THE PHENOMENON OF BABY-KILLERS

Introduction

The phenomenon of baby-killer belongs to the new forms of crime that have lately begun to devolp and spread also in Italy.

As a matter of fact today juvenile violence, is not carried out through simple show offs, it tends to be expressed more frequently through murderous behaviours.

The study of this phenomenon has then been carried out in order to answer such questions as: Who are the children who murder? Why do they kill? Whom do they kill? Under which circumstances?

The analysis of the literature

Analysing specific material about this subject largely coming from the United States - the country mostly struck by juvenile crime - it emerged that most of the murderers are males aged from 11 to 18. Many of them are pre-adolescent involved in the realization of murders and there are also several episodes in which the murderous action is committed by children aged 5/6 or younger.

Getting to know that also very little children can kill with apparent self-assurance, has lead us to question ourselves about the childlike concept of death in order to understand the meaning that children ascribe to the terms "die" and "kill". The notion of death of the little child and of the adult cannot be obviously put on the same footing. As a matter of fact, up to about six years of age, death is conceived as a temporary event and compared to sleep. Since he has a non realistic conception of death, the child who murders does not realize that he is causing an irreversible event and that he is carrying out an irreparable action. Moreover erroneous ideas about death are nourished by the mass media. Both TV and the new world of video games have transformed death in a game, in a show making it less permanent and distressing. Unable to distinguish between fancy and reality children can remain bewildered by the images broadcast by the small screen up to the point to convince themselves that death is a fictitious event from which you can revive. If very young children can be reasonably acquitted of charge of murder, since they act without reflecting and without fault, all the children aged up to fourteen, according to the Italian Law, are anyway considered unable to develop the wilfulness of killing because it is commonly believed that they have not yet reached the ability to distinguish good from evil.

The analysis of the acquaintance relationship between the perpetrator of a crime and his/her victim, has pointed out that the murders are committed above all against acquaintances and strangers even if by strangers we mean persons tied to their aggressor by a subtle bond of acquaintance. The murder within the family represents a lower percentage though it remains anyway a remarkable phenomenon..

The victim of the baby-killer is not chosen at random but by virtue of certain features. It is a question of a hated person or someone that due to some peculiarities represents him/her. The victim can be a deputy or a surrogate of the individual that the baby-killer wants to hit; he/she is identified with an internal depriving and frustrating figure that is able to set off the unconscious conflict that drives the murderer to kill. The victim can also be a person on whom the child projects his/her worse self: he/she becomes the container for his/her unacceptable impulses, a kind of object towards which he/she can pour on his/her own hostility and aggressiveness. It is like a mirror on which he/she sees his/her negative image reflected that he/she strongly wants to destroy to get free from the feeling of guilt (expiatory victim).

In the number of victims are included children, adolescents and adults. The "typical" victim is the more accessible and vulnerable one or the one that, against his/her will, is able to puts himself/herself in a condition of vulnerability.

When a baby-killer kills someone within the group of his/her equal this is normally to demonstrate his/her force and superiority. He/she adopts a violent and aggressive behaviour considering it the only valid model of success. The children who play the role of the victim are school-friends or playmates of the aggressor: they are typically physically weak, passive, submissive and quiet. Given their physical superiority, adults are on the contrary attacked when they become more vulnerable and defenceless : when they sleep, when they are under the effect of alcohol or from behind. A particular class of victims is represented by parents. The fathers or stepfathers killed by their sons are hot-tempered, violent, very often alcoholic and abusing. They are described as absent, inclined to punishment and with no affectionate nature. The victims of matricide are typically dominant and possessive women and mothers inclined to rejection and ambivalent that show seducing a attitude towards their sons.

