babies have been discovered in the following circumstances: face down in a toilet at an Adelaide hospitality school; in a pile of rubbish at a Perth recycling plant; in a shopping bag at a bus stop in regional Victoria; in the grounds of a South Australian high school; wrapped in newspaper and left in the driveway of a home in a South Australian country town; on a Sydney rubbish tip; at a Brisbane water treatment plant; and, in August, in a shoebox in the garden of a Strathfield apartment block.
        In all but two of these cases, the mother has never been found. In each, the umbilical cord was still attached and torn, not cut, indicating a panicked separation of mother from child. An autopsy of the girl from the shoebox proved inconclusive.
        Dr Joe Tucci, chief executive of the Australian Childhood Foundation, says such killings occur for the grisly reason that "it's easier to hide the body of a very small baby and it's very easy for a very small baby to fall through cracks in the system".
        There are, he says, fewer contact points between the community and a newborn. "If an adult is killed, there are friends and family who miss that person," Tucci says. "He doesn't show up at work. But if a mother has carried and delivered her baby in secrecy, it's not hard to make it disappear. If we had some sense of prevalence of hidden pregnancies, we'd know which ones went to term and what happened to the babies afterward. There is no framework to even try and research that."
        Mairead Dolan is professor of forensic psychiatry at Monash University and assistant clinical director (research) at the Victorian Institute for Forensic Mental Health. She is co-author of a draft paper, Maternal infanticide and neonaticide in Australia: a forensic evaluation. Dolan says few neonaticides are reported because bodies are never found or reported to authorities, or the cause of a death remains unknown. She also says there is an acceptance that coroners sometimes incorrectly rule a death accidental in actual homicide cases.
        "It's also accepted they can be reluctant to think the worst without supporting evidence," she says.
        With about 10per cent of sudden infant death syndrome cases estimated to be possible homicides, and the absence of birth certificates for 2.8per cent of children who die, Dolan writes in her research paper that official figures are often regarded as the "tip of the iceberg". (Last week the British Medical Association published a paper that found the number of newborns in France killed within 24 hours of birth is at least five times higher than official statistics.)
        Tasmanian Labor Senator Helen Polley, who is campaigning for the introduction of "baby safe haven laws" in Australia to counter neonaticide and child abandonment, says at least 10 babies are abandoned by their mothers every year in Australia.
        Safe haven laws have been enacted in most US states in the past eight years. They provide for a mother to abandon her newborn baby without fear of being charged with criminal abandonment. In the US and European experience, abandonment usually takes place in a hospital or at a police or fire station, where special hatches have been built into the walls. There are limits to the age of the children who can be abandoned and there are frequently provisions for child and mother to be reunited under certain conditions.
        The Australian Medical Association has backed the senator's call. State welfare departments have routinely dismissed the idea, claiming they already have services that provide for mothers at risk.
        But as Dr John Scott, associate professor at the University of New England's School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, points out: "How can intervention occur when something is concealed? The other problem is, some sections of the population may have more opportunity to conceal than others. By nature, welfare workers tend to deal with socially disadvantaged groups but clearly this practice occurs right across the social spectrum and there is even some evidence to indicate it may be more common among affluent groups."
        This week, new Victorian Community Services Minister Mary Wooldridge said the Victorian government would consider the viability of baby safe haven laws as part of an investigation into how women who conceal their pregnancies might be recognised and cared for.
        Dolan says there is no data to support the effectiveness of such laws in reducing the risk of neonaticide. It's uncertain whether the mothers who kill their babies outright are of the same mind as those who abandon them.
        Would the baby safe haven laws have made a difference in the case of Keli Lane?
        The facts of the case fit the neonaticide profile almost perfectly, save for one anomaly: Lane, then a 21-year-old student living with her parents, was alleged to have left Auburn Hospital with baby Tegan two days after giving birth. Tegan was never seen again and Lane was four hours later celebrating with friends and family at a wedding. Strictly speaking, neonaticide is said to occur in the first 24 hours of life. It's also rare for a neonaticide victim to be given a name.
        However, Professor Phillip J.Resnick, the US forensic psychiatrist who identified neonaticide 40 years ago, told The Sun-Herald by email the Lane case "would fit the characteristics of neonaticide rather than the killing of an older child. I also think that the baby being given a name was related to expectations in the hospital."
