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PARRICIDE: A CASE STUDY

A Case Study Presented to the

Faculty of the Institute of Criminal Justice Education

Gov. Alfonso D. Tan College

Maloro, Tangub City

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the Degree

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN CRIMINOLOGY

Cagmat, Pretzel M.

Castro, Mary Ann R.

Cabrera, Khen Aldrige

April 2022
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ABSTRACT

There are several reasons why people get addicted to drugs, as well as varied levels of
dependence. This case study titled, “Challenges Encountered by a drug offender: A Case
Study” was primarily conducted at Municipality of Molave through face-to-face
interview to assess the offender about the challenges encountered. This study used the
case study analysis of research with the researcher-made guide questions as the data
gathering instrument. The informant of this study is a drug offender. The informant
shared his life challenges as a drug offender.
Keywords: Preventive measures, patrol, promote children’s safety, security, widen their
approach, strategies.
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INTRODUCTION

Parricide is the abiological or acquired murder of one's parent, and it includes

patricide, which is the murder of one's father, matricide, which is the murder of one's

mother, and double parricide, which is the murder of both parents. It is an uncommon

crime that accounts for a small percentage of all voluntary murders: in Europe and North

America, it occurs around 2-4 percent of the time, with patricide being the most common.

The murder usually takes place in the family home, and the killer and the victim usually

live together. Parricide by children occurs infrequently during violent disputes; rather, it

occurs when the parent is defenseless or when the victim has a low vigilance threshold.

Furthermore, the aggressor-child acts calmly and calculatedly (Mones 1991).

The murder of a parent, parents, or other close family members by a son or

daughter is known as parricide. Cussen and Bryant (2015) examined a recently released

research on domestic/family homicide and the relationship between victims and

offenders.7Parricide can involve many perpetrators, like in the 2001 case of Sef

Gonzales, who murdered his parents and sister8. In some circumstances, there may be

more than one perpetrator, such as when the victim is a father or uncle and the offender is

a brother or sibling, as in the case of brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who murdered

both of their parents in 1989. Offenders (Cussen & Bryant, 2015).

According to Gabbiani (2013), in early Chinese history, parricide was considered

the most serious of family crimes, with the punishment for such a heinous crime against a

parent being dismemberment '...through the renowned surplice of "slicing" or "death by a

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thousand cuts.'4 Gabbiani adds that unintentional parricide was not considered to be

lenient under statute 319. Parricide was regarded as such a serious crime that any less

than intentional behavior was judged undesirable. They are obliged to live with their

family members and rely on them financially due to their health difficulties and

incapacity to achieve self-sufficiency; in this setting, conflictual relationships appear

inevitable.. Furthermore, adult criminals with serious mental illness typically murder their

mothers, whereas adolescents target their fathers (Cooke2001).

Most of the adolescent parricide offenders act in reaction to experiences of

physical or sexual abuses perpetrated by their parents Instead, adult aggressors, usually

between thirty and forty years of age, are psychiatric patients who commit the crime as a

consequence of their mental illness. These perpetrators are generally unmarried,

unemployed or part-time workers who live with the victim and have inadequate social

interactions or participate in few extra-familiar activities (Cooke 2001).

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CASE 1

This is a 15-year old boy, firstborn of three children and the only male, who lived

in his family, together with his father a 40 year-old blacksmith, currently receiving

redundancy payments, the mother (a 30-old woman, employed in a cleaning company

and the two sisters (10 and 12 years old respectively). Within the family, there were

many conflicts between the parents, who alternated between separations and

reconciliations, to the point that it became necessary for the Social Services to monitor

the situation. Often the children were involved in violent arguments between the parents

and were instigated by their mother, who was perceived as the main caregiver, to go

against their father.

In such context, the boy would use a defensive mechanism based on the

detachment and the repression of the events: on one side, he did not appear particularly

distressed towards his father (with whom he had also lived together); on the other side, he

clearly remembered his father's aggressive attacks. With the complicity and the

incitement of his mother, the boy planned the patricide (in the last months before the

crime he had become introverted and reserved towards the social workers) which he

perpetrated with the aid of a butcher's hook and some acid.

