Fatal Maternity (Part 9): Child Survivors
Ending this series with a focus on the true victims of filicide: the children and those who survived
Trigger warning: I don’t always add these warnings (this is true crime, I feel like people expect some level of graphic and potentially triggering content) but this includes some discussion of severe child abuse and attempted filicide. I minimized most graphic content for the duration of this series, and here I tried to keep it as subtle as possible, but it still has potential to be triggering, so just a head’s up.
A mother’s deranged decision can shatter a child’s world in an instant - if they survive their mother’s sudden homicidal urges, that is. Regardless of the mother’s motive, or her state of mind at the time, she drags her children down into the darkness to perish with her.
“We belong together,” she might say. She may use words as direct daggers to the father, or she may say nothing at all.
When we think of child survivors of filicide, the mind could wander back to ten-year-old Lashaun Armstrong, who escaped the van his mother had driven into a frigid lake with him and his siblings inside. Shivering, hypothermic, and in shock, Lashaun had walked until a woman picked him up and learned his harrowing story.
We may think of Joanne Zephir’s eight-year old daughter, who survived being force-fed bleach, and then her three-year-old sister died. Or of Angela Flores’s teenage son, who ran for help while his mother murdered his siblings, only for her to tell police he helped her do it.
Often, the children are placed with other family members, or the other parent, and aren’t heard of again. They deserve privacy and the space to grieve and heal. They grieve the siblings lost, of a mother lost, be it to suicide or incarceration, of a childhood lost, and the daunting need to process the accompanying trauma.
The children are, after all, the true victims at the heart of all this.
The Survivors
Much more literature exists regarding the mothers who commit filicide than there is concerning the survivors. Between the grief and survivor’s guilt, what is the impact of such a trauma on a young child?
It stands to reason that children who lived with abuse prior to the filicide attempt would react differently than ones who didn’t. The feelings towards their mothers would vary. A mother who suffered psychosis yet was loving beforehand would be received differently by her children in the aftermath than a mother filled with cruelty and spite.
Abused Survivors
Carmit Katz from the Bob Shapell School of Social Work published a study in 2013 called “The narratives of abused children who have survived attempted filicide.” Katz cites the short and long-term effects of abuse in children. Short-term effects include “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptomatology”, like anxiety, fears, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, aggression, depression, low self-esteem, sleep disorders, or guilt.
Long-term trauma turns PTSD into Complex-PTSD. According to webmd.com, C-PTSD forms from long periods of trauma instead of one or two traumatic incidents. C-PTSD has the same symptoms as PTSD, but comes with intense emotional dysfunction and extreme trust issues, also mimicking Borderline Personality Disorder.
Katz interviewed seven children who survived a filicide attempt and experienced maltreatment beforehand, all of whom were under the age of 12.
“The thorough content analysis that was conducted on the children’s narratives revealed five key categories: (a) many bad things have happened to me, (b) this was not the first time I was abused by my parent, (c) I am concerned about my parent, (d) I am alive thanks to my siblings, and (e) it is hard to remember what exactly happened,” Katz writes.
The children proved understandably reluctant to discuss the abuse and filicide attempt, saying they didn’t want to get their parent(s) in trouble, or that the parent threatened them if they told anyone.
“Our mother told us that it didn’t happen and that we should keep quiet about it, because even though she drowned us she loves us and will take good care of us from now on,” one child said.
Another told Katz: “The only solution is to pray. You know that if I tell on my father this will be a disgrace to god, and he will punish my family; so, I need to pray really hard for my family.”
Death threats were common, the kids said.
“When he was upset with me he often told me that one day he would put my head under the water until I died, and he actually did it. . .” One stated of their father.
When it came to recalling the filicide attempt, the children could remember pieces, but not details, Katz writes. Two of the children lost consciousness during the filicide attempt.
A third child said: “I tried to resist her and to scream, but she was really strong… I cannot remember how it stopped…”
Interestingly, Katz also writes that the kids expressed concern for their parents and what was going to happen to them after the interview. Two kids told Katz that outside of the abuse, their parents were good to them. None used terminology related to filicide such as “kill” or “tried to kill me”. Descriptions of the attempt were minimal.
The seven attempts Katz studied involved more than one child, and the victim discussed how their siblings potentially saved their lives.
