88 Presentence investigations reports: Kathleen Daly, Gender, Crime and Punishment (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 83.
89 Guinevere Garcia described in The New York Times: Don Terry, “Hours Before Execution She Sought, Illinois Woman Is Given Clemency,” The New York Times, January 17, 1996, p. 10.
90 ACLU to Christian Science Monitor. James Tyson, “Woman’s Pending Execution Revives Death Penalty Furor,” January 16, 1996, p. 3.
91 “serious crimes” data for 1987: Rita Simon, “Women in Prison,” in Culliver, ed., Female Criminality, p. 375.
92 Phoenix, Arizona, study: J. B. Johnston, T. D. Kennedy, and I. Shuman, “Gender Differences in the Sentencing of Felony Offenders,” Federal Probation 51 (1987).
93 Average sentences for spousal homicide: Patrick A. Langan, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 1995.
94 Men 11 percent more likely than women to be incarcerated: Darrell Steffensmeier, John Kramer, and Cathy Streifel, “Gender and Imprisonment Decisions,” Criminology 31:3 (1993), 411–446.
C. Frazier, E. Bock, and J. Henretta, “The Role of Probation Officers in Determining Gender Differences in Sentencing Severity,” Sociological Quarterly 24 (1983), 305–318. Authors found a 23 percent discrepancy between male and female sentences, with women more likely to be described in psychological terms.
95 1987 review of London crown courts: Hilary Allen, “Rendering Them Harmless: The Professional Portrayal of Women Charged with Serious Violent Crimes,” in Pat Carlan and Anne Worrall, eds., Gender, Crime and Justice (Philadelphia: Milton Keynes, 1987), pp. 81–94.
For additional research see: Hilary Allen, Justice Unbalanced (Oxford: Open University Press, 1987). The argument is frequently advanced that women receive greater lenience because they are often mothers with sole responsibility for their children. But a 1989 study of male and female offenders in the Seattle and New York courts found that the courts were more lenient to the women supporting families than to the men supporting families even if the women were separated or divorced and without the children. Kathleen Daly, “Neither Conflict, Nor Labelling, Nor Paternalism Will Suffice: Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Family in Criminal Court Decisions,” Crime & Delinquency 3:1 (1989). Daly, like other scholars, points to women’s childcare responsibilities as perhaps the single greatest argument to keep them out of jail. But to say that women should be freed because they have children is to make too eager a generalization. Some women are in prison because they assaulted or killed their children. A third are there for drug offenses that involved a lifestyle in which their children were the least of their priorities. According to Ralph Weisheit, “What information was available indicated that nearly half of the mothers with children did not have custody of those children at the time of the offense. Surprisingly absent from the reports of prison psychologists were references to distress over separation from children.” Ralph Weisheit, “Female Homicide Offenders: Trends over Time in an Institutionalized Population,” Justice Quarterly 1:4 (December 1984), 471–488.
96 “This is a masculine system”: Interview with the author.
THE PROBLEM THAT STILL HAS NO NAME
97 “With regard to the public”: Quoted in Donna Osborne, “The Crime of Infanticide: Throwing the Baby Out with the Bath Water,” Canadian Journal of Family Law 6 (1987), 52.
98 “power of the mother”: Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986), p. 68.
99 killing of infant children between 1985 and 1988: Karen McCurdy and Deborah Daro, “Child Maltreatment: A National Survey of Reports and Fatalities,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 9:1 (1994), 75–94. According to the National Center on Health Statistics, the homicide rate for children under one year old rose 55 percent between 1985 and 1988, climbing to 8.2 per 100,000 children. But, say McCurdy and Daro: “It should be noted that these figures undercount the actual incidence.… Research has consistently found that some percentage of accidental deaths … and SIDS cases might be more appropriately labeled a child maltreatment death if comprehensive investigations were routinely conducted.”
There is evidence that child homicide and infanticide are on the rise in the United States. Reports of child abuse increased 50 percent nationwide between 1986 and 1992, with a total of 2,936,000 children allegedly abused in 1992, of whom 1,160,400 were confirmed as abused by investigators—a 10 percent increase over 1991. Child fatalities rose 49 percent between 1985 and 1992, from 1.3 per 1,000 children to 1.94. Forty-six percent of all child fatalities were infants.
