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Why Kids Kill Parents

Sat, 2008-04-19 14:54 - Kerry

Tragedy in the family: When kids murder their parents.

By: Kathleen M. Heide

A father is gunned down... a mother is bludgeoned to death... a family of four-mother, father, and two small children-is butchered alive... by a son... a daughter... a son and daughter acting together.

While tabloid television has brought us closer to the everyday horrors of our society, nothing still shocks as much as a child killing a parent or step-parent. Such an act, though thought uncommon, is almost a daily event in the United States. Between 1977 and 1986, more than 300 parents were killed each year by their own children.

Don't think that these children fit any of the classic stereotypes--the kind we believe keeps murder at a comfortable remove. This is not another example of angry inner-city teenagers doing anything for drug money: An in-depth analysis of the FBI Supplementary Homicide Report for this period shows that, in the great majority of cases, the child who killed was a white male.

What kind of kid is capable of such an atrocity against a parent? What kind of a situation would lead to such a violent end? Looking beyond society's most alarming trend reveals society's most alarming undercurrent: These are neglected and abused children whose options are limited--children who honestly think they have no other way out.

Mean Teens

Almost invariably, the killers are adolescents. Why are the killers teenagers? Preadolescents, those under 11, typically do not understand the concept of death and have tremendous difficulty in accepting that their actions lead to an irreversible result. Adolescents are more likely to kill because the normal turbulence of adolescence runs up against constraints they perceive have been placed upon them in a setting of limited alternatives.

Unlike adults who kill their parents, teenagers become parricide offenders when conditions in the home are intolerable but their alternatives are limited. Unlike adults, kids cannot simply leave. The law has made it a crime for young people to run away. Juveniles who commit parricide usually do consider running away, but many do not know any place where they can seek refuge. Those who do run are generally picked up and returned home, or go back on their own: Surviving on the streets is hardly a realistic alternative for youths with meager financial resources, limited education, and few skills.

Even under the best of circumstances, adolescence is a stormy time. Children going through it need the support of parents, who must give them room to grow and help them confront tough issues. Those who commit parricide have parents who have not been available to help them. In fact, they are most often carrying adult responsibilities in their families. Indeed, they often look exemplary on the surface, taking care of themselves and often taking care of one or both parents as well as running the entire household.

Who Kills Their Parents?

There are three types of individuals who commit parricide. One is the severely abused child who is pushed beyond his or her limits. Another is the severely mentally ill child. And the third is the darling of the tabloids, the dangerously antisocial child.

By far, the severely abused child is the most frequently encountered type of offender. According to Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in defending adolescent parricide offenders, more than 90 percent have been abused by their parents. In-depth portraits of such youths have frequently shown that they killed because they could no longer tolerate conditions at home. These children were psychologically abused by one or both parents and often suffered physical, sexual, and verbal abuse as well--and witnessed it given to others in the household. They did not typically have histories of severe mental illness or of serious and extensive delinquent behavior. They were not criminally sophisticated. For them, the killings represented an act of desperation--the only way out of a family situation they could no longer endure.

Only on occasion does a severely mentally ill child kill. These are children who have lost contact with reality. Their cases are often well documented with records of previous treatments that failed. Many of the cases are never tried; the killer is declared unfit to stand trial.

There are those few children who seem to kill without any remorse, yet whose parents seem to be loving and kind. The dangerously antisocial child is often the fodder of newspaper headlines. These juvenile offenders typically exhibit a conduct disorder--severely disruptive behavior that continues for over six months. These are the kids who kill their parents merely for some sort of instrumental, selfish end--never having to ask before borrowing the car again, for instance.

Portraits of Pain

I have conducted assessment interviews with approximately 75 adolescents charged with murder or attempted murder. Seven involved youths who killed parents. Of the seven, six were male; all were white. They ranged in age from 12 to 17. Two killed both parents. As a group, they killed six fathers, three mothers, and one brother. The murder weapon, in every case, was a gun, and it was readily available in the house. Six out of the seven were severely abused children; the seventh was diagnosed as having a paranoid disorder. Although seven may appear to be a small number of cases from which to draw conclusions, it is valuable for demonstrating the characteristics of kids who kill. Among the findings:

THEY AREN'T VIOLENT. Analysis revealed that the six adolescents who fit the profile of the severely abused child had approached life fairly passively until the homicide. Five thought of themselves as strong and in control of events. Their friends were typically nice kids, and they were relatively uninvolved in criminal behavior prior to the shootings.

