Familicide, a type of murder where an individual kills one or more of their family members, is viewed as an unthinkable act to most people. While today's society has become accustomed to seeing homicides make national headlines in the media, it still comes as a shock when an individual decides to take a family member's life. These murders become even more alarming when the offender turns out to be a juvenile. While cases of familicide are infrequent, they are considered to be the most common type of mass killings ("Familicide," n.d.) and are unique in that the victims are known to the offender. The motivation and circumstances surrounding a juvenile's decision to end the lives of their family members often stems from the family being dysfunctional …show more content…
This type of family violence has the highest rate of occurrence out of any other type (Walsh, 2014). Peck and Heide (2012) studied offender, victim, and incident characteristics regarding fratricides and sororicides committed by juvenile offenders between 1976 and 2007. The results of their study showed that about 60 percent of juvenile siblicide offenders fell into the range of 15 to 17 years old, with both offenders and victims more likely to be male; however, offenders who committed sororicide were significantly more likely to be females (Peck & Heide, 2012). The researchers also found that juveniles who killed their sisters were often younger than those who killed their brothers. It was discovered that "68.7 percent [of sororicide offenders] were 15 years of age or younger, compared to 53 percent of fratricide offenders" (Peck & Heide, 2012). In addition, victims of sororicide are often younger than victims of fratricide (Peck & Heide, 2012).
This data suggests that young females are the ones who are the most at risk of becoming the victims of siblicide. One way that the occurrence of siblicide, especially sororicide, could be prevented would be to keep young children under closer supervision. If there are known issues between siblings, some kind of intervention or counseling should be utilized to …show more content…
It can be further broken up into the subgroups of matricide, the killing of one's mother, and patricide, the killing of one's father. Approximately 25 percent of fathers and 17 percent of mothers were killed by children under the age of 18 between 1976 and 1999 (as cited in Heide & McCurdy, 2010). However, the rate at which juvenile offenders commit matricide has continually declined over the past 30 years. Juveniles made up 14.8 percent of matricide arrests from 1976 to 1991, which then decreased to 11.7 percent between 1992 and 2007 (Heide, 2013).
There are three types of children who commit parricide: the severely abused child, the severely mentally ill child, and the dangerously antisocial child (as cited in Heide & McCurdy, 2010). Children who are abused often struggle with making connections and friendships with others due to a lack of empathy, remorse, or guilt, while the antisocial child will kill a parent in the pursuit of a self-centered gain, such as money or freedom. Finally, the mentally ill child kills because of their mental illness, although these types of cases are