Abstract
This chapter draws on data from the Murder in Britain Study to examine male perpetrators and compare family to nonfamily perpetrators. These comparisons were examined in terms of the nature of relationships, the murder event and the life course of the perpetrators. The results suggest these perpetrators experienced adversity in childhood and problematic adult lives, but contextual factors such as the orientations of the men, the type of relationship with the child and the child’s mother were also significant.
We strongly urge that more should be done through training and research to consider the implication for social work practice with these “shadowy men”. As reported in the prison casefile of a man who killed his stepchild.
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Notes
- 1.
An asterisk denotes a statistically significant comparison.
- 2.
We use the acronym NBF because we think that the terms “stepfather” and “stepchild” constitute a gross mis-representation of many of the relationships between the perpetrator and the victim considered here. These relationship did not involve a “stepfather” in any legal or cultural sense, indeed, many of the relationships between the child and the perpetrator would not qualify for the word “parent”. We think those concerned about and engaged in researching the murder of children should seriously review the use of these terms.
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Dobash, R.P., Dobash, R.E. (2018). When Men Murder Children. In: Brown, T., Tyson, D., Fernandez Arias, P. (eds) When Parents Kill Children. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63097-7_5
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