Moreover, some common features in the way of behaving of baby-killers have been pointed out. First of all there is a preponderance of murders sprung out further to quarrels. The murder often represents the conclusive event of a stressful situation or the end of a physical or verbal dispute. Since the degree of mobility of young criminals is inferior with respect to the adults, it is more probable that they commit the crime within their home or in proximity to their home. Moreover they act on their own and not in group. The murder carried out by baby-killer is characterized by the lack of a seemingly logical motive. The reconstruction of the dynamics of the murder often leads to presume an accidental event. In reality there is a motive even if it cannot be immediately understood. A peculiar connotation of the murder is the brutality with which the victim's death is caused. Criminology documents a series of cases in which the victims have been stabbed more than sixteen times or repeatedly strangled. These signs of fury reflect the ferocious nature of the crime that is induced by uncontrollable impulses. Usually the murderous attack is characterized by a spontaneous, impulsive nature: the sudden connotation of the murder can be inferred by the fact that there are no signs of premeditation or planning and the weapon used is the one that the murderer has at his/her disposal. Baby-killers use different damaging means to kill. The victim's death is caused by stabbing, by suffocation, by strangling, by drowning and by wounding with a blunt instrument. The guns are most frequently used to carry out these murders and this certainly depends on the easiness for American children to get in touch with guns and other firearms in their own homes or on the roads. The crime execution usually happens in a dissociative mental state, called episodic dyscontrol syndrome.. During the violent act the murderer experiences transitory feelings of non-involvement and distance from himself/herself and from the external reality; he/she unconsciously carries out a defensive dissociation towards his/her own destructive drives that are committed outside his/her consciousness. This momentary "escape from reality" can account for the amnesia that generally follows the murderous action of young killers. Due to an actual distortion of memory, the latter often lament their inability to recall the crime. Even after confessing they look cold and detached, unable to feel any remorse, feeling of guilt for the effects of their damaging actions. The lack of empathy remarked in these persons has led to formulate the hypothesis of dehumanization of the victim. Insofar as on the basis of the process of neutralization the victim is considered a mere object and not a human being, the murderer feels entitled to inflict any destructive act. The low esteem that he/she has towards himself/herself, leads the baby killer to shift on the victim the depreciation and the humiliation of his/her self and this workings favours the aggressive behaviour.

From the case study we could identify two different typologies of murderers. This distinction refers to the behavioural characteristics of the minor showed before the execution of the crime. The first kind of murderer defined "detached" distinguishes himself for his shyness and discretion. He is the typical "good fellow" described as a solitary, sensitive and intelligent individual. He does not show any sign of aggressiveness or violence before committing the crime that is therefore considered an unpredictable and inexplicable event .

The second kind of murderer defined the "aggressive" is the opposite of the former. A distinguishing feature is a widespread aggressiveness that goes along with impulsiveness, restlessness and irritability. Some premonitory signs of the murderous behaviour are present since childhood: the person deliberately sets fires; he/she is physically cruel with animals and he/she often starts physical clashes. The principal explanatory theories about the subject of baby-killers are the psychiatric theory and the environmental theory. According to the psychiatric theory the murderous behaviour of children and teenagers goes back to mental troubles both of organic and psychogenic origin. Many children, who committed a murder, have been diagnosed carrier of illness such as the psychosis, antisocial personality trouble, epilepsy, mental retardation. In the psychiatric view the murderous conduct is considered an expression of the subject’s psychical abnormality. The child is driven to kill by a derangement that twists the examination of reality and prevent from evaluating and foreseeing in a realistic way the significance and the consequences of his/her actions. The environmental theory takes the murderous conduct of the children aged up to fourteen, back to a troubled family environment. The baby-killers usually come from broken up family units. They are illegittimate, unwanted sons, from separated, alcoholic or lunatic parents. Very often you can find a psychotic mother and/or an inadequate, indifferent or completely absent paternal figure. The lack of a significant affective link with at least one of the two parents generates anger and frustration. The child feels he/she is not loved and shows his/her uneasiness with irascible behaviours that can lead to a murderous conduct. In this case the murderous action is nothing but a love claim: the child unable to communicate in his/her own word his/her need for love, expresses himself/herself through a loud protest. The origin of the murderous act is found not only in the maternal failure and in the paternal deprivation but also in other traumatic experiences.

The baby-killer lives a childhood and an adolescence distinguished by ill treatments. By ill-treatments we do not only mean physical violence but also psychologic suffering, sexual abuse and situations of carelessness and deprivation. Owing to the cruelty of the abuses they are obliged to suffer, they develop sadistic and revenge fantasies that they later put into practice in more and more violent acts until they reach the extreme act of murdering. Those children and adolescent who are ill-treated within their families often show murderous impulses towards their ill-treating parents. Most of the parricides are carried out by those sons who kill because they are exasperated by violent parental figures that represent the only cause of their suffering. This kind of murder is known as "reactive murder" : the motivation is a kind of self-defence against a situation of family abuses that has become unbearable. Sometimes the child is pushed to murder by a "family plot". By this expression we mean those situations in which the weaker, passive and dependent parent, unconsciously or explicitly pushes the son to murder the abusing partner. Very deep dynamics are at the basis of the murder of the mother. Not only an affection’s deprivation, but also an excess of love manifested through a morbid attachment can spark off the murderous insanity. When the maternal image is castrating, namely felt as an obstacle to any possible evolution, the murderous act seems to represent an attempt to escape from the mother, an extreme way to separate from the involvement of a symbiotic relationship. Fearing to be phagocytized by the maternal object, the child can kill in order to protect himself from fragmentation of the Self and to reorganize his menaced identity. In the murderous action of the baby killers we can then sort out principally two kinds of movements : the mntal disease and the self-defence. None of the two factors can explain, if taken alone, such a complex phenomenon as the result of the continual interaction among individual and environmental components.