        He says secrecy in the hiding of the pregnancy, or psychological denial of the pregnancy, are diagnostic characteristics.
        In a paper published last year, Resnick found an infant's chances of becoming a homicide victim during the first year of life are greatest if he or she is the second or later-born child of a teenage mother. This was according to an analysis of birth and death certificates by researchers at the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
        In fact, Tegan was Lane's second child. She gave birth to a girl in March 1995 – a year before Tegan was born – at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown, and secretly gave her up for adoption.
        Three years after Tegan's disappearance, Lane gave birth to a third child, believed to be a boy. He was also given up for adoption. None of Lane's family or friends was aware she was pregnant with any of the children, though her water polo teammates later said in court they'd had suspicions.
        The Crown alleged Lane murdered Tegan because she was desperate to pursue her sporting career unhindered by a child. Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi, QC, told the jury Lane was also desperate to get to her friend's wedding, and killed Tegan between leaving the hospital and joining her boyfriend at the ceremony.
        The key argument made by Lane's barrister, Keith Chapple, SC, was that the absence of a body provided reasonable doubt. Even if Tegan was dead, he argued, there was no way to know how she died and to what degree, if any, Lane had contributed to that death. It was a powerful argument and the jury took more than a week to decide she was guilty.
        Lane, 35, who at one point told a coronial inquiry she'd never given birth to the girl, later told police she gave Tegan to the man she believed to be her natural father, with whom she'd had a brief and secret affair. She knew him as either Andrew Norris or Morris. The man has never been found.
        Chapple also argued that Lane's alleged motive was ludicrous. "So, it's 'Hurry up, I've got to get to a wedding and play water polo,' is that it?" he asked.
        It seems too callous. How can a woman throw her baby away as if it's nothing, and then immediately go dancing?
        Consider the story of American girl Melissa Drexler, probably the most notorious case of neonaticide on record. In 1997, 18-year-old Drexler arrived at her New Jersey high school prom. Soon after, she delivered a baby boy in the toilet. She placed him in a garbage bag and dropped him into the sanitary receptacle. She then returned to the dance floor. US media dubbed her the "Prom Mom". Drexler plea-bargained her charge down from murder to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years. She served three.
        Still, the question remains: if these women aren't mentally ill (and in most cases they are not), what drives them to kill their babies? Poverty and social isolation, shame, panic and an iron-willed determination to keep their lives uncomplicated, appear to be contributing factors in many instances. But the causes and psychological reasoning are only vaguely understood.
        John Scott says it is easy to dispose of an "object" that we have no emotional links with. Moreover, he says, if the object threatens to block social opportunities, crime becomes a viable option.
        "It is easier to kill animals because they are not 'human'. At what stage does an infant become 'human'? Not an easy answer here and [it] is likely to vary between individuals and cultures," he says.
        Scott says social factors are strong influences on women committing neonaticide. For example, he says, rates are likely higher in some US states because of social attitudes towards unmarried pregnancy. He also suggests that "in an age when men and women are marrying later in life to establish careers, there may be more social pressures exerted to engage in this sort of behaviour".
        Does brain development play a part? A study by the US National Institute of Health suggests people under 25 are more prone to risky behaviour, and their problem-solving skills are not totally developed.
        Dolan says there is some evidence of abnormal brain pathology in males who commit homicide but this has largely been associated with impulsive aggressive or psychopathic personality pathology. She says there are no studies specifically looking at this issue in women, largely because there are significant differences in prevalence rates of homicides across genders.
        Craig H.Kinsley, professor of neuroscience at the University of Richmond, Virginia,
        is in the early stages of research that has found women develop a set of "maternal neurons" — a cluster of brain cells created during pregnancy — that operate like "good mother" switches in the brain.
        It appears that a certain number of these maternal neurons need to be switched on for a woman to show good mothering skills, Kinsley says. The research has so far been restricted to small mammals.
        It shows that "the mothers with a fewer number of 'maternal neurons' tended to neglect or abuse their offspring, while those animals with the lowest numbers actually savaged or killed their own young".
        Kinsley told The Sun-Herald that the brain sometimes doesn't work in the way that society demands. What we regard as wrong behaviour is sometimes coldly efficient in terms of how nature works. "In the end, we are a species with an ancient brain living in an age where we can think about the whys of our behaviour."
        http://www.smh.com.au/national/mother-murderer-20101218-191i2.html

