‘Just Say Goodbye’ (January 2013 online edition)

DVRCV Discussion Paper No. 8I’d been back to the Family Court to try and have those orders enforced …had explored many avenues of trying.In her police interview, Cathy stated that she saw herself as failing in herrole as mother of her children. She said that there was no way she could haveprovided for the children physically, mentally, emotionally and financially onher own.Cathy’s perception that she would fail to provide for the children is consistentwith previous research that has shown social expectations of women to be ‘good’mothers play a crucial role in maternal filicides (Wilczynski 1995). Obermanand Meyer (2008) found that mothers who killed their children struggled to begood mothers under exceedingly difficult circumstances.While mothers and fathers may have similar emotional responses to separation– loss, failure, despair, anger – there are some practical differences in the impactof separation. While both parents may face financial difficulties, mothers areparticularly disadvantaged after separation. Women continue to face genderinequality in economic opportunities (Cassells et al. 2009). Studies show thatseparation often has a greater negative financial impact on women than men,resulting in poorer living conditions and lifestyles. A recent study that usedlongitudinal data to examine and compare women’s and men’s financial livingstandards following separation found that it has a significant negative impacton women’s household incomes compared with those of men (de Vaus et al.2009).Cathy was assessed in the week before the filicide by a psychiatrist andpsychiatric nurses with the Psychiatric Assessment Crisis Team (PACT).The psychiatrist diagnosed her problems as the result of a ‘situational crisis’,an ‘adjustment disorder with depressed mood’ and a ‘maladaptive reaction toidentifiable psychosocial stressors’. After the filicide, Cathy was diagnosedby six psychiatrists as suffering clinical depression, which they identifiedas a mental illness. One psychiatrist described her as ‘grossly depressed’ andprobably ‘psychotic’. In another case, a psychologist equated the mother’s‘irrational belief ’ that both she and her children would be ‘better off dead’with ‘schizophrenia’.In the following case, the mother also expressed a perception that she and herchildren were ‘better off dead’.68