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Filicide
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Filicide is the deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own son or daughter. The word filicide derives from the Latin word filius meaning "son".
In some cultures, killing a daughter who is deemed to have disgraced the family is a common occurrence (see honor killing).
A 1999 concluded that between 1976 and 1997 in the United States, mothers were responsible for a higher share of children killed during infancy while fathers were more likely to have been responsible for the murders of children age 8 or older.
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Encyclopedia
Filicide is the deliberate act of a parent killing his or her own son or daughter. The word filicide derives from the Latin word filius meaning "son".
In some cultures, killing a daughter who is deemed to have disgraced the family is a common occurrence (see honor killing).
A 1999 concluded that between 1976 and 1997 in the United States, mothers were responsible for a higher share of children killed during infancy while fathers were more likely to have been responsible for the murders of children age 8 or older. Furthermore, 52% of the children killed by their mothers were male (maternal filicide), while 57% of the children killed by their fathers were male (paternal filicide).
Sometimes there is a combination of murder and suicide in filicide cases.
Known or suspected filicides
Filicides in myth and fiction
- In the book series Warriors, Yellowfang kills her son Brokentail. It was a mercy killing because Brokentail was blind and sustained very bad, permanent injuries. Yellowfang killed him with a heavy heart to end his suffering.
- In the 2007 film Stephen King's The Mist, the main character, David Drayton, murders his son to save him being slaughtered by vicious creatures.
- In the PS2 God of War (video game) series, Kratos is tricked, by Ares, previous god of war, in the series, into killing his own child and his wife. Kratos decides to get back at Ares for doing so, as well as for what Ares did to Athens.
- In the PS2 sequel to God of War (video game), God of War II, Zeus, attempts to kill Kratos, who at the end of the game is revealed to be Zeus's son. Although this merely counts as attempted filicide, due to Kratos' release from the grips of Hades (The Greek god of the Underworld).
- Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare - Title character kills his daughter Lavinia. This is an attempt to restore her honor after she was raped, her hands were amputated, and her tongue cut out. Titus previously kills her attackers (then apparently puts pieces of the men's dead bodies into a pie that he serves their mother), marking this play as Shakespeare's most gruesome.
- La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) - This Hispanic American folktale tells of a woman, Maria, whose husband is unfaithful. In her rage, she throws their children into the river, where they are drowned.
- In the Medea of Euripides, Medea kills her children, in retaliation for being abandoned by her husband, Jason.
- In The Bacchae, also by Euripides, Agave kills her son Pentheus while possessed by Dionysus.
- Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigeneia, to the goddess Artemis in Aeschylus' The Oresteia and in Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis.
- Orchamus, a king in Greek mythology ordered his daughter Leucothea buried alive upon learning that she was in love with Apollo.
- In the HBO series Oz, white supremacist Schillinger has his son killed by providing him with poisoned narcotics while he is in solitary confinement.
- In the video game Castlevania, a witch named Actrise relishes the memory of sacrificing her child to the Devil in return for eternal life.
- In the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, Cuchulainn unwittingly kills his son Conlaoch when Conlaoch arrives in Ulster and, under a geis from his mother, the warrior queen Aoife, refuses to give his name to the king. Cuchulainn recognizes his son by a golden ring only after he inflicts a mortal wound with his magical spear, the Gae Bolga.
- In the 1990 film The Grifters, con artist Lilly Dillon unintentionally kills her son while trying to take his money.
- In Beloved, Sethe kills her daughter Beloved to save her from being returned to slavery.
- Hercules of Greek mythology killed his wife and children in a fit of rage induced by Hera
- In the FOX Network show Justice, a woman is tried and convicted of shooting her son, who threatened to reveal the mother's drug dealing business.
- In the FOX Network show 24, Graem Bauer (Paul McCrane) is killed by his father, Phillip Bauer (James Cromwell) before he can reveal Phillip's involvement in the nuclear attacks against America in Season 6.
- In the V.C. Andrews novel Flowers in the Attic, Corrine kills her young son Cory and then tries to kill her other children (including main character Cathy) with aresnic in order to get her parents' inheritance.
- The 2007 film Before the Devil Knows You're Dead ends with a scene in which the character played by Albert Finney smothers his son (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) with a pillow after Hoffman's character confesses that he was responsible for the botched robbery that resulted in his mother's death.
- In the story line of Alternative Rock band "Coheed and Cambria", Coheed is tricked into killing three of his children, Maria, Matthew, and Josephine. His son, Claudio, manages to escape.
- In the Death Note anime, Soichiro Yagami threatens to kill his son, Light, but the murder attempt was simply an act (using a revolver loaded with blanks) to determine whether or not Light was the notorious serial killer, "Kira".
- In the Family Guy episode, Lois Kills Stewie, Peter and Lois Griffin kill Stewie.
- In the "evil" endings of The Suffering video games, Torque murders his two sons and wife.
- In William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice, the title character is ordered by a Nazi to choose between her two children, telling her that the one she chooses will live, the other will die. She chooses, and the child she chose to live is the one murdered.
- In the director's cut of the 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven, Sibylla of Jerusalem poisons her son Baldwin V to spare his suffering when he is diagnosed with leprosy.
- In Silent Hill: Homecoming, several cult members sacrifice their children. Also, in one of the endings, Alex Shepherd is murdered by his father.
- In Silent Hill 3, Harry Mason mentioned in one of his notes he left behind in Silent Hill that he considered killing his foster child Heather/Cheryl at one point in his life.
- In the Septimus Heap book series, the third book Physik has the character Queen Etheldredda who killed her own daughters so that she will have unparalleled control over the kingdom and no one can be her successor.
- In Kathryn Lasky's book series Guardians of Ga'Hoole, Nyra, evil queen of the Pure Ones, tries to kill her son Nyroc (later Coryn) after he left the Pure Ones. However, Nyra's close ally, the Striga, kills Coryn in book 15.
- Lucius Junius Brutus, one of the founders of the Roman republic, famously condemns his sons to death who were conspiring to overthrow the newly established order. See Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, Book I, Chapter 16 and Book III, Chapter 3.
Related terms
And as for non-familial killing terms from the same root:
Also consider filial cruelty (cruelty toward one's own child), child cruelty (cruelty toward an unrelated child), and child murder (the murder of a child in general).
See also
External links
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