The Queensland Family and Child Commission worked with researchers from the University of Queensland on a study to understand the key risk factors that can lead to filicide
This article discusses the topic of child death, which may be distressing to some readers
The death of any child is a tragedy, but when it happens at the hands of a parent or carer, it is particularly shocking and leaves us asking how warning signs were missed.
When a parent or a person in a parental role kills their child, the act is known as filicide. While it is relatively rare compared with other non-natural causes of death, 109 children in Queensland, Australia, have lost their lives to filicide between 2004 and 2020. These deaths occurred in 90 events, meaning some involved more than one child. Sadly, 75% of children involved in these cases were younger than five years.
The Queensland Family and Child Commission worked with researchers from the University of Queensland on a study to understand the key risk factors that can lead to filicide. This involved examining records associated with fatal child assault and neglect from Queensland’s Child Death Register, a database containing 20 years of information about the deaths of Queensland children.
Understanding filicide
Filicide is a complex phenomenon, and there is no simple answer as to why a parent may kill their child. Research—including analysis of the Queensland Child Death Register—has identified the main circumstances, which is useful for understanding the risks.
A parent may kill their child as an act of revenge, a deliberate attempt to inflict suffering on their spouse. These events are premeditated and are often associated with a history of dysfunctional behaviour by the perpetrator. Parents who kill their children in revenge are highly likely to take their own lives as well.
A parent can kill their child unintentionally, where the death results from maltreatment, such as physical abuse and neglect. This can be in a single event or the culmination of escalating violence over time. It often occurs in the context of excessive disciplinary action.
A parent may kill their child under the belief it will be better for the child or out of a belief it will relieve the child of their suffering, whether real or perceived. This is known as altruistic filicide.
Parents living with some types of mental illness may experience acute psychosis and kill their child under the influence of hallucinations or delusions. This can sometimes overlap with altruistic filicide, when a parent experiencing delusions kills their child to save them from harm they perceive to be real, such as possession by spirits.
A child may also be killed by a parent who does not want the child. This often occurs shortly after birth but can also occur when a parent wants to pursue an improved life outcome for themselves in the absence of children.
Understanding these circumstances can help practitioners to identify risk factors.
Risk factors for filicide
The study acknowledged filicide can be difficult to predict; however, it identified risk factors that indicate an elevated risk and should trigger further action or investigation. The presence of domestic and family violence and alcohol and substance misuse were identified as key risk factors, appearing in almost half of all filicide events analysed. The true extent of filicide in the context of domestic and family violence is likely to be higher, as it is known to be under-reported and under-recognised across the community.
The study found that children were more likely to be killed by a biological parent than a step-parent, extended family member, or other caregiver. Fathers were responsible for 34 of the 90 filicide events, mothers were responsible for 28 filicide events, and both were responsible for three events. The remainder were perpetrated by caregivers, step-parents and extended family members.
Parents’ separation was identified as a key risk factor, with the study finding 23 of the 90 filicide events occurred in this context. Previous Australian research found that separation was often a factor in filicide, particularly in cases where a filicide event was perpetrated by a father motivated by anger towards their former partner and he had intention to cause hurt to the child’s mother. In contrast, where a perpetrator was a child’s mother, the event was often motivated by beliefs she was unable to provide for the child and/or that the child would be ‘better off’ not living.
Repeated contacts with child protection services were also observed in the cases examined in this study. In 45 of the 90 events, at least two or more contacts were recorded.
Compounding features indicating heightened risk
The study identified several features that indicate heightened risk that should not be ignored if observed by any professional working with children and families. Some of these factors arise from a combination of risk factors.
Our study highlighted an increasing risk to a child when a parent or carer makes a threat to kill, which should always be considered a high-risk, standalone factor for filicide, even in the absence of any other known risk factor. Evidence of a threat to kill a child was present in 11 of the 90 filicide events. It is possible that threats to kill were present in other filicide events but were not known to authorities or recorded in their reports.
This finding indicates that every threat to kill must always be taken seriously and investigated.
Extended hospitalisations of five days or more following the birth of a child (or more than three days at any time during the child’s life) are considered rare enough that it may indicate an increased risk of filicide. This was considered especially relevant where other compounding risk factors—such as repeated contact with child protection services—were present.
The study found that children younger than four who had multiple child protection concerns could be at increased risk of filicide if their family context includes a non-biological father figure, such as a step-father or mother’s partner. When combined with other factors, such as extended hospitalisations or the presence of domestic and family violence, this risk was found to increase.
Predicting outcomes
While the presence of risk factors does not mean a filicide event is inevitable, this research reinforces that risk factors play a critical role in assessing the safety of a child.
Risk factors should always be considered with caution: they are indicative of risk but not predictive of a fatal outcome. This does not mean that risk factors should be discounted, minimised or ignored; rather, they should be understood as one part of the constellation of factors that could indicate an increased risk of filicide.
All child safety practitioners and people working with children and families should strengthen their understanding of filicide to help them better identify risk factors that can lead to harm. Importantly, filicide risk factors should be prominent in safety assessments and critical in forming a complete picture of a child’s life and environment.
The full report, A study of indicators of red flags for fatal child assault and neglect in Queensland, can be found here.
