Children's Lives

It seems as though we're seeing a lot more of it; parents murdering their children. Likely it's simply being reported more than before. In all likelihood children have always been subjected to mortal threats at the hands of parents who for one reason or another, snap. A father killing young children as a way of teaching his wayward wife a 'lesson', taking from her her most precious gift in life. Conversely, a mother abandoning her child and finally simply killing the child because caring for the child seems simply too onerous.

Of all types of murders, surely infanticide is the most difficult to come to grips with emotionally within society. It is inconceivable to most people that children and infants could be facing dire danger when they are in the care of their parents. Mothers drowning young children in a fit of some kind of psychotic break-down. Fathers stabbing their children, first one, then the other. How it is even remotely possible that normal people can descend to such bestial failure defies us.

And perhaps because we cannot believe that it is possible, in the throes of cold anger and sudden hatred to do such dreadful things, we must also believe that the person who kills the child who trusts and depends upon him or her must have lost their senses. Something made them lose touch with reality, succumb to a shrieking, inner madness of such dense, black proportions they could not possibly have known what they were doing.

The devil within was responsible. And who can summon that devil to appear in a court of law to be reproached and found guilty of a breathtakingly awful act of annihilation of the soul of their own genetic offspring?

A man who had the benefit of a higher education and a supposedly normal upbringing, and whose skills as a cardiologist assisted the ill and the elderly to overcome the dangers of their heart conditions, earning the respect of his peers and the community at large. A man who is young, accomplished, professional, intelligent, privileged - and vulnerable as are we all, with our interpersonal, and very intimate relations.

His wife is unfaithful and has an affair with someone he knows well. His wife is also a health professional. Two skilled and competent medical experts. Parents of two young children. Guy Turcotte's resentment and burning anger against his wife whom he could no longer trust, experienced the impulse to betray the trust of his dependent children by slaughtering them.

A young woman's mother, the grandmother of the young woman's child, desperately attempts to track down the whereabouts of her two-year-old granddaughter. Her daughter tells her that the child has gone off with a care-giver. She has no idea where the child is. The mother of the child is busy making the most of her opportunity in the absence of the child, to enjoy being with her boyfriend.

The child's body is finally discovered. The child's grandmother's suspicions have been aroused because she can smell the distinctive odour of a cadaver in her daughter's vehicle. And her grandchild is unaccountably missing. The mother of the child, Casey Anthony, is unconcerned. But her parents, George and Cindy Anthony are beyond alarmed, they are frantic at the child's disappearance.

Casey Anthony did not bother reporting her child's absence from her care for 31 days. She claimed a babysitter had kidnapped Caylee Marie. Days after the child had disappeared, her mother had a tattoo done, reading bella vita. Free, free at last to live the good life, presumably. And then came a series of lies to explain the child's absence, before her remains were discovered.

The jury hearing the case, the accusations of murder levelled by the prosecution against the young mother, and the counter-accusations of the defence on the accused's behalf that somehow her father had engineered the tangled mess after the child had drowned in their pool, on their watch. The deceit was all her father's fault. The jury could not bring itself to believe that a young mother would destroy her adorable child.

In the first instance Guy Turcotte has been found not criminally responsible for the fatal stabbing of his two children, for his mental state was such that he was not in possession of his faculties. His wife appears not to credit that possibility, and it would seem she is not convinced that justice has been done in the loss of her children. But he will undergo psychiatric medical examination to determine the extent of his emotional malfunction.

In the second instance, Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murder, and she has been sentenced to four one-year terms for lying to prosecutors. She will be set free, on probation, in six days.