100 data on infanticide compiled by WHO: Katherine K. Christoffel and Kiang Liu, “Homicide Death Rates in Childhood in 23 Developed Countries: U.S. Rates Atypically High,” Child Abuse & Neglect 7 (1983), 339–345. The median homicide rate for children under one year of age was 1.7 per 100,000, as compared with a median rate of 1.2 homicides per 100,000 for all age groups. Japan had the highest rate, at 8.6 infants killed per 100,000. The U.S. homicide rate for male children under the age of one year was 4.8 per 100,000; for female children it was 3.3. Adding in possible homicide, the rate became 8.7 infants per 100,000, compared with a rate of 8.2 homicides per 100,000 for all ages. “The incidence of infanticide, unlike the incidence of child homicide, tends to be as high [as] or higher than the rate of homicide for adults.” The data, conclude the authors, “may indicate that the susceptibility to infanticide is reinforced by features of our society, perhaps particularly social isolation of parents.” See also Murray Straus, “State and Regional Differences in U.S. Homicide Rates in Relation to Sociocultural Characteristics of the States,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 5 (1987), 61–75.
101 “neonates are discarded but not found”: Patricia M. Crittenden and Susan E. Craig, “Developmental Trends in the Nature of Child Homicide,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 5:2 (June 1990). In Dade County, Florida, between 1956 and 1986, 171 child murders were recorded by police. Mothers accounted for 86 percent of newborn deaths, 39 percent of infant deaths, 22 percent of toddler deaths, 23 percent of preschooler deaths, and 8 percent of child deaths. These figures don’t include the 22 percent of cases where the perpetrator was unknown, or possible child homicides where no body was found. “Should a mother decide either to end the neonate’s life or to dispose of a body which she believed to be dead, there would be no observers or official records of the death.” This would follow from the fact that in seven of the thirteen neonate cases, “the murder was discovered only when the infant’s body was accidentally found after being discarded.”
102 “Infanticide Increasing, Experts Fear”: Martha Shirk, St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 7, 1991.
103 Long Island Newsday editorial: “Compassion fits this crime, not punishment,” March 22, 1991.
104 Suffolk County Detective Lieutenant Gierasch: Interview with the author.
105 extrapolating from animal behavior to human mothers: An in-depth account of this research is cited in Diane Eyer, Mother-Infant Bonding: A Scientific Fiction (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).
106 skin-to-skin bonding: Ibid. Although this sort of bonding is still being touted in pregnancy and birth books, many researchers have rejected its significance, pointing out that mothers with premature infants, as well as adoptive mothers, have no trouble bonding with their offspring in the long term.
107 Dr. Stuart Asch: Interview with the author.
108 Letters to the editor: Suffolk Times, “Ellwood Case: Unequal Justice,” March 28, 1991; Newsday, “Questions in Ellwood Case,” March 4, 1991.
109 “Under Christianity”: Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 259.
110 Thirty-three percent of Paris women: William Langer, “Infanticide: A Historical Survey,” History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1974), 353–374.
111 Infant abandonment and killing in Greece and Rome: Shari Thurer, The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994)
.
112 “a preschool-age stepchild is 100 times more likely”: Margo Wilson and Martin Daly, “Evolutionary Social Psychology and Family Homicide,” Science 242:4878 (1988), 519.
113 A new name for Medea: Ira Daniel Turkat, “Divorce Related Malicious Mother Syndrome,” Journal of Family Violence 10:3 (1995), 253–263.
114 maternal resentment and infanticide in ancient Greece: Thurer, Myths of Motherhood, p. 77.
115 infanticide in colonial America as “revolutionary”: Ann Jones, Women Who Kill (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1980), p. 55.
116 Personal impulses in the murder of infants: Brandt F. Steele, “Psychology of Infanticide Resulting from Maltreatment,” Child Abuse & Neglect 120:1 (1987), 76–85.
117 “women who commit infanticide run a wide spectrum”: Stewart interviewed by the author. See also C. Erlick Robinson and Donna E. Stewart, “Postpartum Psychiatric Disorders,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 134 (January 1, 1986).
