Filicide of Karissa BOUDREAU

It has been just over 1 year since this shocking case hit the news. First, the odd disappearance of a 12yr old girl in a small Nova Scotia community, then the televised news conference asking for help in locating the girl by her mother and finally the terrible discovery of her body.

The unspoken assumption during this period was the poor girl was a victim of a sexually motivated crime. This strikes terror into all parents - whether you have a son or daughter as these are terrible crimes. The step-father is always prime suspect #1 irregardless of his relationship to the child. Despite the emotional distress of dealing with this loss he will be sorely tested by law enforcement and the crown prosecution.

Yet I always find that the unasked questions by the reporters seem to be the same. Rarely are questions addressed about other family members - grandparents, aunts and uncles. And what happened to the birth-father? Why he not present. His involvement reflect alot about the mother's emotional capacity to deal with anger, rejection and ultimately her relationship with her child. Does she somehow blame the child for her misfortune of single parenting? Does she have the "Munchhausen" by proxy relationship common of narcissistic and alienating parents? Who is the real parent? These appear to be taboo subjects frequently sidestepped by feminist indoctrinated reporters or those too green/young to know better?

In June 2008 her mother Penny BOUDREAU was charged with murdering her own daughter. In Dec 2008, Karrissa's mother Penny BOUDREAU plead guilty to filicide, or murdering her own daughter.

After the charges are laid, the spin begins! Minimize ("these are not serious crimes due to mitigation factor that she is a women" ); Blame-shift ("she had no choice") and my favourite, Mis-specify the problem ("our court system is incompetent").

So too in this sad case. In the Winnipeg Free Press "Mother’s violence has experts aghast" seems to bear witness to professionals incredulity that a women could do this when all available "non-feminist" indoctrinated literature on DV points conclusively that women are responsible for most domestic child abuse and death 1.

Canwest News carried this headline, "Boudreau joins list of mothers who chose men over their children" which only blame-shifts Boudreau's murder to the "ultimatum" from her boyfriend that drove her to this fatal act! One would think that a rationale women would be able to talk herself down from this kind hysteria. If it was a man "he" would have been described as "out-of-control". Incredible!


Here are U.S Statistics for 2006 Child Fatalities by Perpetrator. Mother + Boyfriend/Step Dad (38.9%) were 2.7x more likely than Biological Dad's + Girlfriend/Step Mom(14.6%)to inflict abuse on their child which leads to death.2



Footnotes:
1) To provide some baseline general population incidence data on this issue, two large scale studies have found the following. A huge (135,573) and nationally representative study of child abuse allegations was made by the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence in Canada (Trocme et al., 2001). Substantiation rates in general ran from 52 to 58%. Biological mothers were more likely to commit physical child abuse (47 vs. 42%), emotional maltreatment (61 vs. 55%), and neglect (86 vs. 33%). On the other hand, biological fathers were more likely to commit sexual abuse (15 vs. 5%) than biological mothers.

The gender of the substantiated child abuse perpetrator in the general population is more likely to be female and the allegation/substantiation ratio is higher (1/2) than that obtained in custody cases (about ¼), suggesting that false allegations may more frequently be made in the latter.

This “different view” of the gender of the perpetrator is echoed by the even larger sample of child abuse perpetration in the 2004 US Department of Health and Human Services study. In their national study of risks to children (n = 718,948), 57.8% of the perpetrators were women and 42.2% were men. Mothers were involved in 51% of child fatalities; fathers in 38.6%. Source: www.mediaradar.org Media Fact sheet

2) Chapter 4 - Child Fatalities. Another interesting addition is if you include Female (3.0%) or Male (1.6l%) Relatives as well as the Male (2.9%) and Female (nil%) Partner of Parent which are included in non-parental perpetrators, which increases the odds of Mom and her family/common-law partners being involved to 44.8% vs. 16.2% for Dad (odds are still 2.8x). From an *estimated 1,530 child fatalities. 44% of these fatalities were 1 year old or younger and are normally considered infanticide so they draw a lesser prison term of 1-2 years - primarily due to the evidence that post-partum depression is almost a legitimate "insanity" defense for new mothers - as well as the now out-dated leniency accorded mothers of unwanted children. *Estimated as only 36 states reported actual child fatalities of 1,050 in 2006. Also, perpetrator breakdown was based on this actual child fatality figure. Source: U.S Department of Health: Administration for Children & Families - Child Maltreatment 2006.