THEY ARE ABUSED. Child maltreatment, particularly verbal and psychological abuse, was readily apparent in these six cases; severe psychological abuse was present in five. The one girl, in addition to being physically, verbally, and psychologically abused by her father, was also sexually abused and raped by him as well. Six youths had been emotionally and physically neglected by their parents. Two had virtually no supervision at all because both of their parents were alcoholics. None of the six had been protected from harm by their parents. At least one of the youths had been medically neglected. Contrary to popular wisdom, teenagers experience all types of abuse and neglect at higher rates than young children, according to the Second National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect.

THEIR PARENTS ARE MOST LIKELY SUBSTANCE ABUSERS. In all six cases there was alcoholism or heavy drinking in the home. There was strong evidence that each of the five fathers slain was an alcoholic. Three used drugs; one smoked marijuana and the other two used tranquilizers. One of the mothers murdered was also an alcoholic. Among the surviving spouses, chemical addiction was also common. Only one of them had reportedly never been an abuser, though her husband was an alcoholic. Two of the surviving mothers had been addicted to Valium for years as a way of coping with an abusive husband.

THEY ARE ISOLATED. These families tend to be relatively isolated because of problems in the home. The six teenagers had fewer outlets than other youths because they were expected to assume responsibilities typically performed by parents, such as cooking, cleaning, and taking care of younger children. One, too young to be a licensed driver, even drove his brother to school every day. These children were isolated not merely by the burden of chores but by a burden of shame. They knew their family was not the Brady Bunch. And parents had often not been hospitable to friends they had brought home.

Over the course of the years, the youths had made attempts to get help--from teachers, relatives, or even the non-abusing adult in the house--but they were either ignored or unsuccessful. Increasingly, the children's goals centered on escaping the family either through running away or suicide. Over time they felt increasingly overwhelmed by the home environment, which continued to deteriorate and diminished whatever support had been available. Then, already stressed to the limit, their inability to cope eventually led them to lose control or to contemplate murder in response to some new overt or perceived threat.

THEY KILL ONLY WHEN THEY FEEL THERE IS NO ONE TO HELP THEM. Just prior to the murder, life had become increasingly intolerable. In the four cases where only the abusive father was killed, the mother was not living at home at the time. In one case, the common-law stepmother did the same thing the boy's mother had done several years before: She walked out. That was one month before the homicide. In a second case, the mother was chronically ill and had been hospitalized for several weeks at the time of the murder. In each of the two other cases, the mother had divorced her husband on the grounds of physical and psychological abuse, and then allowed the children to live with the father more than a thousand miles away. One boy killed his father within a year of being left alone with him; the girl in the other case killed her father within 16 months of his common-law wife's departure.

THEY "BLOCK OUT" THE MURDER, NOT REVEL IN IT. Five out of the six cases clearly suggested that the children were in a dissociative state at the time of the killing; there was an alteration in consciousness that left the memory of the murder not integrated into awareness. These youths do not deny the murder took place or that they were responsible for it, but they have gaps in their memory of the event, "blackouts," and a sense that events were somehow unreal or dream-like during the homicide or immediately afterward. In one case, the youth did not remember the homicide; in another, dissociation left only part of the memory of the shooting intact. He remembered the sequence this way: terror from a threat from his abusive father, flashback view of his father beating his mother, then standing over the father's bloody body. He has no memory at all of firing the shots that killed his father, although he assumed he did it.

THEY SEE NO OTHER CHOICE. The youths killed a parent or parents in response to a perception of being trapped. In two of the five cases in which there was severe physical abuse, both were reacting to a perceived threat of imminent death or serious physical injury. In the three others, the children were experiencing terror and horror even though death and physical injury were not imminent. Interestingly, in these cases, the victims were defenseless: two were shot as they lay sleeping, the third as he sat watching television, his back to his son.

THEY ARE SORRY FOR WHAT THEY DID. While many young felons brag about their acts, these youths seemed uncomfortable with having killed. They knew their behavior was wrong, but experienced conflict over its effects--repugnance at the act they felt driven to carry out, yet relief that the victim could no longer hurt them or others dear to them. Their conflict seemed to result from a sense of their own victimization. They do not see themselves as murderers or criminals.

Ending The Madness

The true killer in these cases is child mistreatment. The significant damage comes not only in human carnage but in the death of the human spirit that persistent abuse often carries out.

Few severely abused children actually kill their parents. But all are at a vastly increased risk of becoming delinquent or socially dependent than are children who are treated well by concerned parents or loving guardians. Most often, the destruction unleashed by child abuse does not manifest itself until a generation later. A disproportionate number of those who as adults kill others were themselves abused as children.

The undeniable realities and effects of child abuse are increasingly being recognized as a responsibility of everyone in the culture. Yet society has failed these children. It has failed to make a sufficient commitment to children. It has clearly failed to protect these children. And it has failed to foster good parenting.