        INFANTICIDE: Australia: Keli Lane

        Angela Shanahan : December 18, 2010
        Keli Lane, convicted of murdering her newborn baby Tegan, fits the profile of maternal killers.
        The notion that a mother could not kill her baby is demonstrably false.
        THE conviction of Keli Lane for murdering her middle child, Tegan, after concealing the pregnancy seems by most standards a bizarre, horrific story.
        The fact that she hid five pregnancies in all -- two aborted, two that proceeded with the babies adopted out, and baby Tegan -- has already prompted a puzzled outcry. How can a mother do this? Why didn't she use contraception or have another abortion?
        For many it is a matter of her being the "poor thing"; she was just crazy. But was she mad or just bad? It would be presumptuous and facile of me to come down on either side and an appeal against the jury conviction is expected.
        But a couple of facts need to be considered if interest in this case is to progress beyond the ghoulishly banal and broaden our understanding of why women may kill their infants.
        First, the notion that a mother could not kill her baby is demonstrably false. Not only do mothers kill their infants, but when an infant is killed it is usually by the mother.
        This month, some very disturbing statistics based on judicial data were released in France by the Inserm Institute following the publicity surrounding the case of Dominique Cottrez, who killed eight of her newborn children during about 17 years. They have caused great disturbance in that country and abroad.
        The findings showed that more than five times the number of French infants are killed by their mothers within 24 hours of birth -- neonaticide -- than the official mortality statistics have indicated -- or 2.1 cases per 100,000 births compared with the official rate of 0.39 cases.
        The average age of these women was 26. One-third already had at least three children. More than half the women lived with their child's father. Two-thirds were employed in jobs that did not differ significantly from women in the general population regarding occupation.
        What is more, the vast majority did not have frank mental illness, nor were there any true cases of denial of pregnancy (a phenomenon that is not uncommon in teenagers). Most of the women, however, appeared to have "low self-esteem, be immature and [be] dependent". None used contraception.
        Except for the fact that Lane hid her pregnancies to the point of playing water polo prior to her labour and going to a wedding after she gave birth, the similarities of these statistics to what we know of her case are uncanny.
        So what does this say about the "mad or just bad" question? It may look on the surface as if she is just bad. After all, if a father killed multiple offspring, he would be regarded as a monster and certainly not as a poor deluded victim of his own unreal expectations.
        Although there is much more abuse and killing of children by mothers (and boyfriends of mothers) than fathers, we tend to excuse mothers. We may well ask why.
        The biggest problem with the crime of infanticide is that the mothers don't always fit into two distinct categories, mad or bad. Because most of us cannot conceive of murdering a newborn we jump to the conclusion that the offending mothers are all mad. They all must have post-partum psychosis or whatever. Unfortunately the French study seems to negate this.
        However, there are degrees of madness and badness. These women simply feel nothing for their newborn, many of them deny their existence or insist, as Lane did, that they are still alive. In this case, the fact that Lane hid her pregnancies may lead one to suspect that denial or delusion was more of a factor in her psychology.
        There are common threads among many mothers who commit infanticide. One is that they often become pregnant multiple times without any view to keeping or even adopting the child. Hiding the pregnancy is also common.
        Lane managed to keep her pregnancy from her boyfriend and Cottrez managed to keep all eight pregnancies from her husband.
        So why did Lane not use contraception or have an abortion, especially since she was a serious athlete? One should remember that contraception and abortion are very different, despite the attempts of the feminists and family planners to equate the two, and they require different decisions.
        Contraception requires a definite rational decision not to have children at a particular time and can be difficult to bother with, both physically and psychologically, unless one is in a committed steady relationship.
        By all accounts Lane was very insecure. She had been quite promiscuous and although she apparently hoped for marriage, she was obviously too insecure in her relationships to have a child openly. It is possible she did not even know the identity of the father.
        Emotionally insecure women with unrealistic career expectations such as Lane are often incapable of making a considered decision about their emotional future, so they are incapable of thinking about contraception.
        With nothing but the forlorn hope for emotional security and a terror of scaring off partners with unplanned pregnancies, women such as this often have multiple abortions. Abortion is more of a quick way out. But we know it can cause terrible long-term trauma. And Lane had already had not one but two abortions, the first when she was only in high school. Draw your own conclusions.
        http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/complexities-beyond-bad-or-mad-that-drive-mothers-to-murder/story-fn562txd-1225972411186

