They are not crazy, nor have they lost their minds in a flash. They are men who plan the murder of their children in minute detail, who study when to commit it and how to carry it out with the sole aim of causing irreversible, irreparable and lifelong harm to the woman These children are not seen as his children, to whom he gave life, but as weapons to kill the mother in her life. They are the killers of vicarious gender violence, which since 2013 has skewed the lives of 52 children. The last two victims, on Monday: the children who lived in the Horta neighborhood.
This is indicated by Vicarious violence: an irreversible blow against mothers, the first study on this type of violence carried out in Spain and prepared by the psychologist and forensic Sonia E. Vaccaro, creator of the term vicarious violence, with the collaboration of the association Feminist Psychology and the Board of Andalusia. This research consisted of the study on data analysis of cases of extreme vicarious violence, murder. Specifically, it analyzes 51 murders of minors between 2000 and 2021 (these figures have been officially collected since 2013, the previous ones have been compiled from court rulings).
This study does not include the last two murders that took place this week in Barcelona, in Horta. A 53-year-old man murdered his children, aged seven and ten. He armored the rented flat where he lived and lit a coal brazier. All three died of carbon monoxide inhalation.
The man had a visiting regime and the brothers spent Sunday with their father. That same day they were to return to their mother, but he asked her to let them sleep at home. On Sunday, the man took it upon himself to seal all the rooms in the small flat. She placed cloths and even a carpet in the door slots to cover any air inlets and outlets. Everything had been meticulously planned.
It is not an isolated case. According to the study, the majority of murderers are the biological father (82%), they had no criminal record or illnesses to attribute the behavior to. "On the contrary, the class of crime committed shows us a prior planning (they bought the weapon with which they murdered the day before, and sometimes several days before). The details of the crime were planned down to the millimeter, they were not crimes as the product of a fit of rage or a rampage. In effect, all these killers acted coldly and premeditated, sometimes to the point of plotting scenes that could confuse and mislead the investigation to avoid solving the crime and, in this way, plunge the mother into permanent uncertainty and infinite that killed her a little more every day", he points out.
The majority of murders are committed when the parents are in sole charge of the children (48%), either to exercise the visitation regime (44%) or shared custody (4%). The place of the murder is mainly the murderer's house (42%), without the presence of other people (68%) or in the presence of the children's mother (16%) or siblings (14%).
The perpetrators mostly use a sharp weapon (knife) to carry out the crimes. The type of weapon, bought expressly to commit the murder, "indicates the mastery of the scene of the aggressor and the vulnerability of the victims. To have to approach them, to have contact with the body and even to be splashed by the blood of the victims undoubtedly determines us the lack of empathy with the victims and the consideration as objects, not not as subjects, on the part of the murderer: the murdered children have been lethal weapons to injure the mother", he points out.
Contrary to the widespread opinion that murderers are "careful" when killing their children so they don't suffer, the data collected in this work refutes this. In 26% of cases, the crime is committed with a sharp weapon (knife, razor, etc.). In 22%, the aggressors used their hands to kill, assault and beat. In 14%, they used a combination of methods that basically consisted of the use of anxiolytics and barbiturates at first, then using another type of weapon to complete the crime. In 10%, they used firearms. In 10%, they are also murders committed by gas and smoke poisoning. And in 8%, they are killed by immersion in water.