What the World Needs Now

Parenting skills and support are areas that desperately need attention. Classes need to be made available to help parents cope with the stresses of raising children, particularly those with special needs. Research shows that increasing the knowledge of parents about home and child management, and enhancing the development of good communication skills, healthy emotional ties, and parent-child bonding helps prevent child abuse.

In addition to teaching adults and teenagers about child development and parenting skills, our nation's elementary, junior high, and high schools should develop courses that help children recognize abuse and neglect. Ideally, such courses would encourage children to take action if victimized or threatened, and teach them how; there would be a child advocate in the schools to help them. The programs should aim to foster the development of self-esteem and conflict resolution skills to aid youth in self-protection.

Almost 40 percent of schools in the U.S. do not offer prevention education. Programs restricted to helping children protect themselves from abuse are inadequate; children and adolescents must learn about all types of abuse. The earlier these behaviors are targeted, the earlier they can be stopped and any accompanying damage addressed therapeutically.

Abuse and neglect are not always recognized by their victims. When I discuss abuse and neglect in university classes, only then do some students become aware that they were abused or neglected as children. Some mothers of children who kill their fathers allowed their child to be mistreated because they never realized the fact they themselves had been victims.

And much of sexual abuse is covert. A child whose parent shares pornography with him/her senses that it is wrong, but assumes it must be okay because it's Mom or Dad whose doing it. The child resolves the resulting confusion by assuming that "what's wrong is me."

Most of all, we have to listen to our children. In a follow-up interview given four and half years after his conviction for murder, Scott Anders (see below) expressed bitterness when he recalled the number of teachers, neighbors, and relatives whom he told of the abuse--and who did nothing to help him. "Just because a kid is young, don't think he's stupid. At least listen to him. Then check into it."

Despite increased public attention to the fact of child mistreatment, many people are unclear about what to do when confronted with this problem. If you suspect a child is being abused or neglected, you should at least call the local or state agency that investigates child abuse and neglect cases. Reports in many states can be made anonymously; in any case, the caller's identity is kept confidential. If the agency determines that a child is in danger, he or she win be temporarily removed from the home and given a safe place to stay pending other arrangements.

Lastly, as a society we must look with compassion on adolescent parricide offender. These are not tough children, but after indictment they are usually dealt with harshly, even though their youth is considered a mitigating factor. They have been abused for years and feel a great deal of anger and pain. They need to understand the tragedy, appreciate that their actions were wrong, extreme measures that are not allowed as a way to solve problems, and that they could have chosen a nondestructive course of action. They need to work through their many losses--the loss of their childhood, the loss of a clear future, as well as the loss of a parent. They need help to realize that they did have positive feelings for their parent, and let the deeply buried feelings come to the surface so that they can be resolved. These are not conflicts that can be resolved by prison.

Theirs, after all, is the misfortune of being born before we could create a safe world for them.

CHARACTERISTICS OF KIDS WHO KILL

Although few studies have been done, Dr. Heide, drawing on earlier work by others and her own cases, delineates the common characteristics that emerged among 50 cases of adolescents who committed such a personal crime:

o Evidence of family violence

o Attempts to get help, which failed

o Attempts to run away or commit suicide

o Isolation from peers

o Increasingly intolerable family situation

o Children feel helpless to change the home situation

o Inability to cope with what is happening to them

o No criminal record

o A gun available in the home

o Alcoholism present in parents

o Amnesia reported after murder

o Victim's death perceived as a relief by all involved.

IF THOUGHTS COULD KILL

It is disturbing but true. Parricidal thoughts are far more common than any of us may have dreamed, as my colleague, Dr. Eldra Soloman, and I recently discovered in a survey I conducted of 40 adult women who had been sexually abused as children. The questionnaire, filled out anonymously, contained 200 items about abuse and neglect. Because many people do not recognize as abuse what happened to them at the hands of a parent, the questionnaire did not label any behavior as abuse or neglect; it merely described behaviors and asked whether they had occurred.

One question asked, prior to age 18, did you ever consider killing the abusive parent. Fully 50 percent--20 of the women--said yes, as an adolescent. Some reported they had even gone so far as to make plans.

We know that women are nowhere near as violent as men, yet fully 50 percent reported thoughts of murdering a parent. The interesting question is, would the incidence of thoughts be even higher among men?

These findings attest to the depth of feelings that abuse creates. It generates pain, fear, anger, and shame that many people spend a great deal of energy to contain over the course of their lives. Given the strength of the feelings abuse generates in its victims, the real question should be not why do kids kill their parents, but why don't more of them do it? Then we need to find out what insulates those who don't.