One said: “When trying to breathe in some air before going into the water again, I heard my brother yelling at my mom, saying, ‘leave him alone, please stop it’.”
Another told Katz: “I only remember him drowning me, and then I remember seeing my sisters crying and calling an ambulance. I understood that they saved me and that I am alive thanks to them. . .”
The reluctance to name the incident as a murder attempt by the kids could be linked to how normal chaos was for them after prolonged abuse, Katz writes. They were so accustomed to violence that a filicide attempt felt familiar enough to be just another day in their world.
The study revealed in the children a “loyalty conflict,” battling between saving themselves and protecting their family from outside scrutiny or action. The need to protect family seemed to make them disclose further details when it came to helping their siblings, though. The possibility of getting help for siblings seemed to make them open up more.
Survivors Not Previously Abused
For children who didn’t experience violence at the hands of their mother before, a filicide attempt would be their introduction to trauma.
In 1979, Dr. Maria Paluszny (from the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychiatry) studied a five-year-old boy she called “Peter” in the aftermath of his mother attempting a filicide-suicide in the chaos of mental illness. Paluszny also theorizes that the “Medea Complex” may have played a part.
Paluszny reports that Peter hadn’t been abused before and was actually the favorite child; the youngest of four boys. His mother, “Mrs. Smith,” had lost two babies previously after her third pregnancy, both of which were girls. She and her husband, “Mr. Smith,” reported that after the second miscarriage, Mrs. Smith would have “intermittent episodes of depression and drinking bouts...”
She struggled with substance problems, taking Noludar, barbiturates, and still drinking in the months leading up the filicide attempt.
“She threatening suicide but did not threaten any of the children,” Paluszny writes.
In the weeks before the attack, there seems to be signs their marriage was suffering. Mr. Smith moved from the bedroom to the couch. Mrs. Smith slept in the same room as Peter.
On the day of the filicide attempt, Mr. Smith checked on his wife three times, last checking on her at 3:30 a.m. She’d been drinking and took Tuinal before going to bed angry.
“At 6:45 a.m., a brother found Peter by the bedroom in a pool of blood with his throat slashed. Mrs. Smith was lying nearby, semiconscious,” Paluszny writes.
Peter’s therapy in the aftermath of the horror was divided into five stages:
1. Reaction to trauma
Peter spent four weeks in the hospital after which he was discharged to go live with one of his uncles. A judge agreed with the therapist that Peter should live with relatives for at least six months, while his mother, who survived, was mandated into therapy for that period. Paluszny writes that Peter would walk up to strangers and say: “Do you know what happened to me? I had my neck cut.”
In therapy, he expressed anxiety over discussing the filicide attempt despite being otherwise verbal, intelligent and friendly. He focused on broken or torn toys in the office, and showed a fixation on things that could cover up one’s neck.
“He asked if the therapist knew what happened to him. Then quickly turning his head, pointed to the scars. Peter volunteered that his mother was responsible and was now in a hospital. He tried to recall some details, remembered that he could not scream because his mother held her hand over his mouth, but was unable to remember any thoughts or feelings,” Paluszny writes.
After his mother was released from the hospital, Peter became reluctant to discuss the incident. Destruction became a theme while he played; breaking clay objects he made, and playing out fantasies like a toy car running over a puppet, and saying there was “lots of blood.”
“When the therapist told Peter that sometimes when children are afraid they will talk or play out their fears, Peter indignantly announced that he was afraid of ‘nothing,’” Paluszny writes.
Peter also displayed themes of death in playing, both in the act of killing dolls or toys, and in denying death in bringing the toys “back to life.” He told the therapist multiple times that he stopped breathing in the ambulance, hence he died and couldn’t do so again.
2. Ambivalence toward mother
As time went on, Peter displayed conflicted thoughts and feelings towards his mother.
Some time after returning home, his mother took some pills left out by Mr. Smith and was back in the hospital. Peter displayed trust in her, but also went into a state of heightened anxiety when she returned home from the hospital. His destructive themes during play increased. When Peter stayed overnight in the home with his parents, he became unwilling to discuss what happened in that time. The therapist suggested Peter had been anxious about spending a night with his mother for the first time since the incident.