118 Infanticide Act: K. O’Donovan, “The Médicalisation of Infanticide,” Criminal Law Review 5 (1984). In two reviews of the act—by the Butler Committee (1975) and the Criminal Law Revision Committee (1980)—its medical basis was challenged, and social stress was conceded. Noted members of the Butler Committee: “the operative factors in child killing are often the stress of having to care for the infant, who may be unwanted or difficult.” And: “mental disorder is probably no longer a significant cause of infanticide.” The CLRC went beyond that concession and recommended that the act be revised to include “environmental or other stresses,” including poverty, incapacity to cope with the child, and failure of bonding. Nevertheless, as O’Donovan notes, “the Committee was careful to link such factors to ‘the fact of the birth and the hormonal and other bodily changes produced by it.’ Thus, to enable the court to take account of socio-economic factors, yet still forgive women, the medical model was retained” (p. 263).
119 link between postpartum hormones and violent behavior: See, for example, Robinson and Stewart, “Postpartum Psychiatric Disorders.” “Despite terms like lactational psychosis,” note the authors, “researchers have been unable to confirm a link between postpartum psychosis and levels of prolactin or for that matter, levels of thyroxine, estrogen, progesterone, adrenal corticoids, follicle-stimulating hormones or B-endorphins.”
120 coroner’s inquests: Cited in O’Donovan, “The Medicalisation of Infanticide.”
121 “courts regularly returned ‘not guilty’ verdicts”: Osborne, “Crime of Infanticide.”
122 defending the diagnosis of lactational insanity: J. H. Morton, “Female Homicides,” Journal of Mental Science 80 (1934), 64–74.
123 “studies linking life history to depression”: Michael O’Hara, Janet Schlechte, David Lewis, Michael Varner, “Controlled Prospective Study of Postpartum Mood Disorders: Psychological, Environmental, Hormonal Variables,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 100:1 (February 1991), 63; Steven E. Hobfoll, “Depression’s Birth in Poor Women,” Science News 147:24 (June 17, 1995), 381; Phyllis Zelkowitz and Tamara Milet, “Postpartum Psychiatric Disorders: Their Relationship to Psychological Adjustment and Marital Satisfaction in Spouses,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 105:2 (May 1996), 281; Susan B. Campbell and Jeffrey Cohn, “Prevalence and Correlates of Postpartum Depression in First-time Mothers,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 100:4 (November 1991), 594.
124 fathers and postpartum depression: E. J. Anthony, “An Overview of the Effects of Maternal Depression on the Infant and Child,” in H. L. Morrison, ed., Children of Depressed Parents: Risk Identification and Intervention (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1983), pp. 1–17. See also W. V. Diskin et al., “Postpartum—After the Baby is Born,” in Our Bodies, Ourselves (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), pp. 297–316.
125 Kathleen Householder: “Why Mothers Kill Their Babies,” Time, June 20, 1988; Josephine Mesa: “Women Who Killed Child Remains Free,” Tom Gorman, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1989; Sheryl Massip: “Judge Won’t Confine Massip,” Andrea Ford, Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1989.
126 depression and psychosis less severe in early twentieth century: Katherine Dalton, Depression After Childbirth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
127 Harris and Thompson on “Oprah Winfrey” show episode: “Mothers Who Killed Their Children,” February 6, 1991.
128 account of professional woman giving birth to twins: Robinson and Stewart, “Postpartum Psychiatric Disorders.”
129 “the parent may decide it is a hopeless task”: Steele, “Psychology of Infanticide,” 83.
130 “I was like I gotta do this”: Paula Sims to Audrey Becker, Dying Dreams: The Secrets of Paula Sims (New York: Pocket Books, 1993), p. 328.
131 Of eighty-eight infanticidal women in a 1988 study: Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Homicide (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988).
132 women admitted to Broadmoor: Patrick McGrath, “Maternal Filicide in Broadmoor Hospital, 1919–69,” Journal of Forensic Psychiatry 3:2 (1974).
133 “morbid and mistaken maternal solicitude”: J. Baker, “Female Criminal Lunatics,” Journal of Mental Science 48 (1902), 13–28.
134 men in Brixton prison convicted of infanticide: P. D. Scott, “Fatal Battered Baby Cases,” Medicine, Science and the Law 13 (1973), 197–206.
135 Jennifer Uglow on Toni Morrison: “Medea and Marmite Sandwiches,” in Katherine Grieve, ed., Balancing Acts: On Being a Mother (London: Virago, 1989), pp. 148–159.