THE CASE OF SCOTT ANDERS

Scott Anders, a white boy from a lower-middle class neighborhood, was 15 when he killed his 36-year-old father. On the afternoon of the homicide, Scott confided to a friend that things at home had been 'building up." His father, Scott said, would come home 'real buzzed" on marijuana and cocaine. He would yell and threaten his son, even talk about killing him, and had done so for some time. Later that day, Mr. Anders smoked marijuana and screamed at the boy. Scott fled the house, telling his father he'd return, hoping he'd feel better. When Scott walked back through the front door, he saw that his father's 12-gauge shotgun was propped against the couch.

"When I got back, I walked in the door and he looked at me and started yelling at me, cussing me and everything, and telling me he was going to beat my ass, and that was the last thing I remember. He was just getting ready to light another joint when I grabbed the gun. I shot him. He went back and rolled over and blood poured out of his mouth. He blinked his eyes. I shot him again. Then I freaked out."

Scott ran out of the house and found his good friend Kirk. He told Kirk that he was going to commit suicide because "it kinda took a part of me away when I shot my dad." Kirk took the gun away from Scott and accompanied him back to the house. As he tried to determine Mr. Anders's condition, Kirk recalls Scott "screaming and crying and everything." The two called the police and Scott gave a complete confession. The grand jury decided to prosecute Scott as an adult and obtained indictments for one count of first-degree murder and another for possession of a firearm.

Scott Anders was the only child born to Lily and Chester Anders. When Scott was three, Mrs. Anders left, taking with her a boy and a girl from a previous marriage. During the four years following his mother's departure, Scott shuffled between relatives four times. His father remarried, and Scott moved in; his stepmother, Mary, is a woman he remembers fondly. But the marriage was not for long, and soon she, too, left. Mr. Anders then married "Marytwo," and Scott moved with them to a neighborhood known as a haven for drug dealers.

Scott "never got into baseball or nothing" and was unable to go to the Scouts or do other fun things because he was "always usually busy around the house. Helpin' with chores." Chores? "I swept, mopped, cleaned the yard, washed the car, cleaned the rooms, cleaned the garage, mowed the lawn, and helped out the neighbors with their chores."

Mr. Anders was an explosive man who had a history of both physically and verbally abusing women. Scott remembers his father referring to women as "sluts. He beat the shit out of them. No reason. He'd wake up grumpy and go to bed grumpy. Make the coffee wrong, he'd throw it in your face. You spent too much money at the store, he'd... he'd show you not to do it anymore." Scott maintained that his father threatened Marytwo with a gun several times and beat her more than a hundred times.

Scott's own daily beatings happened from the time he could remember. Sometimes they had a "reason" (Marytwo would often not do her chores and blame it on Scott), sometimes not ("I'd fall down and he'd get mad"). His father's drinking played a large part in their severity. "When he was sober he would hit you, but when he was drinking ... that's when he really started swingin'."

Scott maintains that his father loved him even though he told him he was "no good." Marytwo would often treat him "like a dog. Get me a beer. Clean the porch. Chop the potatoes." She made Scott get rid of his big dog, a precious companion, because she preferred little dogs.

Weekends were unmitigated hell. On an average day his father would start drinking at one and not stop until he passed out. On Saturdays and Sundays, the father and Marytwo "partied" and went to bars, leaving Scott in the car. When he was younger, he was scared by being left alone. As he got older, he resented all the time it took away from him. Scott considered being beaten better than being left alone.

The most severe beating took place when Scott tried to run away but returned home when he became concerned that his parents would be worried. When he walked in, they were both asleep. Upon awaking, "Marytwo beat the shit out of me until one o'clock that morning. She was swingin' and punchin' and slappin' me and everything else." The following morning, Scott's father took his turn. "He beat the shit out of me, too. He hit me in the stomach, face, everywhere." The beating was so severe that Scott's father wouldn't let him go to school for a few days because the boy had "knots" on his head.

A month before the homicide, Marytwo "ran off" with one of Mr. Anders's male friends. Scott's father blamed his son for Marytwo's flight and told him, "Things are going to get a lot worse." With Marytwo gone, Scott was expected to do all the cooking and cleaning. Mr. Anders was unable to work because of a physical disability. No longer able to tolerate drink, the father turned increasingly to drugs. He also became a lot more violent. "My father started to tell me he was going to kill me."

The night of the homicide, Scott and his father argued about Scott's not being able to be in the house alone (he had to wait outside until his father returned). He kept "yelling and yelling and when I tried to run out he said, 'You better not go nowhere.' I was scared, and I just hauled ass. When I came back I saw the gun."

