Related Research Articles
Infanticide is the intentional killing of infants or offspring. Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history that was mainly used to dispose of unwanted children, its main purpose being the prevention of resources being spent on weak or disabled offspring. Unwanted infants were normally abandoned to die of exposure, but in some societies they were deliberately killed.
Female infanticide is the deliberate killing of newborn female children. Female infanticide is prevalent in several nations such as China, India and Pakistan. It has been argued that the low status in which women are viewed in patriarchal societies creates a bias against females. The modern practice of gender-selective abortion is also used to regulate gender ratios.
Bobbie Jo Stinnett was an American 23-year-old pregnant woman who was murdered in Skidmore, Missouri in December 2004. The perpetrator, Lisa Marie Montgomery, then aged 36 years old, strangled Stinnett to death and cut her fetus from her womb. Montgomery was arrested in Kansas the next day and charged with kidnapping resulting in death – a federal crime. Stinnett's baby was safely recovered by authorities and returned to the father.
Melissa Drexler, who was nicknamed in the media as "The Prom Mom," is an American woman who, as a teenage high school student in 1997, delivered a baby in a restroom stall during her high school prom dance. The baby was later found dead in a trash bin, and Drexler pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, having put the infant in the trash can and then returned to the dance. She was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. After serving a little over three years, she was released on parole.
Concealment of birth is the act of a parent failing to report the birth of a child. The term is sometimes used to refer to hiding the birth of a child from friends or family, but is most often used when the appropriate authorities have not been informed about a stillbirth or the death of a newborn. This is a crime in many countries, with varying punishments.
Amy S. Grossberg is an American woman who delivered a baby at a Comfort Inn in Newark, Delaware, in November 1996, assisted only by her then-boyfriend Brian C. Peterson, who later threw the baby into a dumpster. In March 1998, Peterson pled guilty to manslaughter and was given the mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison; on April 22, 1998, Grossberg agreed to a plea bargain, and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on July 9, 1998.
Neonaticide is the deliberate act of a parent murdering their own child during the first 24 hours of life. As a noun, the word "neonaticide" may also refer to anyone who practices or who has practiced this.
Child euthanasia is a form of euthanasia that is applied to children who are gravely ill or have significant birth defects. In 2005, the Netherlands became the first country to decriminalize euthanasia for infants with hopeless prognosis and intractable pain. Nine years later, Belgium amended its 2002 Euthanasia Act to extend the rights of euthanasia to minors. Like euthanasia, there is world-wide public controversy and ethical debate over the moral, philosophical and religious issues of child euthanasia.
Véronique Courjault is a French citizen who confessed to having killed three of her babies, two of whom she stored in a freezer at her home. Her case has been referred to in the media as the "affaire des bébés congelés," or "frozen babies case".
Celine Lesage is a French woman found guilty in 2010 of murdering six of her newborn babies between 2000 and 2007. She suffocated four of them, and strangled two. On October 19, 2007, a new boyfriend, Luc Margueritte, found the six corpses in the basement of the apartment he and Lesage were sharing. She was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murders.
Fetal abduction refers to the rare crime of child abduction by kidnapping of an at term pregnant woman and extraction of her fetus through a crude cesarean section. Dr. Michael H. Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato have alternatively referred to this crime as "fetus-snatching" or "fetus abduction." Homicide expert Vernon J. Geberth has used the term "fetal kidnapping." In the small number of reported cases, a few pregnant victims and about half of their fetuses survived the assault and non-medically performed cesarean.
Lillian Fanny Jane Hobbs (1882–1952) was a New Zealand woman who was acquitted of killing her newborn infant through neglect and therefore was not found guilty of infanticide.
Infanticide in 19th-century New Zealand was difficult to assess, especially for newborn indigenous Māori infants. Resultantly, many New Zealand women who might otherwise have been sentenced to penal servitude or capital punishment in New Zealand had their sentences commuted to the lesser charge of "concealment of birth" under the Offences Against the Person Act 1867. However, the relative leniency extended only to mothers of concealed or hidden infants who subsequently died. Fathers, grandparents and "baby farmers" like Minnie Dean, the only woman to be executed in New Zealand history, and Daniel Cooper in the 1920s were viewed as more culpable for the death of such infants.
