Experts say abuse and mental illness are at the root of many cases in which parents kill their children. And the same is true when the tables are turned, and children are accused of killing their parents.
Sons are more likely to kill their parents than daughters are, and fathers are more likely than mothers to be victims of a homicide perpetrated by a child, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data.
The D.C. region has seen a handful of such cases over the past year: a 17-year-old Eagle Scout accused of fatally stabbing his father to death in Anne Arundel County; a 54-year-old man convicted of shooting his father to death in Springfield then fleeing the state; a 25-year-old Great Falls man charged with stabbing his father to death; and a Chantilly 18-year-old guilty of fatally stabbing his father.
Studies show that sons who kill their parents often suffer from schizophrenia; daughters who kill — especially those who attack their mothers — frequently show signs of psychosis, Case Western Reserve University psychiatry professor Dr. Sara West and California-based forensic psychiatrist Dr. Mendel Feldsher wrote in a November 2010 article in Current Psychiatry. The cases often involve hostile, violent relationships and the killers — particularly juveniles — are motivated by long-term parental abuse, the doctors wrote.
For adolescent perpetrators, a violent act against a parent is often the result of “an accumulated sense of humiliation and shame,” according to Dr. Carl Malmquist, a University of Minnesota social psychiatry professor.
Adolescents, such as those who were abused, may try to escape an undesirable situation through killing, Malmquist wrote in March 2010 in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
— Emily Babay
