For the past couple of months, I’ve been filming a new TV series, Britain’s Deadliest Mums and Dads, for Quest Red – as the on-screen expert who tries to explain why some parents kill their kids.
I started filming before the murder of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and finished last week, just as the story of little Star Hobson set the news agenda.
Even if we don’t tell their stories in this series, their appalling deaths at the hands of those who should have been caring for them echoes throughout the series.
Figures from the NSPCC show that for the last five years there was an average of 58 child deaths by assault, or “undetermined intent”, per year in the UK.
That means on average at least one child a week will be killed, and most of those homicides are caused by the child’s parent or step-parent.
I find it hard to listen when the case reviews into these deaths declare “lessons will be learned” from the latest child murder.
How many lessons do we need? This is a phenomenon which has been going on for at least five years.
I can go a little further and identify some broader trends seen within these murders.
The child who dies is often quite young and many are under 12 months old.
There is also evidence to suggest a step-parent, or a new partner who is not biologically related to the child, is more likely to be the killer.
In addition, older children who die sometimes get killed to prevent them from disclosing the physical or sexual abuse they have been experiencing at the hands of their biological parent, step-parent, or both. They are killed to ensure their silence.
This latter point hints at what might have motivated a parent, or step-parent, to kill a child, although I’m aware the idea of “motivation” seems inadequate to describe supposed explanations – which can range from, “To stop him from crying all the time”, to, “He ate my piece of cheesecake”, or, “She was possessed by the Devil”.
More often than not, the background to these murders transcends individual motivation and encompasses poverty, unemployment, addictions to drugs, or alcohol and, dare I say it, immaturity.
Some of these child killers seem unable to understand what having a child involved and how they would need to take care of that child’s every need, every day.
As one killer put it, trying to mitigate what he had done, they said: “It was so full-on.”
Before they died, these children endured appalling abuse. They were punched, kicked, burned, bitten, starved and poisoned, as well as being psychologically abused.
A small minority were aware what was happening to them but felt powerless to change the situation by getting another adult to intervene.
If we’d been telling Arthur’s story, I would also have used the description “sadism” in relation to what happened to him. His murder was slow and part of a process that was also filmed. Do you imagine his father and step-mother were not watching and enjoying those images?
In the absence of lessons ever being learned, I wish I had better solutions to offer. After a day’s filming, series producer Simon Gilchrist summed it up, saying simply: “Perhaps we should all be asked to pass an exam before we’re allowed to become parents?”
