Date of Completion

Spring 5-10-2024

Thesis Advisor(s)

Dean Cruess

Honors Major

Psychological Sciences

Disciplines

Criminal Law | Criminology and Criminal Justice | Family Law | Psychology

Abstract

The following serves as an extensive literature review on the phenomena of filicide and familicide–the ultimate forms of parental betrayal–perpetrated within the United States. Subsequently highlighted is the theme that the people who should always take care of and love their children are sometimes also those who demonically arrange for their children’s very deaths, and while parents have the power to bring children into this world, they do not have the right to remove children from it. An overview of the unique perpetrations, victimologies, psychopathologies, and motivations that contribute to the classifications of filicide and familicide are further provided. Six case studies spanning the last fifty years are additionally included so as to offer historical contexts for the crimes of these two natures that have been committed in the recent past. This literature review concludes with pertinent calls for action and implications for further research. Accompanying this literature review is an oral presentation that addresses the theme of American society as complicit actors in the murders of children and the exploitative perpetuation of their deaths.

Keywords: filicide, familicide, overview, history, psychopathology, motivation, victimology, Yates, Jones Jr., Daybell, Watts, Todt, List

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