Child Abuse Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Child Abuse, including details on family violence, examinations, long-term effects, psychiatrics disorders.

A comparative analysis of media reports of U.S. parricide cases with officially reported national crime data and the psychiatric and psychological literature.

Heide KM, Boots DP

University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620-8100, USA. kheide@cas.usf.edu

This article is a content analysis of 150 unique cases of children killing parents in the United States as reported in the electronic news media. The accuracy of online coverage of U.S. parricide incidents is assessed using two types of resources: officially reported national statistics on known parricidal incidents and the psychological and psychiatric literature on matricide and patricide. Comparisons of news accounts of media-reported U.S. parricide cases with Supplementary Homicide Report data indicate that electronic media coverage of parricide cases focused on the more sensational and unusual parricides. Analyses of these media accounts by offender age found 13 significant differences between juvenile and adult offenders. Ten of these 13 differences related to motive and Heide's parricide offender types (severely abused, severely mentally ill, and dangerously antisocial) and were consistent with the mental health-related literature in this area. The limitations and directions for future research are discussed at length.

Published 16 November 2007 in Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol, 51(6): 646-75.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 Child Abuse Research Today. All Rights Reserved.