During the detention, the minor displayed indifference to both of his parental

figures and the events that had occurred, and seemed not to be aware of the consequences

of his act; indeed he was hoping that his family could achieve a new balance. During the

stay at the juvenile penal institute, the boy appeared introverted and closed with his peers,
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but at the same time available to establish a relationship with the adults figures, as he

displayed appreciation for the support he was receiving and interest in the occupational

and recreational activities that he was encouraged to take part in.

CASE 2

This is a 15-years-old boy, who used to live with his parents and brothers (the

father was 45 years old; his mother was a 40-years-old housewife; a 23 years-old

unemployed brother, a 22 year-old sister with a severe mental retardation and a 10 years-

old sister attending elementary school).

The father was described as authoritarian, disinterested in the family and violent;

the man used to have two mistresses and at the time of the murder he was under house

arrest because of sexual harassments against a minor girl. Lately, the man was showing

an unhealthy interest for the two dominating mistresses and a will to annihilate the female

family members. On the contrary, the mother was subdued and was used to suffer the

harsh treatment of the husband and lived in the terror of violence.

The boy had not completed his education because of his father's interference and

had recently interrupted an affective relationship with a girl in order to protect her against

the violent offences of his father. Moreover, he had recently been forced to face alone,

without the support of his older brother, the increasing aggressiveness of his father. This

situation had lead him to plan the murder, perpetrated with a sawn-off shotgun, in order

to save himself, his sisters and his mother from the violence they had experienced. The

parricide was experienced by the boy also as an attempt to affirm his anti-male
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chauvinism, in contrast of that of his father. After the murder, the boy confessed the

crime and was then sent in preventive custody to a juvenile penal institute because of the

possession of a firearm and premeditated murder.

CASE 3

The patricide is a 17 years-old girl who murdered her father, an ex-mason of 36

years old. The family included also the mother of 35 years old, employed in a cleaning

company, and two minor brothers of 11 and 4 years old. The girl had grown up in the

North of Italy, and had experienced poor social relationships and school achievement. At

14 years old, she had moved together with her family to the South of Italy, in the native

place of her parents and she had experienced this change in a negative way. Afterwards,

she gave up her studies and started to work with her mother, because her father had

prohibited her to attend a professional school.

The girl was involved in a pathological relationship with her mother, as it

appeared to be a peer-like more than a parent-child relationship. She identified her

mother as her main attachment figure, whereas she perceived her father as a violent,

nervous, possessive and jealous person. The family environment was described as tense

and not much quiet. Moreover, the minor had started a romantic relationship with a boy,

but she had interrupted it because she suffered from not having enough freedom, as she

perceived the boy similar to her father.

With the complicity of her mother and of her maternal grandmother, the adolescent girl at

first poisoned the father with benzodiapezine, and then she strangled him with a nylon
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string. During the detention, the girl appeared calm, respectful of the rules, emotionally

regulated but concerned about the consequences of the crime she had committed.

General Objectives

 To determine the most common reasons for minors to commit parricide

 To identify is this reasons are also the common in other parricide cases.

 To provide activity to assist family in resolving conflicts.

Specific Question

1. What are the most common reasons for minors to commit parricide?

2. Is this reason common in other parricide cases?

3. What activity can be proposed to assist family in resolving their conflicts?

Research Methods

This section discusses the research design, research setting, the research

respondents, instrument for data collection, and the procedures in gathering data.

Research Design. The researchers employed case study analysis research design.

It is defined as a research approach that allows in-depth, multi-faceted

explorations of complex issues in their real-life settings (S Crowe, 2011).

Research Setting. The researchers conducted the study at Barangay 2, Tangub

City to collect primary information necessary to answer the objectives set

forth for this study.

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Research Informants. In the selection of informants, the researchers employed

purposive sampling. Purposive sampling was employed in this study

because it assumed that individuals chosen for the study would be those

who will provide most valuable information (Guarte & Barrios, 2006).

The informant of this study was the selected individual in Barangay 2,

Tangub City only for the purpose to answer the specific questions of this

study.

Research Instruments. The instrument used in gathering the data were the

researcher-made interview guide. The researcher-made interview guide

was utilized to determine the involvement of the community in crime

prevention occurred within the Barangay.