Fig. 1 Psychologic model of the murderous behaviour

An empirical research

Further to the previous analysis of the scientific literature about the baby killers, we set a research aiming to investigate the social representation of the phenomenon. The intent was that of compare the image of the baby-killer derived from the sperimental enquiry with the one derived from the study of the bibliography to point out the concordancies and the discrepancies.

Methodology and specimen

For this purpose we prepared a questionnaire made up of 16 items with multiple choice answers that explored the following areas : the highest risk age cathegory, the physical appearance, the social, economic and cultural origin, personality, random factors, motivation, the role played by family and society, the chosen victims, the degree of awareness. We explicitated the answer modality for each of these 16 questions, and three of them had an evaluation scale. The instrument was structured according to a spyral pattern in which the cyclical treatment of the different subjects allowed to insert some items of control.

After a first phase of pre-test, that has not showed critical points to be re-formulated within the text, the questionnaire has been given to a specimen of 100 students of both sexes, aged from 20 to 24 and belonging to different faculties.

The application of the questionnaire, proceded by a short oral interview with the subjects aimed to clarify even though generically the objectives of the survey, has been carried out in a collective session. The time left to the anonimous completion of the questionnaire was free, but no candidate took more than 15 minutes.

Results

We illustrate the most interesting data of the survey referring to the Appendix where we riproduced the whole questionnaire fit out with all the answers obtained, question by question.

Let’s start considering what is meant by "baby-killer" according to the people interviewed.

Almost a third of them defined the baby-killer as a child who is influenced by bad companies. This affirmation was supported by 31% of the students. According to their frequency other definitions follows : "someone who kills for sel-defence under particular situations" (20%) and then "someone who kills to give himself the pleasure to do it" (17%). Although 32% of the students answered that baby-killers are psychically unstable children, the items of control remarkably contradict this datum. As a matter of fact the answer to the question concerning the origin or the cause of the murderous behaviour notably took into consideration more often the family (58%) and society (36%). Statistically speaking the students evaluated as highly improbable the possibility that a baby-killer can be afflicted with a psychiatric or psychologic pathology. 88% of the students answered that a baby-killer is not a diseased subjec. According to 87% of the participants the baby-killers belong to problematic families and have a disturbing appearance. The typology of the baby-killer emerging from the specimen presents the following characteristics. It is male (99%), aged from 12 to 17 (83%), physically neglected (68%), violent (80%), impulsive (64%), ill-mannered (98%) and scarcely intelligent (80%). Not even half of the partecipants have taken shyness as a distinguishing feature of the minor murderer : only 8% has taken into consideration this possibility.

With respect to the personal responsibility in committing a crime and to the nature of the crime, notwithstanding some internal contraddictions, the people interviewed on average believe that baby-killers kill voluntarily because they want to demonstrate something or because they want to draw someone’s attention on themselves. Moreover the latter act in group and they most frequently hit their friends respectively according to 67% and 49% of the students.

Conclusions

From the data collected we infer that the profile of the baby-killers traced by the students sticks for some aspects (age, sex and social, economic and cultural origin) to the one emerged from the bibliographic analysis even if with respect to other variables (random factors, favourite victims and degree of awareness) there are very significant differencies.

Both these discrepancies and the internal contraddictions emerged during the evaluation of the answers demonstrate that, notwithstanding the cultural level of the specimen, the perception and the knowledge of the phenomenon are still rather superficial and confused. Extending the results of the research to the population with characteristics similar to those of the examined specimen, we can assert that in Italy people still tend to underestimate the entity of the problem as if it only concerned us marginally. Probably dazzled by the stereotype of the "age of innocence" we find it hard to become aware of a reality that horrifies us and that is rejected by the common consciousness. However we must take note of the fact that baby-killers are a social problem. Undoubtedly the most evident expression of juvenile uneasiness is the minors’ murderous conduct. Instead of limiting oneself to condemn the phenomenon, it is necessary to reflect about the motivations that originate it. In the light of the analysis carried out we believe that we cannot leave apart the consideration and comprehension of the tragic conditions in which the little killers act. Sometimes they are forced to choose the track of violence : since they do not have ant perspective of forming a positive personality, they are inclined to become negative heroes as long as can take up a role that make them think they exist and matter. Very often abandoned to themselves, the minors who act as aggressors, are noting but simple victims and for this reason we believe that instead of siding with those who are in favour of repression, it is necessary to intervene and side with those in favour of prevention in order to point out and understand at the right moment any individual and family difficulty of young people before they are expressed through a murderous behaviour.

References

OLIVERIO FERRARIS A., GIORDA G. (1995), Parricidio: tipologia e dinamiche emotive di un orrore, Psicologia Contemporanea, n.131, p.18-25