        FILICIDE (Attempted): Australia: Steinberg

        A TRAGIC mum who tried to kill two of her kids because she loved them deeply has been found not guilty by a judge who said she was seriously mentally impaired.
        Christine Steinberg wept in the prisoners' dock of the Supreme Court as details were read out of  how she cut the wrists of the children, slashed their throats and then tried to take her own life.
        Justice Ross Robson said it was clear from the evidence presented to the Supreme Court and in psychiatry reports that Steinberg, 43, had a serious depressive disorder with psychotic features.
        The judge remanded Steinberg to Thomas Embling hospital for reports on her mental condition and adjourned the case until February 24 next year.
        Justice Robson was told that both the Crown and the defence agreed that Steinberg did not know the nature of her actions or what she was doing was wrong.
        Opening the Crown case, prosecutor Susan Borg said that Steinberg locked herself in a bedroom of her mother's home with daughter Noya, 3, and seven-month-old son Erez and cut their wrists and throat.
        Steinberg slashed her own wrists and when her mother forced her way into the bedroom she found the accused lying on a blood-covered bed on top of her two children.
        While she was being taken to hospital Steinberg said, "Where's my babies?'' and "I wanna die''.
        Both the children recovered from their injuries.
        Steinberg, of Oakleigh East pleaded not guilty to two counts of attempted murder by reason of mental impairment.
        Ms Borg said Steinberg had a history of mental issues including taking an overdose, depression and bizarre behaviour.
        Defence counsel David Brustman read from a statement from her husband, Chen Steinberg, who said: "I would describe Christine as a good mother. The last couple of days she just dropped.”
        Mr Steinberg also said: "I never heard her threaten the kids in any way. My wife loved the children very much''.
        The court heard psychiatric evidence that Steinberg acted out of a misplaced sense of love because she had bizarre beliefs that gangs were after her and her children were in danger.
        http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/christine-steinberg-found-not-guilty-of-attempted-murder-of-children/story-e6frf7kx-1225970259273

        Wednesday 15 December 2010

        FILICIDE: Ontario: Mendieta

        Dan Robson :  Dec 14 2010
        Emmily Lucas was killed by either Erika Mendieta or Johnny Bermudez. On that much they agree.
        But Crown and defence lawyers painted two starkly different portraits of the tragedy as they made their final arguments to Justice Nola Garton at Mendieta’s second-degree murder trial on Tuesday.
        Emmily was beaten to the point of convulsions on Nov. 13, 2003. The 2-year-old’s body was covered in bruises. Her head and spinal column were severely injured. She died of brain trauma at Sick Kids 10 days later.
        “Erika Mendieta did not kill her daughter,” defence lawyer Robin Parker told the court. “We say Johnny Bermudez killed Emmily Lucas.”
        Bermudez, Mendieta’s former live-in boyfriend, has told the court he killed Emmily. As a witness he is protected by the Canada Evidence Act, so his testimony can’t be used to prosecute him.
        The defence contends Mendieta left Emmily and the couple’s 18-month-old boy with Bermudez when she went to pick up her four other kids from school. Emmily cried. Bermudez beat her.
        The Crown contends Bermudez is lying.
        “His testimony is just another attempt to exonerate Mrs. Mendieta,” said Crown prosecutor Allison MacPherson, noting the pair met several times for coffee between Mendieta’s first and second trial.
        “You don’t drink coffee with the man that murdered your baby,” MacPherson said.
        “But you might if you had killed your baby and he was going to help get you out of it.”
        Bermudez has refused to waive his protection under the Canada Evidence Act, and has never offered a sworn confession to police.
        The Crown says Mendieta beat Emmily in fit of frustration and rage when she was late picking up the other children from school.
        As evidence against her, prosecutors cite inconsistencies between Mendieta’s original police statements and her later testimony, as well as wiretapped conversations in which, they say, she appears to confess.
        The defence has argued that too much of the wiretaps are inaudible and in dispute for that evidence to be credible.
        If Garton is not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Bermudez did not kill Emmily, she must acquit Mendieta, Parker argued.
        Mendieta’s first trial ended with a hung jury in 2009.
        Her second trial spiraled into a judicial debacle last month, when the jury asked that a man be removed from the courtroom for making distracting faces during Mendieta’s testimony.
        They didn’t know that the man was Paul Alexander, an assistant Crown attorney who prosecuted Mendieta at her first trial but was no longer on the case.
        Garton declared a mistrial. Alexander’s actions are being investigated by the chief prosecutor, and he is no longer on in-court duty.
        Garton then agreed to rule on the case alone, using evidence from the second trial. She will return with her verdict on Jan. 17.
        “It’s going to be a tough month,” said Selena Lucas, Emmily’s one-time guardian and the sister of her biological father, Derrick Parra.
        “We just have to wait,” she said, breaking into tears. “And that will be it.”
        http://www.thestar.com/news/article/907120--crown-defence-make-final-arguments-in-mendieta-case