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Results and Discussion

As demonstrated by the three example cases, the crime of parricide is almost always

motivated by a desire to end repeated experiences of abuse and maltreatment. Despair drives

these young victims to react against their abusive parents in order to protect themselves and other

vulnerable family members. One of the most common reasons for a minor to commit parricide is

witnessing their father mistreat their mother. And the only way they could stop their father from

hurting their mother was to kill him. This can be witnessed not just in certain cases, but also in

many cases, where a father's kid kills him to protect his mother, who has been physically harmed

several times.

Minors who believe that murdering the abusing figure is the only way to escape years of

physical and psychological abuse are among the most common causes of parricide. The

parricides in this group typically have clean records and have grown up in violent families with

easy access to weapons. These minors appear unable to tolerate family conditions, have poor

social relationships, and can easily lose control under stressful conditions. The crime is

committed while in a dissociative state, which gives the perpetrator a sense of relief (Cooke

2001).

According to Mills (2003) stated that children who are repeatedly punished, criticized,

rejected, or neglected by their caregivers form an image of themselves as wrong, undesirable,

bad, and unworthy to be loved. These self-image beliefs elicit shame and lead these children,

who continue to be maltreated over time, to develop emotional processes that differ from those

of non-maltreated children and can differ depending on whether the victim is a boy or a girl.

Maltreated minors experience a sense of humiliation and shame for the recurrent abuses,

as they consider them undeserved; the fantasies induced by the feeling of shame seem to favor a
mental state of revenge and an illusion of being powerful which contrast dramatically with the

victim's experience of being actually powerlessness. When this mental state occurs, the abused

minor develops the belief that the murder of the parent is a well justified act and proportional to

the humiliations he/she has experienced. The minors may concentrate themselves on the idea to

take the law into their own hands more than on the consequences of the act. On these premises, it

becomes possible to understand the quietness that minors show before and after the murder, the

lack of remorse, as well as the dissociation that occurs at the time of the murder which had origin

in reaction to the first episodes of maltreatment (Stein 2007).

ALTERNATIVE INNOVATION OR INTERVENTION PLAN

Rationale

The program is to be overlooked in order to fully explain the vital chain of guardianship

of the held upon example. The term "chain of custody" refers to the properly recorded approved

developments and care of held onto narcotics or controlled synthetics from the time of

seizure/seizure to receipt in the legal research institution to supervision to present in court for

destruction.
RECOMMENDATION

1. To the Police Personnel. They should expand their services and hold a seminar to

assist police officers and future police officers in the conduct of drug-related operations. They

also urge that criminology students and future police officers be assisted in gaining appropriate

knowledge and abilities in the preparation of police reports, as these records are extremely

important sources of information regarding the cases filed, the accused, and/or suspects.

2. To the LGU’s. They should provide the PNP Organization with sufficient funding

to cover their demands and enable them to efficiently carry out their obligations. In addition, the

PNP should hold a course on how to be an effective investigator.

CONCLUSION

Affective deprivation, harshness, and restrictions from one or both parents may cause the

child to have an unbalanced or immature personality. Imbalances and changes in the emotional

domain might jeopardize the development of a developed ego, which allows children to be aware

of the repercussions of their own and others' actions and sensitive enough.

In light of the foregoing, parricide committed by minors who were abused by their

parents can be interpreted as the result of multiple risk factors: early identification of these

factors, both clinically and criminologically or forensically, can prevent the desire for revenge

from manifesting itself in the tragic and irreversible event of the parent's murder.
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Alessandri, S.M., Lewis, M. (1993) Parental Evaluation and Its Relation to Shame and Pride in
Young Children Sex Roles Retrieved from https://bit.ly/39GOW8m

Alessandri, S. & Lewis, M. (1996). Differences in Pride and Shame in Maltreated and Non-
maltreated Pre-schoolers Child Development Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3NtTfmk

Andrews, et. al (2000) Predicting PTSD Symptoms in Victims of Violent Crime The Role of
Shame Anger and Childhood Abuse. Journal of Abnormal
Psychology Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3wD63A1

Barrett, K.C., Campos, J.J. (1987). Perspectives on Emotional Development A Functionalist

Approach to Emotions. In: Osofsky J.D., editor, Handbook of Infant Development New York:
Wiley.