China has a history of female infanticide which spans 2,000 years. When Christian missionaries arrived in China in the late sixteenth century, they witnessed newborns being thrown into rivers or onto rubbish piles. In the seventeenth century Matteo Ricci documented that the practice occurred in several of China's provinces and said that the primary reason for the practice was poverty. The practice continued into the 19th century and declined precipitously during the Communist era, but has reemerged as an issue since the introduction of the one-child policy in the early 1980s. The 2020 census showed a male-to-female ratio of 105.07 to 100 for mainland China, a record low since the People's Republic of China began conducting censuses. Every year in China and India alone, there are close to two million instances of some form of female infanticide.
Hester Vaughn, or Vaughan, was a domestic servant in Philadelphia who was arrested in 1868 on a charge of killing her newborn infant, and was sentenced to hang after being convicted of infanticide. The Revolution, a women's rights newspaper established by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, conducted a campaign to win her release from prison. The Working Women's Association, an organization that was formed in the offices of The Revolution, organized a mass meeting in New York City in her defense. Eventually Vaughn was pardoned by the governor of Pennsylvania, and deported back to her native England.
The Richmond child murder was the case of Amy Gregory who was convicted in 1895 of strangling to death her daughter, Frances Maud Gregory, whose dead body was found on the ice in the Old Deer Park, Richmond, England. She was granted a reprieve from execution by the Home Secretary.
The Oulu child murders is a Finnish murder case, referring to the discovery of the bodies of five infants in the basement of an apartment building in Oulu, on June 3, 2014. The mother of the babies, 35-year-old Kaisa Emilia Vornanen-Karaduman, had concealed the pregnancies and abandoned them, after giving birth at home. The Rovaniemi Court of Appeal sentenced her to 13 years imprisonment for five counts of manslaughter, but not for concealing a corpse. According to District Prosecutor Sari Kemppainen, who was the lead prosecutor for the case, there have been no similar cases in Finnish criminal history.
On May 7, 2017, 18-year-old Brooke Skylar Richardson gave birth at home and buried her newborn daughter in the backyard of her parents' house in Carlisle, Ohio. Two months later she described what had happened to her doctor, who informed police. Richardson was charged with but acquitted of aggravated murder, child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter, and was only found guilty of abuse of a corpse. She was subsequently given three years of probation, which was ended early by the court.
From 1996 to 2006, Megan Huntsman, an American woman, murdered six of her newborn children shortly after giving birth to them in Utah.
Maxine Robinson is an English woman who murdered all three of her children between 1989 and 1993. Convicted of murdering two of the children in 1995, Robinson unsuccessfully appealed against her convictions, claiming their deaths had been natural. However, in 2004, she admitted killing them and further revealed that she had, in 1989, murdered her first-born child, whose death until then had been considered a cot death. Her trial judge observed that Robinson's case was a "timely" reminder that "not all mothers in prison for killing their children are the victims of miscarriages of justice."
References
- ↑ Carrol, Linda (15 April 2014). "How Could She? Mother Accused in Deaths of Infants". NBC News. Retrieved 10 November 2017.
- ↑ "French Woman Dominique Cottrez Admits to Suffocating 8 Newborns, Says Prosecutor". CBS News .
- ↑ "France baby deaths trial of Dominique Cottrez opens". BBC News. 25 June 2015. Retrieved 19 August 2022.
- ↑ Crumley, Bruce (29 July 2010). "Why Are French Women Killing Their Babies?". Time. Paris. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
- ↑ "Details emerge in French baby killing case". BBC News. 29 July 2010. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
- ↑ "Woman charged in France over babies' bodies". CNN.com. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
- ↑ "Woman Confesses to Killing Her 8 Babies". ABC News .
- ↑ "French infanticide woman freed". BBC News. 2012-08-02.
- ↑ "" Il faut accepter de ne pas tout comprendre " de Dominique Cottrez". Le Monde.fr. 2015-07-02.
- ↑ Sparks, Ian (7 November 2014). "Mum who 'killed 8 of her newborn babies' to stand trial". The Daily Mirror. Retrieved 21 April 2017.