While there was no immediate threat, the parricide was the end of a long build-up. Scott remembers firing the second shot because he was afraid "what his father might do to him" after he fired the first.

Until the seventh grade, Scott had tried to get help by telling his friends and grandparents about the physical abuse. But "nobody wanted to get involved." Later, he told little even to his closest friends because he didn't want them to know the truth. Scott said he hated the term "child abuse" because he hated what it implied about his father.

Psychology Today, Sep 92

Last Reviewed 30 Aug 2004
Article ID: 1803

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Comments

Sat, 2008-04-19 21:27 — Niels

Interview with Paul Mones

The above article mentioned defense attorney Paul Mones, who is specialized in parricide cases. PBS frontline did the following interview with him:

What should we make of children who kill their parents?

Well, I think there's the old way to look at it, which is these are just kind of these recalcitrant, bad, evil kids. Kids have been killing their parents for years, and we didn't really look at why they did it. It was only really in the early '80s, when we started understanding that child abuse is so prevalent and has such a detrimental effect on children, that we started looking at the whys of kids who kill their parents. ...

They say [these are] heinous crimes.

Well, they are heinous crimes. When these homicides happen they tend to be some of the worst crime scenes you'll ever see. I mean, the kids sneak up on their parents, typically when they're sleeping, watching television. The last few cases I've had in the last year, the parents were in bed, they were reading, etc. And when they do it, there's not just one hit with a baseball bat or one shot; there's blood splatter all over the walls. These are horrific, horrific crime scenes.

Now, the term "heinous" may go to what they're talking about -- the nature of the kid; that the kid is a heinous person. I don't agree with that. These kids by and large are responding to typically horrific situations at home. The problem is, when you abuse a child and that child becomes an adolescent, there's a gamble that the parents don't realize they're doing. It's easy to abuse an infant; ... the infant really can't do anything in response to you. You start abusing a 10-, 11-, 12-, 15-, 16-year-old child, then you have to start worrying as a parent -- though parents never think about this -- about the reaction toward you. ...

These kids think that -- they're so depressed; they think their life is over; they see no way out. And when they kill through a confluence of circumstances, that's supposed to be unexpected. But if you look at their lives, it unfortunately follows a tragedy that is waiting to happen. ...

The problem is, child abuse ... is the perfect crime. It's the perfect crime because parents who do it seal their own protection, because they know the kid's typically, a, not going to fight back, and b, typically not [going to] report, because as bad as children get treated by their parents, that parent is still the caregiver; that parent still is the nourisher. And it's very difficult for the average human being to fight against that person, to rebel against that person.

That's why parricide is such a unique offense, because the vast majority, the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people who have been abused by their parents, never do anything. You get that question all the time in these cases: How many parricides are there a year? Well, 200 to 300. How many kids are abused? In the hundreds of thousands or millions.

So why [do some kill and others don't]?

So why? Well, those cases are the most extreme, and those cases are also the confluence of a variety of events. Typically they've tried to get help. Typically they have told somebody and nobody's helped them out, or the abuse has just reached such a crescendo, given their mental health, that they can't go on any longer.

I followed a couple cases in Colorado where juveniles got life without parole, but what's the usual punishment?

Well, it depends. It used to be that life in prison was the typical sentence prior to about 1985-87. ... Today -- in 2000, really after, like, the late 1990s, we see many, many more sentences of manslaughter and of involuntary manslaughter; there are cases where it's second-degree murder. But in terms of life without parole, it's rare to nonexistent except in a state like Colorado.

Why Colorado?

It's the nature of the law in Colorado. I think it's the punitive nature with which the Legislature has [seen] fit to treat adolescent perpetrators of homicide. It started in the late 1980s. Many states changed their laws with the increase -- it was a big increase -- in adolescent homicides, mostly as a result of drugs.

But that became generalized over the whole country, and many states ratcheted up their laws. In New York state, for instance, at the age of 13, kids could be transferred to adult court. But by and large, [in] the cases I've had, for instance, in New York, most of the kids who have been convicted of a homicide of a parent here have gotten typically manslaughter. They use something called the "extreme emotional disturbance" defense in many states -- it's [that] they're acting under heat of passion.

The states recognize that there is, if you look at the history, that there's a reason why these cases happen. You get a state like Colorado, where there's life without parole; if you get convicted of the murder, then there's no discretion at that point.

They don't care?

... Legislatures which pass laws that give life without parole to teenagers typically don't care about rehabilitation of teenagers, don't care about giving teenagers any hope. All they care about is locking them up and throwing away the key, and those kids be damned. ...

