Honor Crimes and Murder

[Midnight_Sun]

Another story of another honor killing in Pakistan.

http://www.cbc.ca/m/rich/news/story/2012/11/05/parents-kill-pakistan-girl-acid.html

What are your thoughts on these and other brutal crimes? Are all, some, or no murders, mutilations, oppression, and/or persecution justified through honor? Since honor is a big factor sometimes in Pashtun relations as well, what are your thoughts?

[randolph85]

where do these people keep getting acid?

[Admin Khan]

The concept of honor is gravely exaggerated. It's this superficial concept that the entire world is focused on you, therefore you must protect your dignity and honor. I condemn this.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

Look who thinks that sometimes Honor crimes are justified

Sometimes
Friend
1

[faye]

well you propose assassinations of muslims. would they be for honour or just for your convenience and lack of imagination?

[RevolutionThroughReason]

well you propose assassinations of muslims. would they be for honour or just for your convenience and lack of imagination?

so I promote assassinations of people who promote assassinations of people who want to go to school and choose who they want to marry ......how are they equivalent again?

[faye]

check my question again and try not to deviate with your answer.
assassination is assassination, bro.

[Karachi]

much of muslim world is full of jahil people, there is no way to stop this unfortunately, I think women in those parts of the world need to arm themselves against men.

[KGODB]

where do these people keep getting acid?

LOL

this story is just borderline ridicolous. absolute apes

[Pisho]

The father said the girl had turned to look at a boy who drove by on a motorcycle, and he told her it was wrong.

"She said 'I didn't do it on purpose. I won't look again.' By then I had already thrown the acid. It was her destiny to die this way," the girl's mother told the British broadcaster.

The parents should be thrown acid on
Jail just wont do anything to them



I actually had a similar honor thing happen with my fiance it's very hard to deal with

[DaZahroJaam.]

Killing is for the weak. Abolishing a problem rather than overcoming it doesn't make one anything to be proud of. Acts like this puts humanity to shame and its sad to see how some of us take pride in this or justify it. I don't know of a single animal out there that kills its own child. I don't know why they call it honor killing. There is no honor in killing.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

why are they answering anonymously, be brave, stand behind your words

[khushal]

Crime of parents killing their kids is not so uncommon

http://www.startribune.com/local/162...er=y&vi_adid=W

Crime of parents killing their kids is not so uncommon

It's called filicide, and it happens with regularity across the country.




How could any parent kill his own children?
That's been a typical reaction to the news that Aaron Schaffhausen was accused of slashing the throats of his three young daughters last week in River Falls, Wis.
But the phenomenon, called filicide, is more common than most people might want to believe, and not all parents who do it are mentally unhinged, according to one of the country's foremost experts.

"The general lay-public response is they must be crazy, but that's not always the case," said Dr. Phillip Resnick, a professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Only some are psychotic, he said, meaning they have no command of what is real.




Resnick, who has for 40 years evaluated parents accused of killing their kids, conducted a seminal study on filicide in which he identified five types of the crime.
One type -- revenge against a spouse -- may best fit the scenario authorities laid out in the charges against Schaffhausen, 34, who was divorced from the girls' mother in January.

High-profile cases
But all the types are represented in high-profile cases from across the country and the Twin Cities in the past decade or so, including the 1998 stranglings of six children in St. Paul by their mother, and the laundry-tub drowning of an Eden Prairie infant by his father in 2010.
Resnick said one out of every 33 homicides in the United States is the killing of a child under 18 by their parent, or between 250 and 300 of the country's killings each year. In a 2005 study, he found filicide to be the third-leading cause of death of American children ages 5 to 14.

After spouses killing spouses, parents killing children is the most common variety of family homicide, according to a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics study of homicides from 1976 to 2005.
The charges against Schaffhausen allege that he killed daughters Amara, 11, Sophie, 8, and Celia, 5, on Tuesday during an unscheduled visit to the River Falls home where they lived with their mother, Jessica. She told police he called her that afternoon and said: "You can come home now because I killed the kids."

While that scenario -- especially the chilling phone call -- suggests Schaffhausen may have killed his daughters to hurt his ex-wife, other factors Resnick found in most revenge-type filicide cases have yet to be demonstrated as part of this case.
"Usually there's been either a child custody battle or infidelity, and there's so much anger by the one spouse that they use the children to get back at the other," Resnick said.

According to the couple's Jan. 9 divorce decree, Aaron Schaffhausen agreed to give his ex-wife primary physical custody of the children, and he was to have them for most of their summer breaks and on various holidays each year. They had joint legal custody, with shared responsibility for major decisions.
He agreed to take sole charge of their debts of $196,500 and pay $1,353 child support out of the $4,666 in gross income he earned monthly as a carpenter, most recently in the oil fields of western North Dakota.
There's no evidence in the decree that the couple fought over custody or other issues. In fact, neither had an attorney.

But the break-up didn't remain amicable. In March, she complained to River Falls police that he had called from Minot, N.D., and threatened to kill her. River Falls police called Minot police, asking for a "health and safety" check on him at the apartment he shared with a fellow carpenter, according to Minot police.
"Units spoke with Aaron Schaffhausen. He states he has no intention to go back to Wisconsin. Everything is fine at this time," the police report said.
Jessica Schaffhausen told police that when her ex-husband called last week, he said he was in St. Paul and wanted to see the kids. She agreed, but on the condition that he be gone by the time she got home because she "did not wish to see him," according to the complaint charging him with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide.