        Tuesday 14 December 2010

        FILICIDE: Oregon: Downs

        BEND, OR -- Diane Downs is scheduled for another parole hearing this week, and this could be the last one for a long time for the notorious child killer. Under a new state law, Oregon's Parole Board can lengthen the gap between parole hearings, on a case-by-case basis, for up to 10 years. The Lane County District Attorney recently wrote that offenders such as Diane Downs are the reason for the 2009 law.
        Downs shot her three young children back in 1984, killing one of them. The D.A. has urged the Board to refuse her parole and suspend any further considerations for a decade. He said Downs has made no progress toward acknowledging her responsibility for the shooting.
        Her latest parole hearing is scheduled for Friday.
        http://www.mycentraloregon.com/news/local/1303576/Downs-Up-For-Parole-This-Week.html

        Saturday 11 December 2010

        FILICIDE: Alabama: Leavell-Keaton

        By BRIAN SKOLOFF
        12/7/2010
        A father whose missing children are believed to be dead told investigators he buried one of them in Mississippi and the other in Alabama but says it was their stepmother who killed them, police said.
        But she is pointing the finger at him.
        Heather Leavell Kenton
        AP
        This Dec. 1, 2010 photo released by the Louisville Metropolitan Dept. of Corrections shows Heather Leavell Kenton. Police are still searching for two missing Alabama children: five-year-old Natalie DeBlase and three-year-old Jonathan DeBlase. Their father, John Deblase, was arrested in Florida and charged with child abuse and two counts of abuse of a corpse. The children's step-mother, Heather Keaton, was arrested h in Louisville last week. (AP Photo/Louisville Metropolitan Dept. of Corrections)
        Mobile police say John Deblase, 27, has admitted burying his two children — 5-year-old Natalie and 3-year-old Chase — in March and June.
        DeBlase was being held on $206,000 bond. He is charged with child abuse and corpse abuse. Meanwhile, the children's stepmother, Heather Leavell-Keaton, is jailed in Louisville, Ky. on child abuse charges. She will soon be extradited back to Alabama. The couple had been together since 2008 but were not legally married.
        The children were last seen this summer, Mobile Officer Chris Levy said.
        DeBlase has been trying to help investigators find the bodies, which led to searches over the weekend in rural areas of Alabama and Mississippi, but nothing was found, Levy said.
        "He's placing the blame on Heather, and Heather's placing the blame on him," he said. "Both of them are ultimately responsible for the deaths."Levy said DeBlase has had difficulty remembering the exact locations because the children were buried at two different times.
        He said the father told investigators he buried the boy's body around the end of March in Mississippi, and later disposed of his daughter's body near the end of June in Alabama.
        It remains unclear whether the children were killed at the same time.
        "We're really trying to figure that out right now," Levy said. "Without the bodies, it's difficult to know."
        The children's biological mother said she is still holding out hope they will be found alive.
        "Until the police come to me and say they have their bodies, I won't believe it," Corrine Heathcock, who is divorced from DeBlase, told The Mississippi Press. "If they do tell me that, then I want to bury them together. They were always inseparable. I couldn't separate them in death."
        DeBlase was arrested Friday in the Florida Panhandle, and does not have an attorney. It was not immediately clear if Leavell-Keaton had a lawyer in Kentucky.
        Heathcock said she made the best possible choice for her children when she and DeBlase divorced.
        "I wasn't living in a place that was suitable for children," she said in The Mississippi Press article. "He was the best thing for them. He loved them. I would have never let him take them if I thought otherwise."
        Heathcock said things were fine for a while, but then DeBlase stopped letting her see the children. She said he'd make up excuses for why she couldn't see them and eventually stopped answering his phone.
        Heathcock said she last saw her children on Nov. 18, 2009.