Peter told the therapist he wanted to get his mother a diamond bracelet and had brought the gift, in a paper bag, to his therapy session. He talked of wanting to make it hard for her to open the gift.
“The therapist suggested Peter had mixed feelings. He loved his mother and wanted to give her a gift, but he was also angry because she had hurt him so he wanted to make it difficult for her to open the bag. Peter finally agreed this was how he felt,” Paluszny writes.
In this time, Mrs. Smith was deemed not dangerous by an outpatient psychiatrist and the court ruled for Peter to be moved home.
3. Transference and castration anxiety
Peter’s play during therapy revealed heightening fears upon his return home. He began substituting a girl doll for the boy, claiming the boy had changed into a girl by magic. Remembering that his mother had miscarried two girls, was this something she had said to him, dragging him into her adult problems?
He continued to show ambivalence towards his mother. Sometimes she loved him, sometimes he was scared of her.
“Peter was beginning to explore reawakening Oedipal wishes and castration fears. If he was a girl, he might be pleasing his mother and safe from attack. In addition, perhaps the traumatic experience was a castration in itself,” Paluszny said.
Peter, while playing, displayed a fixation with decapitation and losing limbs, only for them to grow back. This area of therapy was cut short when another court ruling came down.
4. Regression and termination
After voicing resentment over the court’s involvement in their lives, Mr. And Mrs. Smith began showing resentment to Peter’s therapist, leading to Peter’s reluctance to discuss his home life during sessions.
The therapist noted regression into the destructive themes of play that had alleviated. If Peter hurt himself, he gleefully denied pain. His nightmares returned.
“The next session, how-ever, clearly demonstrated Peter's fears. Peter announced, ‘My mother said she wished you would have a boy of yours taken away—then you would know what it feels like.’ Obviously, if Peter was associated with the therapist and acted as ‘the therapist's boy,’ then Mother was threatening to destroy him!” Paluszny writes.
Since the therapist felt that Peter’s mother viewed her as competition over her son, fearing Peter would become “the therapist’s boy,” the therapist made the difficult decision to terminate the sessions, to hopefully prevent the mother lashing out to him in retaliation towards the therapist. The therapist felt that as long as Peter felt torn between his mother and her, he wouldn’t feel safe to express his emotions as he needed to.
5. Follow-up
No therapy was immediately resumed for Peter, though at the time of the study’s writing, five years had passed since the filicide attempt. He got help through the school system and was “described by his teachers as a happy child and a very good student,” Paluszny writes.
Paluszny states that problems regarding male identification or “the problem of homosexuality” could crop up. I want to note that I don’t think being homosexual in itself would be the issue, but that Paluszny would have been more concerned with what is now known as “Body Dysmorphic Disorder” (BDD), which wasn’t added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1987, almost ten years after Paluszny’s study.
The term was first coined in Italy in 1891 as “dysmorphophobia,” derived from the Greek word “dysmorphia”, which means deformity or ugliness. Italian psychiatrist Enrico Morselli described this as “the sudden appearance and fixation in the consciousness of the idea of one’s own deformity.”
The Mayo Clinic says: “Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health condition in which you can't stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance — a flaw that appears minor or can’t be seen by others. But you may feel so embarrassed, ashamed and anxious that you may avoid many social situations.”
This wasn’t considered a disorder in 1979, but one could presume this was Paluszny’s concern for Peter.
To survive a filicide attempt, then, could mean many mental issues down the road to be resolved, beyond the immediate trauma, each in need of its own treatment.
Grieving, Processing, and Survivor’s Guilt
Some kids not only survive a filicide attempt, but they have to move on after losing a parent and siblings, too. The mother may succeed in killing herself after believing she’s taking her children with her, only for one to be left behind, filled with grief, questions, and betrayal in a world that no longer feels safe to them.
A 2013 study called “Complicated Grief in Children- the Perspectives of Experienced Professionals” (Atle Dyregrov, Kari Dyregrov) examined the impact of traumatic deaths on those under the age of 18. Complicated grief, it says, doesn’t yet have a clear definition, and cites a 1996 study by Worden that explains the reconciliation process one undergoes while grieving something traumatic.