But really, if you look around the country -- and I've done cases in pretty much every state in the country, either directly or I've consulted on hundreds of these cases. For instance, states like Texas have a really bad national reputation, yet I've done a number of cases in Texas that have resulted in manslaughter [convictions]. In fact, Texas juries are actually the best juries, as far as I'm concerned, to do some of these cases, because the juries do the sentencing in Texas, which is the way it really should be around the United States. Jurors should take responsibility: They convict the person; they should take responsibility for what the sentencing is. ...

What do you think [the sentence] should be when an abused kid [kills his parents]?

Well, I think it really varies. I get asked that question a lot. I think what really needs to happen is that there has to be a full and complete understanding of the history of the abuse. Typically what happens in this case is the state comes in, and they just want to focus on what happens on the day of the homicide, maybe a couple days before, because in these kinds of cases, the kids make the cases for the state; ... because typically, kids being kids, they talk about it, either before they commit the crime or after they commit the crime.

The focus, though, is on those two or three days, and the day of the homicide. If a lawyer allows that to be the geometry of the defense, then the chances of the kid getting anything [better] than murder are very slim. However, what typically happens ... is you go back in time. You go back to when the kid was a child, and you bring up the entire scope of the family history. You also use mental health experts who can fully and effectively explain to the jury the extreme damage done to the child and then have the jury understand that the damage done to the child, as I've often said, is reflected in the rage of the homicide. ...

But even when they say there's a reason, [prosecutors] say it's an excuse.

Yeah, the "abuse excuse," and I think it's really unfortunate that that phrase ever came into being. ... If you go before juries, though, ... if there has been bad parenting or if the kid has a demonstrable mental health problem and you bring it out in an effective and coherent way to the jury, most jurors will respond to that. ...

But jurors are not that nice to kids.

In general they're not very nice. There was a study done by the Department of Justice -- which is not a liberal think tank -- on ... outcomes of family homicides, and that study looked at everything from teenagers who kill their parents to parents who kill their children to husbands who kill wives, wives who kill husbands, brothers who kill sisters. The most harsh treatment, at least [during] the mid-1990s, were teenagers who killed their parents, and the most lenient treatment were parents who killed their children. ...

If you look at, around the country, the way people are treated who commit homicide, we treat most leniently those parents who kill their children, and most children who they're killing are under the age of 2 years old. And we treat most harshly the teenagers who kill their parents.

Why, do you suppose?

I think there's a very good reason for it: because jurors can empathize much more with a parent who kills a child than they can with a child who kills a parent, because jurors, when they come into the courtroom in infanticide cases and when they come into court in parricide cases, come in first as parents. It's the only kinds of cases you [have] where the jurors really are expert witnesses, because they think they know what good parenting is; they think they know the plight of a parent; they think they know what an unruly teenager is; they think they know what a good kid is. ...

"It could have been my child" --

Oh, I think a lot of jurors think that, ... or they compare their kid to it. ... What's interesting [is] legislatures, while they ratcheted up and made the punishments for teenagers who commit not just homicide, actually, but all classes of violent crime much more severe, ... there's been an understanding at the same time that abuse is probably one of the most important social issues today because of its long-term effects. So the punishments that we give to parents who injure their children are much greater now.

[It] used to be that if a parent killed a child it was rare that they even went to prison -- that was true up through the mid-1980s -- or if they went to prison it was for a year or two. And only in the last 10, 12 years do parents now who kill their children get sent to prison for any length of time. ...

The usual thing about children [committing homicide] is they'll bring along a friend.

Well, yeah. I don't know how usual [that is]. I'd say in 20 percent of my cases, 20 percent of parricides, they'll bring along a friend or they'll tell a friend or they'll get a gun from a friend. Those kinds of parricides are much more difficult to defend. It's much easier defending a case where the child does it on his or her own, because then the psychological motivation from it is much easier.

But when you have somebody come along with you or you hire somebody -- I've got a lot of cases where they hire somebody, or typically I call them the "Bonnie and Clyde" cases, where the girl goes and gets her boyfriend to kill her father or mother; those are very common cases -- the argument that you can make that it's solely abuse-driven or the kid had no recourse to get help are much more difficult. ...

That, plus what you call overkill. ... Explain the overkill to me.

Overkill is ... a result of the emotional buildup and the fear that this parent is larger than life, and when they kill, they have to stab numerous times; they have to use the baseball bat numerous times. They never fire one bullet from a gun; they fire the whole barrel. They never fire one shotgun shell; they fire numerous ones. In today's time kids use semiautomatic handguns that, when you press the trigger, you can pull off 14 rounds in a few seconds, whole clips typically. It's not just bang and you're dead. Never happens like that. Never, never, never. ...

