Caught in the act

[Guest guest]

Excerpt from the article " The Last Frontier: Myths and the Female Psychopathic

Killer "

" In November 1997, the Journal of Pediatrics published the results of a

terrifying experiment; doctors at several hospitals in Great Britain had decided

to covertly videotape 39 parents –most of them mothers– whom medical personnel

had begun to suspect were deliberately bringing their young children to the

brink of death (Southall et al., 1997).

In 30 of the 39 cases, the parents were observed intentionally suffocating their

children; in two they were seen attempting to poison a child; in a third, the

mother under surveillance deliberately broke her 3-month-old daughter's arm.

Many of the

parents seemed as methodical and as brazen, as scoured of fear or conscience, as

any serial killer. " Abuse was inflicted without provocation and with

premeditation, and in some instances, involved elaborate and plausible lies to

explain consequences " (Southall et

al., 1997).

For example, one mother claimed that she had suffocated her son because of

stress related to his crying and continually waking her from sleep. However,

under surveillance, the mother was seen, with premeditated planning, to

suffocate her infant when he was deeply asleep. The majority of other cases

showed attempted suffocation when the child was asleep or lying passively on the

bed.

The disturbing feature was that these were women (and a few men) who masqueraded

as good parents, the sort who rushed their children to the emergency room when

they had trouble breathing, and stood by them with fortitude and devotion while

the doctors puzzled out what was wrong. They were conning; they could give the

appearance of the concerned mom the minute a doctor or nurse walked in the room,

enjoy the social prestige of a mysterious disease, the proximity to powerful

medical professionals, they liked the attention and the drama—the wail of the

sirens, the adrenalin rush of the emergency room

(Brown, n.d.).

With further investigation, it turned out that the 39 patients under

surveillance, ages 1 month to nearly 3 years old, had 41 siblings, and that 12

of those siblings had died suddenly and unexpectedly. "

****

Sadly, it seems that the only way to really protect children from parental abuse

is to have them under camera surveillance everywhere, 24/7.

-Annie