Case Report - (2021) Volume 6, Issue 5
Received: 14-Sep-2021
Published:
05-Oct-2021
Citation: Tiffon, Bernat-N. "A Case of Neonaticide with Homicidal Defenestration of the Minor." J Forensic Med 6 (2021) : 148.
Copyright: © 2021 Tiffon BN. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
A case of notorious uniqueness of neonaticide is related, illustrating the psychological profile of a young mother who, at the same moment of breaking water and giving birth to a female baby, throws it into the void from the window of the bathroom of her home when he was only a few minutes old.
Personality disorder • Filicide • Neonaticide • Homicide • Medea syndrome
When a parent kills his or her own child, it is known as filicide. Such a criminological situation always originates a great social, legal, and media impact [1].
For Raymond maternal filicide is defined as the killing of a child by its mother [2]. Many classifications have been developed based on underlying motives such as altruism, mental pathology, fatal abuse, spousal revenge, or an unwanted child. Pathological filicide refers to cases in which the perpetrator has a severe psychiatric illness. The related literature is scarce. For Calzada et al., they consider "as neonaticide the death of a child in the first 24 hours and infanticide when the child is between 1 day and 1 year old. In general, filicide is reserved for children with age ranges between 1 and 18 years, subdivided into early-type when it includes ages 1 to 12 years and late-type over 13 years". In a recent longitudinal study conducted by Raymond with a population sample of 17 women, they observed that in 12 victims the dynamics of filicide are contextualized in psychotic-delirious subjects, which would respond to a "psychotic infanticide"-in the terminology described by Resnick or d'Orban or "pathological infanticide" (according to Bourget, in contrast, for four women of the total population sample, the contextual framework of the filicide dynamic was (couple) separation; the cases were diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, major depressive episode, and bipolar disorder. But if these aforementioned diagnoses were heterogeneous, they all suffered from separation anxiety and fear of abandonment as common psychopathological elements per se [3]. The authors of the study also considered that cases of revenge filicides ("medea syndrome") are described as retaliation, in the context of separation, against parents/husbands. Out of the total sample of 17 subjects, one case responds to infanticide as a result of a series of sadistic acts and severe beatings [4].
Likewise, the development of preventive strategies in cases of neonaticides and filicides is difficult to establish due to the diverse and widely heterogeneous dynamics between perpetrator and victim [5].
This is a 19-year-old woman who, according to the wording and as stated in the body of the sentence, the proven facts were the following: At an unspecified time, but between the afternoon and the evening, she gave birth in the bathroom of her home to a female baby that came to breathe independently; and immediately after the birth, she threw it out of the bathroom window that overlooks an interior patio of the property from a height of 74.97 feet [6]. As a consequence, the newborn suffered severe polytrauma with the destruction of vital brain centers, which caused her death [7].
The defendant "threw the baby out of the window with the intention of ending her life or, in any case, aware of the risk she was creating for her life and the very high probability of causing her death" [8].
The defendant "took advantage of the fact that the newborn lacked the capacity to defend herself in any way" [9].
From the legal point of view and as stated in the sentence, the jury considered as proven that the baby was thrown and defenestrated by the accused from the window; as stated by the police officers in their statements during the trial held and explaining that the victim "went to the bathroom and that her family was in the dining room, that had the birth and got so scared that she threw it out the window" [10].
The jury also considered as proven the intentionality of the facts so that the accused, when proceeding to the arrest, stated that "she had done it alone (the delivery) in the bathroom and that everything that came out she threw it out the window because she got scared" [11].
It was also considered as proven the intentionality of the facts as a result of the extraction of data from the victimizer's cell phone so that the same states that her ex-boyfriend left her pregnant and that she would solve the problem [12]. In a later conversation the victimizer says that "everything is solved" and to the question of her ex-boyfriend "what is solved?", she answers "the baby", and to the question "is it already out?", she answers "yes". In another subsequent chat, she says that she has a pretty big problem, that she is pregnant, and that there are times when she "thinks about killing herself " or that "they run her over to lose it" [13].
From the psychological point of view, the victimizer was examined by mental health professionals, while she was still a pretrial detainee awaiting trial, in order to evaluate her psychological state and to obtain some justification for her criminal behavior [14]. However, the sentence did not find any type of circumstance modifying criminal responsibility due to psychopathological causes and, therefore, the victimizer was considered to have acted with malice aforethought and was sentenced accordingly as the person responsible for her acts. After some time, she was psychologically evaluated again and was administered the MCMI-IV, whose scores related to the validity modifying indexes are within the statistical normality and can grant reliability to the psychological profile obtained, being compatible with the genuine personality traits of the defendant [15]. Likewise, and following the line of clinical personality patterns, statistically significant scores were obtained in the scales "Avoidant" (TB=89), "Melancholic" (TB=83), "Compulsive" (TB=80), and "Dependent" (TB=75). Moreover, from the subclinical point of view, the scales "Paranoid" (TB=69), "Masochistic" (TB=68), and "Tempestuous" (TB=67) are also significant shown in Figures 1 and 2.
Figure 1: Results and psychological and psychopathological profile of the subject obtained from the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-IV, version 4, 2018).
Figure 2: Results and psychological and psychopathological profile of the subject obtained from the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-IV, version 4, 2018).
The set of scales described above, come to be compatible with a personality characterized by an acute and singular fragility, weak and sensitive psychoemotional instability, avoidant-dependent-melancholic, who weakens in situations interpreted subjectively and paranoidly as critical and/or acute [16]. The personality profile described suggests as compatible that the victim was feeling acutely and emotionally overwhelmed by her own situation of motherhood [17], with feelings of low tolerance to frustration and could have originated the perpetration of the criminal and lethal behavior shown in Figures 3 and 4.
Figure 3: Grossman Facets. Results and psychological and psychopathological profile of the subject obtained from the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-IV, version 4, 2018).
Figure 4: Grossman Facets. Results and psychological and psychopathological profile of the subject obtained from the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-IV, version 4, 2018).
A unique case of neonaticide of a young mother with a dysfunctional personality and suffering from acute psycho-emotional instability is described.
In this particular case, it is difficult to describe psychologically what was the real will of the mother to perpetrate the facts, since only the victimizer knows what her most intrinsic motives were (and as it seems to be clear from the clinical interview, she herself does not know it and even manifests the desire to be a mother again). For this reason, and from the basis of Criminal and Forensic Psychology and the psychometric results obtained, it does not appear that the victimizer presents serious psychopathology or mental dysfunction; but neither does it appear that the itercriminis of the crime committed does not seem to be compatible with her having committed it from a vengeful posture (or "medea syndrome").
As can be seen in the sentence, all the experts who testified regarding the mental state of the victim agreed that the victim did not present any type of serious mental disorder for which she could benefit from an exonerating circumstance or an attenuation of the criminological penalty. Thus, and following the ruling of the sentence, this meant the consideration of being the responsible author of the crime of murder with the aggravating circumstance of kinship to the penalty of twenty years of imprisonment.
Likewise, and in order to develop preventive strategies in cases of neonaticides and filicides, it is notoriously difficult to establish and apply due to the heterogeneous dynamics between the perpetrator and the victim.
Journal of Forensic Medicine received 165 citations as per Google Scholar report
