Warning: This story discusses family harm, suicide and mental health, and may upset some readers.
After the suspected killings of three children by their father at their Manawatu home, questions immediately focused on whether there were any “red flags”. Previous cases of filicide in New Zealand show that the warning signs are not always predictable.
On Saturday, Manawatu father Dean Field seemingly killed his three children, set his house alight and is suspected of then taking his own life.
Dean and his wife, Chelsey Field, were understood to be in the process of separating. Stuff understands they were still living together. But little else is known about their circumstances which led to the tragic event.
Police would not divulge if there were any “red flags” ahead of the suspected murders in the Manawatu town of Sanson.
Through a family spokesperson, Chelsey declined to comment while the police carried out their homicide investigation. (After publication of this story she issued a statement which you can read here.)
Cases of filicide-suicide – in which a parent kills their children and then themselves – are extremely rare and research is limited here and overseas.
When news was first published of a father and three children dead, retired family counsellor Rhonda Pritchard said it set off an alarm in her head: “Immediately I thought – is this a filicide-suicide case?”
Pritchard, from Wellington, carried out one of the only studies into the subject in New Zealand, looking at six Australasian cases which involved custody disputes between 1994 and 2000.
Four of the killers were men and two women, all of them attempted suicide or killed themselves, and none of them had sought or received psychological help.
Pritchard’s research found there was no single factor which could help predict such a violent event. But there was a common thread in all of the cases. The final catalyst was when the subject faced a final loss: of a partner, a child or control of their lives.
“They all related to a partner being rejected,” Pritchard told Stuff. “The impending separation and the loss of full-time care of the children was the precipitating event in every case.”
There were also “unexpected” findings compared to overseas cases. Five of the six killers had no history of psychotic illness or criminal offending. They were viewed as at least caring parents, in some cases over-caring.
In almost all of the cases, there was no record of child abuse before the killings. But all of the four men had a record of violence against their partners.
“The essence of one of my findings was that children are the victims of this kind of crime, but the partner is usually the target,” Pritchard said.
The killers were found to be highly dependent on their partners, meaning that separation had led to “acute grief” and feelings of “intolerable loss”. They also held fantasies of reunion and revenge against their former partners.
Another theme was what Pritchard described as narcissistic vulnerability, which included intense projection of blame, rigid thinking and low empathy. In other words, the killer was capable only of imagining the impact of events on themselves and could not separate their needs from their children’s needs.
Several family violence experts cited other high-profile murder-suicides by parents in New Zealand, in particular Edward Livingstone, who shot his children, Ellen and Bradley, before killing himself in Dunedin in 2014; and Alan Bristol, who killed his three children, Tiffany, Holly and Claudia, before killing himself in Wanganui in 1994.
In both those cases, there was a history of abuse from the perpetrator against their partner. The couples were also engaged in custody disputes.
Hamilton-based psychologist Neville Robertson was deeply involved in the Bristol case. He said family homicides were typically preceded by extremely controlling behaviour. That was not always physical and could be purely psychological, he said.
“There’s a high correlation: men who beat their partners abuse their children. Even if they are not directly hitting them, they are explaining to the kids why their mother deserves to be hit. They are very disruptive, they will play favourites, sow discord.”
Robertson said family violence was “notoriously complex”. In some cases, a parent who is being abused chooses to stay with their partner because they believe it would be safer for the children.
The Bristol case led to reforms of the Family Court because the father had been given interim custody of the children despite evidence that he had been violent towards his wife, Christine. Some of those reforms were repealed in 2013.
Ang Jury, chief executive officer of Women’s Refuge, said there was no record that the Field family had any contact with family violence services.
The child protection agency, Oranga Tamariki, also confirmed to Stuff that it had not been involved with the family.
Jury said the apparent absence of an intervention by the state or social services did not mean there were no warning signs.
Police commander: “It’s unimaginable, the horror, the heartache.”
“This is another example of domestic violence reaching its absolute peak,” she said.
“People are going to say it was out of the blue and he couldn’t deal with the separation but in our experience this sort of thing never comes out of the blue.”
There was a tendency in New Zealand for people to frame family violence homicides in terms of mental health problems. Jury said she was dreading that conversation after the suspected homicides in Sanson.
“People separate every day of the week in this country – well people and unwell people – and they don’t murder their children.”
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She said family violence data strongly showed that a relationship breakup was the most dangerous time for a woman.
“If you are thinking of separating, if you are worried even in the slightest, reach out and get a little bit of advice, get a little bit of help. Just get some ideas to get some strategies to keep you and your kids safe.”
SOURCE: https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360893499/man-allegedly-killed-his-three-children-warning-signs-crime-are-not-always-predictable
