Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents (27 page)

A
s the previous chapters have shown, parents kill for a wide variety of reasons. Whilst some of these killers are arguably untreatable, such as psychopathic parents who kill for the insurance money, others could have been prevented from harming their children, or, indeed, from having children at all.

In an ideal world, every baby would be a wanted one, born to emotionally-mature parents who can cope with 18 years (or more, if the child has to be supported through college) of enormous personal sacrifice. The reality is very different – the more intelligent a couple is, the less likely they are to procreate.

Our society is culpable in promoting the myth that everyone is parent material. Soap operas and other simplistic television programmes give the impression that a baby will bring a straying boyfriend back to the fold. In truth, he’s more
likely to flee into the arms of an unencumbered girlfriend who is free to party. On Britain’s sink estates (and in American ghettoes) it’s not unusual for a man to have fathered children with half a dozen women, each of whom has convinced herself that a baby will glue together an unstable relationship. Many muddle through, but a significant percentage take their anger, loneliness and frustration out on the child with sometimes fatal results – more than one child a week (70 a year) in Britain is murdered by its parent and, in under-fives, this parent is usually the mother. Uneducated teenage girls with a poor support network are especially likely to abuse their child.

Ironically, though a young woman may be beating her toddler or toddlers, she often goes on to have another baby. Such women love their children when they are infants, but become enraged or withdrawn when they grow into toddlers with their own personal likes and dislikes. They feel rejected – and can become violent – if the child refuses food or wants to spend time with anyone else.

Even if the man does stay around, the partnership doesn’t return to its pre-baby happiness until the children have left home. In a survey of 600 parents in the UK conducted by
Home Start,
only 4 per cent said that child rearing had lived up to their expectations. And, when
Good Housekeeping
magazine questioned 1,000 of their readers in 2003, 61 per cent of mothers admitted that their family life had been damaged by having a baby, 60 per cent had lost friendships and 12 per cent found that having a baby had led to separation or divorce. An American survey conducted in the mid-1970s went further, asking the question ‘if you’d known what parenthood was going to be like, would you have had children?’ A resounding 70 per cent said no.

There is surely scope for a social care programme which
takes babies into schools on a regular basis to show teenagers just how demanding childcare is. At the moment, modified versions of this exist where children are given a bag of flour and told to carry it around for a week, and to arrange for a babysitter whenever they want to go out. But a bag of flour doesn’t cry all night, or defecate, urinate and vomit on its carer, involuntary acts which immature parents often misinterpret as deliberate wickedness on the part of the child.

Good contraceptive advice is also vital, as is free contraception – there have been instances of boys in their early teens using chocolate bar wrappers in place of condoms because they didn’t have access to the latter. Purists may argue that these teenagers are too young to have sex but, hormones and emotions being what they are, some teens will become sexually active before it’s legal. Surely it’s better that they use a sheath than create a tell-no-one baby which they murder as it takes its first breath?

But, let’s assume that the worst happens, and a young woman gives birth alone and feels she has no option but to dispose of the child. In an effort to cut down on infanticide, America has made its fire stations available to new mothers. A girl can safely leave her newborn at any of these buildings, knowing that he or she will receive immediate care.

Germany has instigated a similar system whereby there is a flap on the outside wall of many hospitals which opens to reveal an insulated box. The mother can place her baby into this warm environment and leave with no questions asked, whilst an alarm alerts staff to the fact that a baby has been left inside.

Mothers can reclaim their infant within the next eight weeks without fear of legal reprisals, after which the baby is put up
for adoption. Germany currently has at least 80 hatches and Pakistan has over 300, saving many newborn lives.

France’s system is even better for the tell-no-one mother, as it is legal for a woman to give birth anonymously in hospital and leave her baby there.

Unfortunately, even babies which were originally planned for and brought into a stable marriage can be at risk from a mother who is suffering from post-natal depression or who has an episode of post-natal psychosis. These women often tell doctors, spouses and friends that they hate the baby, but are told that it’s just the baby blues, that they’ll be fine. As a society, we need to listen to these deeply-distressed women and encourage them to seek medical intervention – be it chemical, therapeutic or a combination of the two – before the situation becomes critical. A clinically-depressed woman shouldn’t be left alone with her infant as she is potentially a danger to both the child and herself.

Whilst many women can cope with one or two children, their emotional resources become stretched at three or four. Andrea Yates, a deeply religious woman living in Texas, had four children in quick succession – whom she named after saints – after which she had a nervous breakdown. In hospital, she told her doctors that every child was a gift from God and that He would care for them. (A 10-second look at any Third World country, where millions of babies die of starvation, would have disabused her of this belief.) Two months after her therapy ended, the registered nurse became pregnant again and, on 30 November 2000 gave birth to her fifth child, Mary. By the following spring she was re-hospitalised for depression but
allowed home to be cared for by her husband and mother-in-law. That June, she drowned all five of her children – ranging from seven years to six months – in the bath.

Her plight is echoed elsewhere in this book, where mothers coped with a first and perhaps a second child, but went to pieces when overburdened with caring for a third or subsequent child.