[One inmate I interviewed] was saying, "I was sitting in the jail, and I was telling my brother: 'I have an ounce of marijuana at home; go get it. And write a letter that I won't be going to school tomorrow.' And here I am facing a first-degree murder [charge], and I worry about the marijuana at home." The last thing he thought was he was in trouble.

Right, that's right. Many times I've had cases where the kid does not know the parent is dead. Even though they participated directly in the homicide and they died in front of the person, they somehow think that maybe a shotgun shot ... will not kill the person if they're shot in the head or the chest. ...

And they rarely can talk about it.

Well, that's a big thing I've learned over the years. ... When you interview somebody about what happened to them in these cases, where you interview somebody about the homicide, you create this traumatic stress reaction in them usually where they start reliving. You ask somebody who has been abused, they start reliving the abuse, and this is true of even ... victims of sex abuse in the church or wherever. Those people, typically when they tell you their story -- and these are people 50, 60 years old sometimes -- they relive it as if it was yesterday. ...

At the Geneva [meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Committee] last year, the U.S. was criticized for what it does about life without parole, and they said, "It's very, very rare, and it's the worst of the worst." And when I look at the guys, it's their first crime!

Oh, yeah, yeah. This is the first time. ... These kids are excellent candidates for rehabilitation, and the one principle you look at is you can tell a person's future behavior by how they were prior to the offense they've committed. For instance, kids who, let's say, rob a convenience store, all the research shows that there's an ascending level of violence. It starts out with what they call bump-and-grabs in elementary school or junior high school -- they'll take lunch money from kids; then it goes up to breaking and entering and an ascending level of aggressive behavior against people and property.

These kids [who are abused by their parents] don't have any of that. They tend to be -- unfortunately, because of their history of being intimidated by authority, they do excellent in prison. They don't rebel; they don't talk back to officers. I can't tell you the numbers of cases where these kids have become trustees in prison; they become excellent candidates for parole, because there is a psychological reason for why they killed that's identifiable and verifiable. ... They ended up killing as a result of their parent relationship; that parent is dead tragically, but that's not going to repeat itself in their lives. So as a result, they do excellent in prison, and I haven't had any kids who have gotten [out], none ever recommitted an offense.

So it's even more sad for the kids [in] Colorado?

For those that get convicted of murder and get sent away with life without parole, yeah, sure. You know, I don't think people really care. I think you're asking a question that is like screaming into the ocean for people. ...

I did a case a number of years ago: A woman was in a Maryland state penitentiary. ... Maryland is one of the first states in the country to give clemency to battered women. So a battered women's coalition is formed within the women's prison in Maryland to get women out of prison.

[This] woman had been in prison since 1975 for killing both of her parents, tries to join the group, and she calls me up, and she says, "Mr. Mones, I tried to join this group, but they told me I couldn't be in the group." And I said, "Well, why is that?" She says, "Well, they said because I didn't kill my husband; I killed my parents." ... I ended up taking her case on, and we got clemency from the governor of Maryland for her. But she got no support from the battered women's community at that time. ...

One thing that's interesting that's happened in America in the last 20 years is we used to have the death penalty for anybody really basically between, like, 13 and 17. First we declared the death penalty for people 15 years and younger unconstitutional, a case called Thompson vs. Oklahoma [1988]. Then just in the last year, now we don't have the death penalty for kids who are [17]. Why? Because even this Supreme Court, as conservative as it is, recognized that evolving standards of decency in America showed that it was not appropriate to kill teenagers.

Now, what that's raised, though, is the issue of, if you don't kill them, then we've got to put them away [for] life without parole. I think the same arguments that the Court has made of why we should not have the death penalty for teenagers is the same reason why there shouldn't be life without parole. And in fact, if you look at a lot of the research that was the underpinning of those decisions, it's that kids lack consequential thinking.

Think of all the laws we have in America about why we don't allow adolescents and teenagers to do things. For instance, the same kid who gets life without parole and can be interrogated [as an adult] without his parent present, who is 15 or 16 years old, can't sell his bicycle, OK? You can't enter into a contract, can't buy a piece of property, can't enter a pool hall, can't buy a drink -- can't do all those things -- can't vote. Why? Because we recognize that 18 is a bright line for decision making, for consequential thinking. ...

It's not saying that the crime is not serious; I mean, the crimes are clearly very serious. But this [Colorado mandatory sentencing law applies] to people who kill convenience store clerks, who have long histories of being aggressive, etc., as it equally applies to kids who kill their parents. ...

In the ladder of heinous crimes, where do you see parricide?

Parricide by teenagers? Well, I think the most heinous crime is the killing of a child. In my world that would get the most significant penalty. ...