After the killings, Schaffhausen's employer, a St. Paul construction firm engaged in projects in North Dakota, revealed he was fired July 5 after he didn't show up for work.
Other common types
Some parents say they killed the kids for their own good, a category Resnick calls the "altruistic type."
"Often they'll intend to take their own life and take the children with them as an extended suicide, or they have the delusion the children are better off dead," Resnick said.
A St. Paul woman made such a claim when she was sentenced in 1999 for strangling all six of her children.
"I know I was wrong ... but they don't have to suffer no more," Khoua Her, 25, told the judge who sentenced her to 50 years in the Shakopee prison. She said her life as a Hmong immigrant had been full of abuse, and she wanted to spare her kids the same fate.

When parents kills infants, it's often because they never wanted the baby -- a third type of filicide -- or they fatally abuse the baby, a fourth type, Resnick said.



The fifth type is acute psychosis, a truly mentally ill person who has no comprehensible motive, is delirious or believes someone or something is commanding the killing.
In July 2010, 37-year-old Randel Richardson of Eden Prairie drowned his 7-month-old son, Rowan, in his home's laundry tub while his wife was shopping. He told authorities he believed he couldn't provide for his family and wanted to spare the baby from misery.

A Hennepin County judge found Richardson not guilty by reason of mental illness, saying that in his unmedicated state, his reasoning was so defective that he didn't understand the consequences of what he was doing.

[khushal]

Filicide happens all over the world but the reasons differ from society to society

http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2008...ty-to-society/
Filicide happens all over the world but the reasons differ from society to society

June 3, 2008
tags: homicide


I learnt a new word yesterday…filicide. It means “the deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own son or daughter.”

The murder of children by parents is in the news lately…the Aarushi murder case (where the father is the prime suspect) has still not left the headlines in India and now we hear of another case of filicide – of an Indian man killing his wife and stepchild in Australia. An earlier case – that of the a man of Indian origin, Ashok Kalyanjee, who killed his two sons (six and two years) in England last month – but it was barely reported in the Indian media.

Filicide happens all over the world and in all societies
Parents killing their children is not unusual in any society…only the motives differ. While mental instability and/or lack of control is the underlying factor of most homicides, filicide or not, the trigger/motive to commit the violent act depend on circumstances and the social milieu.
In western societies today the “reasons” if I may use that word, are thought to range from an inability to look after the child to an overwhelming loss of control over their life. Also, feelings of revenge/jealousy due to divorce and/or separation can tip a parent’s mental balance, particularly if the children are with the ex-spouse.
Germany has been rocked by baby murders of late…

…at a time when the state is pushing legislation to encourage people to have more children…experts say the rate of German mothers murdering their children is no higher than elsewhere in Europe

A woman may do it because she is single and unable to cope…and a man because he feels he is unable to provide for the child…however the article cautions that one cannot always pin down one reason for such a violent crime…the reasons are usually complex and mental illness can play a very important part.
One


would have thought that this problem would be less intense in Germany because of their strong social welfare system which helps single mothers. It makes one wonder whether finances are really the critical factor. In India women don’t usually murder their babies because they can’t look after them financially…desperately poor people continue to have children…though ofcourse in the hope that one day these children will grow up and support the parents. In India when there is a baby murder, it is usually a girl as girls are thought to be a financial burden. So finances do play a part after all. In filicide cases in the west, an equal number of boys and girls are murdered by parents.

In America baby killing is more acute than in Europe, if one goes by statistics, but again motives are complex…although inability to cope is considered an important reason.
In western countries women who kill their kids are usually thought to be mentally ill while men who do so are considered criminals

It is interesting to note that women overall are not prone to violent crime…unless it comes to murdering their own children…this they do as frequently as the men. Women commit less than 13 percent of all violent crimes, but commit about 50 percent of all parental murders. I think in India this will be the case too…although no statistics are available. For example, In female feticide cases, both parents are guilty. However, courts in western countries tend to be of that view and women who kill their babies are mentally disturbed while fathers who do so are criminals. This is why more often the women who murder their kids are “hospitalized or treated, while men who do so are disproportionately jailed, even executed.”

This has been proven by various studies in America as well as in Britain.
Well, we in India know differently. Women who kill their children are not necessarily crazy…they are criminals. But courts in western countries tend to take the more lenient view towards women.

Why parents kill kids
In western countries at least the motives for killing one’s kids are not that different when it comes to men and women. While women do it because they don’t want the child because they can’t look after it, men too can do it because they don’t want the child. They might feel unable to provide for it. Both men and women also do it because of some idea that they are committing an act of “mercy” because they themselves are planning to commit suicide. Men usually have other reasons too…they can do it because they want revenge against their spouse or because the children are taken away from them after divorce or separation. The presence of another man in the life of their child can also be a cause of intense jealousy. Men also do it because of perceived infidelity.

When it comes to female feticide in India men and women are equally culpable and financial considerations are paramount.
What about murder of teenage kids?
Parents killing their children once they are teenagers sounds crazy doesn’t it. In the west this is uncommon. In fact, there are more cases of teenage children killing their parents rather than vice versa…it’s called parricide. Often these children are abused children…
In India we have these cases too, but fewer than in the west. We needn’t congratulate ourselves on this because in India abused children usually run away and try and survive on the streets. Everyday we hear of such cases. In developed nations, the system is such is that runaways are often found and returned to the parents and the children also find it difficult to survive on the streets.

In India we have a different kind of killing of grown-up children…the killing of grown up girls by their male relatives, usually the father because they feel the girl has shamed them in some way. These are known as honor killings. Most of them don’t even come to light and happen most often in rural India.