Protecting the little innocents

LAST week in a quiet community in West Cork, three-year-old Clarissa McCarthy was killed by her father.

The whole nation has been deeply saddened and shocked by her death. Over the last 12 years, more than 30 children in Ireland have been killed by their parents, and while there are no international comparators, a deputy State pathologist commented “he was struck by the numbers of murder- suicides in families in Ireland since he took up his position in 2004”.

Understandably, in the aftermath of such deaths, commentary and analysis focuses on how a loving parent could have become so desperate and so despondent that he could not only take his own life, but also the life of his child or, in some cases, all of his children?

Commentary centres on exploring the pressures that the parent was experiencing at the time leading up to the deaths and the emotions that might have led to taking such awful actions. Often the actions are attributed to mental health difficulties.

When the killing of a child is committed by a parent, we tend to focus on this parent’s mental health and emotional state. What we need to explore is the parent’s attitudes and beliefs about their child and how these attitudes might have influenced their actions.

There is no merit in vilifying the parents who commit these acts who do require our compassion and understanding. But to prevent these types of deaths from occurring in the future we need an honest conversation about the attitudes that underpin them.

Those who carry out such acts are usually greatly distressed, but alongside this distress they must carry a common belief that their children cannot or should not live without them, or that if they cannot have their children nobody else will have them.

Underpinning most forms of child abuse is a belief that a child is a possession of an adult, of a parent or of the State, a possession for whom decisions should be made and who can be treated as adults wish to treat them. This belief has been at the centre of most of the failings by Irish society of children since the founding of the State and has underpinned most of the child abuse scandals emerging over the last number of years.

It is inaccurate and deeply stigmatising to attribute such acts to mental health difficulties alone.

People who experience mental health difficulties often feel great despair and hopelessness and some decide to take their own lives. But even at these times of great despair few decide to kill another person. Sometimes rash impulsive actions by those experiencing mental health distress can lead to unintended consequences, like the death of another family member and sometimes a person with a serious mental health difficulty is so detached from reality that they lack the mental capacity to know what they are doing. However, the nature of these murder/suicides is different, involving a great deal more premeditation and planning. Suicide is usually a self-punitive violent act which contrasts with violent acts that punish others. These extra punitive acts are not typically associated with mental health difficulties.

The surviving parent must also be given the support and reinforcement of knowing that they are the victims of a terrible act, the responsibility for which lies with the other parent. Some have quite rightly focused on the failings of the child protection or mental health services, questioning why those working with their spouses did not adequately communicate the risks they presented to their children, or why more was not done to protect their children.

There is a need to tackle, at a societal level, our attitudes and beliefs about children. The continued placing of children in adult mental health facilities or with foster parents who have not been properly vetted, reflects a disregard for children’s welfare and rights, a disregard that is at some level accepted by all levels of society.

We need to start this process within the education system, but we also need to engage in public education and awareness-raising campaigns encouraging honest debate about how we view and treat children. We need to stop attributing familicide to mental health factors alone and recognise it as child murder unacceptable no matter who perpetrates it. We need to create a society that truly values children, that treats them as citizens with rights and capacities, a society that does not tolerate any form of child abuse.

Clarissa McCarthy had a right to life. For her, and other children who died at the hands of their parents, we need to have an honest conversation about the factors that caused their deaths and how we can better protect our children.

* Paul Gilligan is chairman of the Children’s Rights Alliance and CEO of St Patrick’s University Hospital