Hat tip credit to Annie for saying “Shared Parenting is the Number One Cause of Children Being Murdered By A Parent” which gave me the topic and thought to write this post.
In 2009 every time you turned on the news or read the news you learned of another murder-suicide where one parent would kill them self, their spouse and children. All the experts blamed this on the economy, no one really looked into the reasoning past that. Domestic Violence is the reason, abusers are the reason. When an abuser can not control something, someone or a situation they lash out; many times with lethal measures.
I want to highlight here what we are seeing this year in 2010. We are still seeing many familicides, but either there are less this year or they are old news and not sensational enough to warrant top headlines. This year we are seeing more and more reports of one parent killing them self and their children in situations where there is a shared parenting agreement. Generally shared parenting agreements are forced by abusers to continue their reign of terror and control over their victims.
When an abuser feels they are losing that control for whatever reason they are capable of lashing out violently and lethally. Some may even see this as a way to control their victim from beyond the grave. They have taken their victims, children’s lives forever... leaving the victim mourning the loss of the children and blaming them self for not doing more to protect them.
Family courts play a huge role in this and in my opinion are just as at fault as the abuser is in these murders. By granting and/or forcing shared parenting when there has been domestic violence in the relationship, family courts are basically signing the death warrants of these children.
Father, girls found dead near Junction City in apparent murder-suicide: Richard Rauscher and his two daughters die of gunshots in an apparent murder-suicide near Junction City
Rauscher and his estranged wife, Jennifer, shared custody of their two daughters, police said. Richard Rauscher had weekend custody and was with the girls on Sunday, when they attended a birthday party
3 children killed in suspected murder-suicide attempt (chron.com)
Goher had threatened to kill or hurt himself if he lost visitation
While there was a history of violence against the mother — including a 2006 conviction against Goher for beating her
I’m including many articles, just the two most recent; that is enough to get my point across.
Think about it... shared parenting kills kids when domestic violence is involved. Judges and GAL’s need to start paying attention to the family dynamics and know that if an abuser has been abusive to his spouse in the past then when she is not there the abuse will be transferred to the kids.
People who are abusive HAVE to have someone to control. When the main victim removes them self from the relationship and there are kids involved, it has been proven time and time again that the abuse continues... just then it is child abuse.
Don’t just take my word for it... do some Google searches on the effects of domestic violence on children and what happens when the adult victim leaves the abusive relationship.
