Filicide

Filicide is the killing of a child by a parent, stepparent, or parental figure. It is one of the most consequential intersections of domestic violence, coercive control, and child welfare — and one of the most chronically underreported categories of homicide in official statistics, because many cases are concealed, misclassified at autopsy, or recorded under other cause-of-death categories.

Filicide is not a uniform phenomenon. The most widely used classification system — developed by psychiatrist Phillip Resnick — identifies five primary types: altruistic filicide, in which the parent perceives the killing as an act of mercy; acutely psychotic filicide, driven by severe mental illness; unwanted child filicide; accidental filicide resulting from abuse; and spouse revenge filicide, in which the child is killed to punish the other parent. This last category is the most directly connected to coercive control — the deliberate killing of a child as the ultimate act of retribution against a partner who has attempted to leave or assert autonomy.

The gendered pattern of filicide is distinct from most other forms of homicide. In the context of intimate partner violence, fathers are significantly more likely than mothers to perpetrate filicide — and paternal filicide is more likely to involve firearms, to occur in the context of familicide, and to occur at the point of separation or divorce. A large-scale study of filicide perpetrators in England and Wales found that 66% were fathers. Research on intimate partner violence-related child homicide found that these cases disproportionately involved firearms and frequently ended in perpetrator suicide — the final act of a man who has chosen to destroy rather than relinquish control.

Maternal filicide follows a different profile: more likely to be associated with mental illness, social isolation, and domestic violence victimization. Research has found that 12 of 20 mother perpetrators in one systematic analysis were themselves victims of domestic violence — a finding that demands both accountability and structural understanding simultaneously.

On this platform, filicide appears in the coverage of the Minnesota 2023 intimate partner homicide memorial, where Messiah O’Neal — infant son of Kyla Bianca O’Neal, who was killed alongside his pregnant mother — is documented as a victim of filicide in the context of intimate partner femicide. His case is a reminder that coercive control does not only kill the primary target. It kills everyone within reach.