In July 2008, a group of leading doctors, concerned about Britain’s increasing overcrowding problem, suggested that couples should restrict themselves to a maximum of two children. Noting that we are now more overcrowded than China – and that England is the fourth most densely populated country in the world – the Optimum Population Trust’s policy director, Rosamund McDougall, said ‘With the UK population growing by more than 350,000 a year, it’s hard to understand why it’s so controversial to suggest we need solutions to our over-population crisis.’

At the time of writing in 2009, Britain’s population was just over 60 million and the country was struggling to provide enough accommodation, social services and energy supplies. That number is projected to swell to 77 million by 2050 – but if people restricted themselves to two children, the number would fall to 55 million and our resources would become less stretched.

Unless we are willing to remove babies from grossly inadequate parents within the first month of life, they are destined to suffer. Some of these parents, part of Britain’s growing subclass, see each child in terms of further cash for themselves. Karen Matthews, found guilty in December 2008 of kidnap and false imprisonment for financial gain of her own daughter, Shannon, had seven children to five different fathers
and lived entirely off the state. One of these fathers said that she was only interested in the child benefit which she spent on partying and cigarettes. The children were repeatedly abused and neglected and Shannon had been on the at-risk register. Her 12-year-old brother was so unhappy that he had started to run away from home.

In November 2008, an incestuous Sheffield father went to jail for 20 years for impregnating his two daughters a total of 19 times between the late 1980s and early 2000s, because he wanted the various housing and welfare handouts, including child benefit of £31.25 a week per child. (Because of congenital abnormalities in the foetuses, the young women had multiple miscarriages and abortions and only seven children survived, still enough to net him thousands of pounds in benefits, and allowing him to spend his days in the pub and his nights watching TV.)

Baby P’s mother also netted a considerable sum for her four children, allowing her to spend her days gambling online, smoking and drinking vodka. As is typically the case in such subclass families, the children benefited little from the money and were hungry, dirty and afraid.

A study by Libertad Gonzalez,
The Effect of Benefit on Single Motherhood in Europe,
showed that as benefits rise, so does single motherhood. The fathers, equally feckless, have often moved on before the child is even born. These children are disproportionately likely to end up in special needs schools, or to require child psychology services, at further cost to society. Our welfare state, intended as a back-up in times of need, has increasingly become a meal ticket for life for Britain’s workshy, and their children suffer and sometimes even die at their hands.

In 2007, UNICEF published a report which analysed 40 indicators of child well-being in 21 developed countries
between 2000 and 2003. Britain came bottom of the league when it came to child welfare, with broken families identified as putting children at risk. The report said ‘The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialisation and their sense of being loved, valued and included in the families and societies into which they are born.’

Ten per cent of British children are born into homes in which they are abused, either physically, sexually or emotionally. If we are serious about protecting children, we must ban corporal punishment. This has already been achieved in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine. But Britain and America still take a punitive stance, despite numerous studies linking such punishment with depression, alcoholism and later criminality.

Many children are being hit at nine months old by their parents, who haven’t read up on the option of positive parenting. When the slaps don’t have the desired effect, these parents tend to hit harder, with occasionally fatal results.

British law on this subject is significantly confused, with it being left to the courts to determine, retrospectively, what ‘reasonable’ punishment is.

It’s difficult to protect children on an hourly basis from a former spouse who is intent on revenge, especially when a court has given him or her private access visits. It’s far easier to avoid creating children with an unstable partner by examining their past history, current behaviour and
personality traits. Are they pushing for an especially speedy marriage? This suggests a level of insecurity which may cause problems in the future. Have they a history of physically attacking their partners or even their own parents? Why did their previous love affairs end?

Have they a history of suicide attempts or self-harming? For now, they may be turning their anger inwards – but if they turn it outwards, you or any future children may be targeted.

In March 2002, a government amendment to the Adoption & Children Bill, said that domestic violence should be taken into account when court orders were made granting parents access to their children. The move came about after 15 children were killed by non-custodial parents who had a history of violence.

But, clearly, some cases are still falling through the cracks, as Viviane Gamor was given unsupervised access to her children – after shaving off half of her baby’s hair and attacking her half-sister with a knife – despite their father begging the legal system and social services to maintain supervision. Gamor, who features in chapter three, killed both of her children during their third unsupervised visit.

Many parents benefit from regular short breaks from their children – and three or four year olds who adapt to nursery tend to find starting school less stressful than children who have been at home full time with only their mothers for company. At the time of writing, all three-and four-year-olds are entitled to twelve and a half hours of free education per week in a Sure Start Centre for 38 weeks of the year. Sure Start centres also offer antenatal checks, healthcare advice and parenting classes as well as information about training opportunities and work.

For details of free nursery places under the Sure Start scheme, visit www.gov.uk and search for Sure Start.

By bringing babies into schools and showing how much work they really entail – and by encouraging young women to have aspirations beyond motherhood – we can lessen the number of tell-no-one babies which are conceived and murdered. Hospital hatches, where girls can leave their newborns without fear of reprisals, would also cut down on such unnecessary deaths.

Many hormonally-triggered murders could also be prevented if GPs, psychiatrists and the general public were better educated about the signs of post-natal depression. We have to start supporting mothers who have the courage to admit that they aren’t coping, rather than blandly reassuring them that they will be fine.

We should also be more open to the idea that, if the mother has addiction problems or mental health issues, the father may make the better custodial parent. At present, a man has only a 3 per cent chance of getting custody of his child.