Parental Homicide occurs when one spouse kills another. This is the most frequent type of intra-family victim-offender relationship.
When a child looses a parent to death it is hard at any age and under any circumstance. When a child witness parental homicide the child has to carry the haunting image with forever.
WARNING: For those of you who are recovering from a lost one it might be very triggering for you to read. The following stories below illustrate what these children have had to go through.
 | Emily (age 4) and her brother (aged 11) were with their mother in the kitchen, when their father, from whom their mother had separated 3 years earlier, but who remained pathologically jealous, returned, entering by the back door. He shouted abuse at his wife and then pulled out a shotgun and aimed it at her. Emily ran to her mother. Her father pulled the trigger. The first shot blew off his wife's face, the second hit her in the abdomen. The little girl stood in the middle of the of her room covered in her mother's blood and guts. Her brother ran for help, leaving her with their father and the dead and disfigured body of their mother. |
| There were four children in this family, two girls and two boys, each a year apart in age from one another, ranging from 7 to 4 years. They were members of an immigrant family and led an isolated existence, developing their own private language, and did not attend schools. The family was under increasing pressure because of debt, and had recently been evicted. The father was unemployed and desperately seeking work. He returned one night after a frustrating day of job hunting to find that his wife had not prepared dinner for him. He flew into a rage, attacked her, beat her to the ground, jump up and down on her and dragged her screaming into the bedroom. There was more scuffing and screaming, and then all went quiet. The children waited. Then father called them into the bedroom. He told them their mother was asleep. What they saw was their mother lying on the bed, tied up, with a blue face and protruding tongue. He ordered them into bed with her. Then he locked the door behind him and left the house. They stayed there until the next morning, when they were found by neighbors. |
Reading those two stories it is hard to imagine that children can recover from a tragedy of that magnitude. With a lot of LOVE, support, and understanding they can and do l4arn to deal with the loss and anger.
The following stories were taken from British Journal of Psychiatry (1988). Father Kills Mother , 624-625.