“This includes accepting the reality of the loss, experiencing the emotional distress, adjusting to the new situation without the loved one, finding meaning, and becoming engaged with other adults who can provide the nurturing care needed,” the Worden study says.
Children are unable to complete that reconciliation process in complicated traumatic grief (CTG), remaining stuck on the details, and how sudden and unexpected it was. Remember, even in abusive homes, the violence is normal for the child. The murder would still be an unexpected escalation, paired with such a permanent loss. PTSD symptoms are high in CTG cases, says the Dyregrov study. These symptoms prevent the child from grieving properly and processing fully.
The filicide attempt usually occurs before the child is a teenager, in those vital early development years.
“The development of these brain areas forms the basis for regulating emotions and understanding loss and its long-term consequences,” Dyregrov writes.
In being caught up in the memories, accepting the deaths and trauma may prove difficult for the child, who may also experience self-blame and anger. Academic performance may decrease, as well as concentration. It may become difficult for the child to plan for the future when they see little reason to go on. After all, their mother tried to kill them. For a kid, that must destroy any sense of worth or belonging. Nightmares and other sleeping difficulties may plague the child, too.
“Normal grief, especially the loss of a parent or sibling, is reworked in ways which represent developmental growth and change. It is ‘dynamic’ in the sense that it grows and changes as the child does, whereas complicated grief remains more ‘static,’” Dyregrov writes.
CTG is described by the professionals in this study as “frozen” grief. Normal grief, the study says, reaches a “turning point” of acceptance, whereas the child would be able to integrate the death into their life and begin to move on. CTG prevents one from reaching that vital turning point.
Two subtypes of grief were named in this study. Traumatic grief is characterized by loss due to natural disaster or accident, homicide, being present or involved in the death, or someone missing and not found. Delayed/inhibited grief aligns more with dissociation and masked or suppressed grief, characterized by avoidance. The study adds that other subtypes related to CTG can include “disorganized attachment, conduct problems and risk taking, generalized anxiety, somatization, and depression.”
Grief manifests differently at certain age levels, Dyregrov writes. One psychologist who replied to the study’s survey listed exaggerated fears, major disruptions in attachment with caretaker(s), traumatic play, and persistent regression in preschoolers and school-aged children. In pre-adolescents and adolescents, this psychologist listed risk behaviors, suicidal ideation, inability to create a story about the loss of the event, and an inability to set future goals as grief manifestations.
Other psychologists who responded also cited a lack of expressive ability in younger children and a hindrance in maturity. They listed more risk-taking behavior as a likely manifestation in older children, as teenagers have more access to opportunities to act out in order to block the pain they feel. To pile on possible survivor’s guilt only increases the emotional distress.
For these children who survive something so horrific as a mother’s attempt to murder them, support systems are vital. Knowing they are still loved, cherished, and needed gives them a pillar of strength at a time they don’t have the capability to move on. They need to know this harrowing experience doesn’t define them and doesn’t have to become their entire identity, as trauma so often does to people. They need to know there is a future despite being emotionally immobilized.
Final Thoughts
We did it. Nine parts later, we have navigated our way through the complexities, tragedies, and horrors of the psychology behind filicide. I didn’t start this series thinking it would go on this long, but many side rants, new facts and studies, and explorations later, we’ve come to the conclusion of it all. It’s only fitting we ended with a focus on the precious children, the ones who have to navigate a world that no longer feels safe. The ones who never deserved it, who never asked to exist, and never asked to die.
Thank you, once more, for coming along on this journey. Your reads, comments, and support means the world to me, truly. I know I’ve been saying there would be a wrongful convictions part of this series, but part of why it’s taken me so long to post that is because I went down yet another true crime rabbit hole and have accumulated too much information for one post. It’s going to be it’s own series. In the meantime, I am going to be taking a break from these longer-form posts for a time while I finish up my book, “Beyond Dark 2: Gravedigger” to go off to my editor. Updates of the cases we are following will continue to be posted. I just need to shift my focus for a time. I took on a little too much at once, and as I always say, we are only human. I’ll be back with the long-form posts in a few weeks. Thank you for understanding, and for being here. You guys rock!
Take care of yourselves, and each other.
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You can find the rest of this series in the “On the Case” Index:
Sources
Another Medium writer who described her own personal experience: Surviving a filicide attempt