        INFANTICIDE: Virginia: Ashkea Johnson

        By Brad Zinn/staff • bzinn@newsleader.com • December 9, 2010
        STAUNTON — Jury selection in the murder trial of a Staunton teen accused of killing her baby last year is set to begin this morning in Staunton Circuit Court, and by Friday the 12-person jury is expected to begin deliberating the fate of 18-year-old Ashkea Johnson. Johnson is accused of smothering her infant daughter, 2 1/2-month-old Rosaleeia M. Johnson, the night of Nov. 15, 2009. The baby, found unconscious and not breathing, died four days later at Augusta Health in Fishersville after being taken off life support.
        Johnson is charged with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.
        She confessed to police that she killed her child, and also admitted attempting to smother the baby a week before she was found unconscious, according to evidence presented at a March preliminary hearing and court transcripts,
        Seventeen years old at the time of her baby's death, Johnson is being tried as an adult after the case was transferred from the juvenile court system.
        In a rambling statement made to police in December 2009, Johnson initially claimed she found the baby with no pulse and tried to resuscitate her three times. After calling 911, Johnson told a Staunton police investigator that when rescue personnel arrived, "My sister handed it ... her to the fire department."
        Questioned further, Johnson admitted she pressed a small, plastic disposable diaper bag over the baby's nose and mouth, transcripts show.
        "I wasn't thinking straight," she told the investigator.
        Johnson also confessed to trying to kill the baby a week before the Nov. 15 incident, and said she once dropped her child on purpose two weeks after she was born.
        Johnson, who gave birth to her first child at the age of 14, told police she was confused and stressed, and tried to have her mother adopt her children to no avail.
        Court records show Johnson has been ruled mentally competent to stand trial, but reports also note she suffers from bipolar disorder and started cutting herself in the sixth grade.
        Earlier this week, a prosecution motion to prevent the defense from mentioning Johnson's mental state was denied, but Circuit Judge Humes J. Franklin Jr. cautioned both sides about broaching the issue. An earlier motion in August by the defense to have Johnson's confession thrown out was unsuccessful.
        Johnson faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted in the killing.
        http://www.newsleader.com/article/20101209/NEWS01/12090316

        INFANT DEATH: Kentucky: Brooks Ecton

        A detective with the Winchester Police Department was the one and only witness to testify against all 3 family members charged in connection with the death of a infant.
        He was able to share his theories on how and why the child died.Around 4:30 in afternoon on October 11, Winchester Police say 21-year-old Brooks Ecton went out for the night, leaving her 10-month-old daughter, Addysen Brooks Mayes, in the care of the child's grandparents Cheryl Kirkwood-Black and David Black. The mom came home around 11:30.
        Det. Tom Bell says, "She posted on Facebook at 12:30 a.m. that the child was snoring extremely loud, louder than her fiancé."
        The next morning police say the mother found her child dead in the play pen. During an autopsy the detective says he found an explanation for the loud shores.
        Det. Bell says, "Dr. Rolf tells us that is the death rattle."
        The child, police say, died from a methadone overdose. Nearly enough to kill an adult says, Bell. He also testified the grandparents are methadone users.
        "They've said they've never lost a pill, they're both junkies.", said Bell.
        During a search of the house, police say they found a box of chocolates, instead of candy there were baggies, straws, and two bottles of childs aspirin and in those bottles, liquid methadone.
        But the search was done a month after the child died, giving question to if the mother knew she was leaving her child in the hands of drug abusers, her lawyer didn't think so.
        He said, "If there was proof, she didn't know it." And the judge agreed with that argument, saying, "She took no steps to seek medical help."
        The mother and the grandparents cases were passed to the grand jury. The grand parents are being held in jail, while the mother of the infant is out on bond.
        Police said in october when the child first died, there were no signs of foul play.