136 average prison sentence: Mann, When Women Kill, p. 150. Thirty-seven percent of the women convicted of killing their offspring in Mann’s study were sentenced to prison. The remainder received probation, were remanded for psychiatric treatment, or were dealt with in some other manner.
137 British imprisonment rates for infanticide: Allison Morris and Ania Wilczynski, “Rocking the Cradle: Mothers Who Kill Their Children,” in Helen Birch, ed., Moving Targets: Women, Murder and Representation (London: Virago, 1993), pp. 198–217.
138 Phillip Resnick interviewed by Long Island Newsday: Carolyn Colwell, “The Pregnancy Denial Defense,” March 11, 1991.
139 number of U.S. cases involving postpartum psychosis defense: G. Laverne Williamson, “Postpartum Depression Syndrome as a Defense to Criminal Behavior,” Journal of Family Violence 8:2 (1993), 151–164.
140 Dade County, Florida, prosecutions: Crittenden and Craig, “Developmental Trends.”
141 use of postpartum psychosis as a reason why women shouldn’t vote: O’Donovan, “The Medicalisation of Infanticide.”
142 “myth-making by legislation”: Nigel Walker, Crime and Insanity in England. Volume I: The Historical Perspective (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), p. 121.
MEDEA IN HER MODERN GUISE
143 “ideal mother”: Cited in Thurer, Myths of Motherhood, p. xxvii.
144 “powerless women”: Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 38.
145 MSBP as “a ‘career’ pursued by ostensibly wonderful mothers”: Herbert A. Schreier and Judith A. Libow, Hurting for Love: Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome (Guilford, Conn.: Guilford Press, 1993), p. 88.
146 “The disorder is far from rare”: Ibid. p. 38.
147 “substantial challenge: “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy,” The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 64:8 (August 1995), 5–7. A clearly coercive, instrumental form of self-directed violence is Munchausen syndrome. It has been noted that such individuals can often shift the direction of their aggression, becoming threatening or physically violent toward medical staff. See, for example, Donald A. Swanson, “The Munchausen Syndrome,” American Journal of Psychotherapy 35:3 (July 1981). Women with Munchausen syndrome by proxy often threaten to commit suicide. The FBI Bulletin on MSBP investigation notes that 60 percent of the women in a sample of the disorder had attempted suicide.
148 “Because I’m a woman”: Joyce Egginton, From Cradle to Grave (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989), p. 99.
149 MSBP as a “form of psychopathy”: Schreier and Libow, Hurting for Love, p. 53
.
150 analysis of psychopathic speech patterns: Interview with author. See also Robert Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York: Pocket Books, 1994).
151 psychopath described: Hervey Cleckley, Mask of Sanity, 5th ed. (St. Louis, Mo.: C. V. Mosely, 1976).
152 psychopath’s brain likened to a reptile’s: J. Reid Meloy, The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics and Treatment (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1988), p. 34.
153 Psychiatrist’s interview with psychopath: Patricia Pearson, “Frankenstein’s Orphan,” Saturday Night, November 1991.
154 women more likely than men to perpetrate child neglect: Leslie Margolin, “Fatal Child Neglect,” Child Welfare LXIX:4 (July-August 1990), 309–318. Two-thirds of fatal neglect victims are male. See also Nino Trocme, “Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse & Neglect” (Toronto: Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse, 1994). This investigation of child abuse and neglect in Ontario tracked 46,683 cases. Child neglect involved a mother as the perpetrator in 85 percent of the cases. In abuse, mothers were responsible in 39 percent of cases, as compared with 40 percent for fathers.
155 “Neglect is continual”: Dr. Mindy Rosenberg, in testimony at the sentencing hearing of Dorothea Puente.
156 “soul murder”: Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (New York: Noonday Press, 1990), p. 248.
157 “inability to socialize”: Meloy, The Psychopathic Mind, p. 35.
158 “a baby was an extension of herself”: Egginton, Cradle to Grave, p. 188. 100 “You could paper the walls”: Ibid., p. 326.
159 “projective containers”: Meloy, The Psychopathic Mind, p. 51.
160 “I’ve seen psychopaths cry like a baby”: Bill Tillier, interviewed by the author.
161 “doing his best to elicit a confession”: Egginton, Cradle to Grave, p. 225.
162 “the Roman mother’s use of her own sons”: Thurer, Myths of Motherhood, p. 78.
When She Was Bad Page 31