Back around 10 years ago, [in 1995,] a woman named Susan Smith strapped her kids into a car and pushed that car into the water, and her kids died. Little children. And I said to friends of mine and others, I said, what would happen if her children grew up, after years of treatment, strapped her into the car and pushed her into the lake? ... Would a great cry come up from America to save the lives of two boys who strapped their mother in a car and pushed her in a lake? Don't think so. ...

The real thing that angers me in parricide cases is that relatives and neighbors and friends know. All of the people that have come to me over the years and said: "Oh, you know what? I knew something was wrong, Mr. Mones, but I really didn't feel it was my place to say anything." ... Most people never say anything. People are much more likely to stop at a car accident, ... when they can do nothing for the car accident, than they can for actually helping to intervene where a kid they know well is being injured.

Even social workers?

And even social workers. The problem in many of these cases I've found -- and there's no hard statistics on it -- but where kids really reach a point of desperation is where they have tried to get help and then they're drawn back in, or the case I've had where the kid tells somebody, and they call the kid and the parent in at the same time. I mean, it's crazy, but they do it. And the kids always get punished for it.

Is this country especially hard on teenagers?

I think we have a very punitive -- teenophobic, I call it -- atmosphere in America. I think we market well to teenagers and to children; they represent probably the greatest demographic for marketing movies and sneakers and all these other lifestyle issues. Yet on the same hand, we're really good in suppressing their dreams in terms of giving them the kinds of education they need, etc. I think we're doing much better, I should say, than we used to do. ... But I don't think we put the same kind of energy into kids as we really should. ...

But you said "punitive." [How?]

... The logic of how we deal with kids is best illustrated this way: A kid screws up in school, so that kid is self-identifying himself that he has a problem. What do you do to him? You kick him out of school. What happens when you kick him out of school? You typically don't give him any services.

You kick him out of school for one day, three days, five days, and the chances of him returning get less and less the more times this kid is suspended, as opposed to saying, OK, we're not going to kick you out of school; you're going to go to another facility where you're going to be sitting in a classroom with teachers to understand why you committed X, Y and Z misbehavior or offense. ...

[Do you think] we're afraid of teenagers?

I think we definitely are afraid of kids. I always ask people on the juries that, and I can really tell jurors' attitudes. I'll say, "Well, do you think teenagers commit more crimes than adults do?," and invariably you get most people raising their hand, saying yes. And it's not true, you know. We like to think teenagers are more violent, etc., than their adult counterparts, but they're not.

Why?

Why? I don't know. It's a deep secret from me. I've tried to think about it over the years, and I think it's that perhaps there's this misunderstanding that becomes punitive; that we ... forget about what it was like to be a kid. We forget about all the emotions. We forget about the hormones raging. We forget about [the fact] that kids don't think before they act. ...

So teenagers become a bit of an enemy?

I think kids are an enemy. ... I want to emphasize I think that things are better now than they used to be in terms of teenagers, but yeah, I think ... there's a myopia about children, that we really don't view them as we should be viewing them. We view them through adult glasses, especially teenagers. Because they look like us, because they're older and taller and bigger and stronger, we expect them to be thinking like us. That's just not the way it is; they just don't think like us. ...

It used to be that the drinking age was 18. One of the main reasons it was raised to 21 is we recognized that even kids between 18 and 21 still lack some of the consequential, mature thinking that allows them, when they get into a car, to say, "Uh-oh, I've had too much to drink; I'm not going to drive." And that's saved thousands and thousands and thousands of lives. ...

But it doesn't translate [to criminal justice]?

But it doesn't translate over. ... And I'll move to another population: kids who commit our worst crimes; kids in gangs; kids who rob the convenience store clerk; kids who commit aggravated violence; kids who do the bad things we read about on the front page of the newspaper. Those kids, by and large, we know have demonstrated significant mental health problems and have been victimized by their parents. And we know this, probably, when they're 6 to 7 years old.

Typically what the system does, instead of spending the money on the front end to treat kids, we spend money on the backend for jails. ... We'd rather pay a correctional officer $35,000 a years, whatever it is, to monitor the incarceration of an adolescent rather than spend the $35,000 up front for more services. ... I think that's a bargain that we're making with society: Spend the money later on rather than spend the money up front. ...

Sat, 2008-04-19 22:11 — neophyte

"no escape"

I relate well to this feeling of having no escape from a house/family hell-bent on maintaining this facade of being a "perfect family", only to have bull-shit at home.

For some reason parents who adopt are seen as these saviors, so other adults admire them.

I can't help but wonder what sort of woman feeds off this public perception, and feels like it's ok to let the charade end as soon as she comes home and pops a few pills.

I was lucky, I made sure I had friends as an escape.  I can only imagine how bad it can be for other adoptees, with no one.