Saving the Lives of Children

a personal note

Even after working in the field of child abuse for more than thirty years, I’ve got to admit that researching and writing the book Filicide – Suicide: The Killings of Children in the Context of Separation, Divorce and Custody Disputes drove me to a dangerous precipice. I could never engage with this subject again.

It necessitated interviewing women bereft of their children who had been killed by their fathers (the fathers then often took their own lives). I attended many inquests and sat through the most harrowing evidence detailing how the children died; seldom a lightning death, more often, a slow, protracted, terrifying ordeal as the father stabbed, or set fire to, or strangled, or shot, or poisoned, or drowned his own children, for whom he had always professed his love! (Women have also killed their own children, particularly in the throes of mental illness, but the majority of filicide killers are men).

These horrific murders by fathers are not, as the authorities persistently tell us, unpredictable and unpreventable. There are clear indications of the likelihood of such killings. That is the principle thrust of the findings in this book: Filicide killings are predictable and preventable.

This assertion is elaborated on in a YouTube video at https://youtu.be/eszfYZPwD1Y