By CKOM News

Psychologist sheds light on murder-suicides involving family

Apr 24, 2015 | 12:51 PM

Saskatchewan is shocked by the horrific murder-suicide of Latasha Gosling and her three oldest children by Steve O’Shaughnessy. 

People are trying to grapple with the notion that a man would kill his common-law partner and her children. 

David Adams, a psychologist and author of Why Do They Kill? Men Who Murder Their Intimate Partners, in the case of familicide—the killing of a spouse and at least one child—there is often a history of domestic violence of possessive control and social isolation. 

The motivating factor is often possessive jealousy.  

“Quite often those perpetrators kill their partners to prevent them from leaving them and also to kind of prevent them to going to somebody else,” Adams explained on the John Gormley Show on Friday. 

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“If I can’t have you then nobody else can have you is quite often the thought process,” Adams said, adding that notion is a huge red flag in a relationship because it’s a very unusual thing to say to a partner. 

The U.S., 45 per cent of murder-suicides involve non-biological children, Adams said, pointing to the murder in Tisdale. 

“It’s really considered to be a risk factor because quite often those children are reminders of her past history with some other man,” Adams said. 

The majority of cases involve depression and alcohol, which is a depressant.

“Alcohol not only fuels the depression but often times also fuels the jealous ruminations that are quite common in these cases,” he said. 

Adams said the most dangerous point for victims is when they are trying to leave their abuser. 

According to U.S. studies, only four per cent of murder victims of intimate partner homicide had ever had contact with a battered women’s program because perpetrators are keen on isolating their victims by depriving them of any sources of support. 

Adams urged victims of abuse to seek out a program for help. Typically battered intervention programs will provide safety planning for victims and help them develop short-term and long-term strategies. 

Most perpetrators are narcissistic and do not see themselves as a victim, nor do they recognize their ill treatment of others, Adams said. 

“Many of these perpetrators are really kind of obsessed with their reputation and their status,” Adams said, adding they have often experienced some sort of humiliation in the form of a job loss, separation or discovery of some sort of secret. Their “solution” is to kill themselves and their whole family. 

“They sometimes will kill their partner to prevent damage to their reputation that they sort of so carefully groomed… they think that they are doing their family a favour—that they are sparing their family the humiliation that they assume they will feel due to their loss of social status.”

panews@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @princealbertnow