Why do men kill their children when relationships break down?

First topic message reminder :

In UK News SM posted a story of a Utah policeman who shot dead his British wife, her mother and their children when she found videos that showed he had been drugging her, raping her while she was drugged, and filming it.

Then on Sky there was this one:


Father Kills Four Children Before Surrendering
A gunman kills four of his children and two adults before a dramatic three-hour stand-off in a suburban area in Texas.
A father has shot dead four of his children after opening fire at a house in Texas.

The suspect also killed two adults and critically wounded his 15-year-old daughter before armed officers chased and cornered his silver car in Spring, a Houston suburb.

The suspected gunman eventually surrendered after a nearly three-hour stand-off with police.

First, he led police on a nearly half-hour pursuit, then his car was sandwiched between two police trucks in a residential cul-de-sac a few miles from the scene of the killings.

Despite being surrounded by marksmen, the suspect remained "cool as a cucumber", Sergeant Thomas Gilliland said.

There were "two hours of constant talking with a man armed with a pistol to his head and who had just killed six people", he said.

After lengthy negotiations the suspect emerged from the vehicle with his hands raised, sinking to his knees before being arrested and detained.

When police arrived at the scene at around 6pm, they found two adults and three children dead.

Another child later died at a hospital.

The victims were two boys, aged four and 14, and two girls, aged seven and nine. The dead adults were a 39-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman.

The gunman and his wife are estranged, and she was out of state at the time of the killings. Two of the dead children were adopted.

Assistant Chief Deputy Constable Mark Herman said: "It appears this stems from a domestic issue with a breakup in the family from what our witness has told us."

Authorities did not release the victims' identities and did not say whether the adults who were killed were related to the children or their father.

The wounded teenager was able to call 911 and later warned deputies that her father planned to go to her grandparents' home to kill them, Sgt Gilliland said.

http://news.sky.com/story/1298299/father-kills-four-children-before-surrendering



Now, I'm not saying that women never do it, but time and time again you read of men doing this. Why? Revenge? Or is it more complicated. It's something that happens so many times I think it should be studied to find out what the triggers are (excuse the pun) so that the deaths can be minimised.

Sassy wrote:Was that a noise I heard?  No?  That's because the ignore button is such a joy lol

You're hardly ignoring didge if you make a reference to him posting.
Also why would you want to put didge on ignore when he contributes to threads about 90% worth?

The ignore button is ridiculous. That's what happened in debates: people disagree.

Sassy wrote:I refer you to my post above Sphinx.

No your above post takes the every child killed.

It also starts from the position that men  are committing heinous acts because they know they cannot be punished - that the mindset is of seeing children as expendable - as MEN ARE BAD.

How about contemplating a mindset where a man feels he is failing his children because he can no longer be their protector because the woman is stopping him.  The mindset which sees imagination of horrific suffering visited on his children that he cannot stop or relieve or prevent - the sort of suffering that leads to the thought that the only way to protect the children from all that pain and suffering is to send them to their deaths and follow to protect them their.  In other words almost identical thinking to that of many women in post-partum psychosis who decide they are so unable to care for the precious baby the only way to protect is to kill.

No it is not a correct mindset - but it has nothing to do with revenge and getting own back and nothing to do with children being seen as expendable and is everything to do with loving and caring so much it results in insanity.  If a woman who has killed her baby can stand there in court and say she could not get past imagining all the paid the world was going to visit on her baby and thought the only way to prevent that pain was to send the baby out of reach of it and have it accepted she acted out of love can we perhaps extend the same acceptance of motivation to the dead man who has killed his children.

eddie wrote:

Sassy wrote:Was that a noise I heard?  No?  That's because the ignore button is such a joy lol

You're hardly ignoring didge if you make a reference to him posting.
Also why would you want to put didge on ignore when he contributes to threads about 90% worth?

The ignore button is ridiculous. That's what happened in debates: people disagree.

Because he bores the life out of me, and goes round in circles.

What it said was:

What is common in the majority of cases is that the person involved is often a middle aged, "ordinary" man.

Sassy wrote:What it said was:

What is common in the majority of cases is that the person involved is often a middle aged, "ordinary" man.

Yeah trust me if I am presenting statistics and refer to "often in the majority" I get A) laughed at and B) considered incompetant

so total number of children killed
total number at hands of parent
numbers at hands of each gender

You have sort of hinted at.

Now how many of those involved parents who immediately took their own life
and what is the gender split on those cases.

sphinx wrote:

Sassy wrote:What it said was:

What is common in the majority of cases is that the person involved is often a middle aged, "ordinary" man.

Yeah trust me if I am presenting statistics and refer to "often  in the majority" I get A) laughed at and B) considered incompetant

so total number of children killed
total number at hands of parent
numbers at hands of each gender

You have sort of hinted at.

Now how many of those involved parents who immediately took their own life
and what is the gender split on those cases.

Yes I realise that, but in this case it was presented by:

Dr Marilyn Gregory, based at Sheffield University, is an expert on homicide followed by suicide.

So I would say, as she has studied it in detail and says that the majority are ordinary men, she says that because she has the facts and figures at her fingertips.

Sassy wrote:

eddie wrote:

You're hardly ignoring didge if you make a reference to him posting.
Also why would you want to put didge on ignore when he contributes to threads about 90% worth?

The ignore button is ridiculous. That's what happened in debates: people disagree.

Because he bores the life out of me, and goes round in circles.

How odd is that where you say the exact same thing as Sexy, anyone would think you are posting from her account, where it would make sense as she has never been condescending towards me before.

Okay as to this utterly absurd debate, how about we reverse roles and show me the percentage of women who have not had full custody of their children percentage wise compared to men. In fact if many more men had full custody would you see a similar amount of women doing as those men that do kill children?
Hence why some of these debates are so utterly flawed, they fail to take any factors into account