EVIL PARENTS (Part one)                                               

My father was an evil man. He raped my mother when she was going out on a date with him. When it was obvious to her that she was pregnant, she decided to keep going with him in hopes that he would marry her so that I would be a legitimate child. In those days —1933—a woman having an illegitimate child was scandalous. He married my mother only because my grandfather threatened to call the police and have him charged with raping my mother.  Then he deserted us after he found a two-room shack in a field for my mother and me to live in. The shack had no water or electricity, just a table, two chairs, a wood stove, a bed and a dresser.  We would have starved if her cousin who found us later didn’t bring us hampers of food. We rarely saw my father after that but when I was eleven, he anal raped me twice while my mother was visiting her sister out of town. He even asked me to bring a girl to our home. I refused. A day later, he deserted us again and I never saw him after that until I was 26 years of age and that was for only an hour. As evil as my father was, he wasn’t as bad as many other evil fathers are or were.

Cases of fathers killing their children before committing suicide are relatively uncommon, but in recent years there have been a number of instances of men killing their families before some were taking their own lives.

In England and Wales, figures show that children are much more at risk of being murdered by a parent than by a stranger. In over two thirds (67% on average) of all cases of children killed at the hands of another person, one of the parents is the principal suspect. While in most cases of family annihilation it is the father who is the killer involved however there have also been a number of instances of a mother killing her children before committing suicide.

One such case was that of 44-year-old Claudia Oakes-Green who stabbed her two children, Thomas, 13, and Eleanor, nine, to death, before killing herself at their home in Shepshed, Leicestershire in 2011.

On September 30, 2012, former-Army sergeant and IRA bomb survivor Michael Pedersen, 51, from Surrey, fatally stabbed his children, Ben and Freya aged six and seven, on an arranged visit with them after splitting from his wife Erica. He then took his own life.

Megan Huntsman pleaded guilty in 2015 to suffocating or strangling six of her own babies, right after giving birth to them from 1996 to 2006 in Pleasant Grove, Utah. She put their bodies into plastic bags, placed them in boxes and stored them in her garage, where her husband found them in 2014. Her family said she had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Before receiving a life sentence, she said in a statement to the court: “I didn’t feel strong enough to be a mother to these tiny babies. And in some small way, I wanted to avoid the terrible life that I would have given them.”                                                 

Jeanette Hawes locked her 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son in an Augusta, Georgia, gas station restroom in 2007, and stabbed them both to death. Described at her trial as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, she believed her children were possessed by demons. Hawes was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2009 and sent to a state mental hospital.

Deena Schlosser killed her 11-month-old daughter in 2004, by cutting off her arms with a knife, while listening to gospel music in her home in Plano, Texas.  She had a history of bipolar disorder, depression and postpartum psychosis, and police found her covered with blood, holding the knife, singing hymns and chanting ‘Thank you, Lord.’ Her two other daughters were not harmed. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state mental hospital. She was released in 2012.

Andrea Yates confessed to drowning her five children, ages 6 months to 7 years, in the bathtub of her Houston, Texas, home in 2001. She had a history of depression, postpartum psychosis, schizophrenia and suicide attempts, and she was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006 and committed to a state me

 horrific cr ntal hospital. After her arrest, she told a jail psychiatrist: “My children were not righteous. I let them stumble. They were doomed to perish in the fires of Hell.

In 2005, China Arnold of Dayton, Ohio, stuffed her three-week-old daughter into a microwave oven and burned her to death after arguing with her boyfriend about dads who murder their children.

Andrea Yates confessed to drowning her five children, ages 6 months to 7 years, in the bathtub of her Houston, Texas, home in 2001. She had a history of depression, postpartum psychosis, schizophrenia and suicide attempts, and she was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2006 and committed to a state mental hospital. After her arrest, she told a jail psychiatrist: “My children were not righteous. I let them stumble. They were doomed to perish in the fires of Hell.

John Sharpe was an Australian man who murdered his family in what he claimed was a moment of madness, but the method of his murders suggests he knew exactly what he was doing. He slew his wife by firing spears from a spear gun into her head whilst she slept and then proceeded to do the same thing to his 19-month old daughter, Gracie, a few days later. His wife was five months pregnant at the time, so Sharpe actually murdered three people. For his horrific crimes he received life imprisonment (two consecutive terms) in 2004 in which he has to serve at least 33 years.

n 2013, an Englishman called Ceri Fuller decided to commit suicide because of marital problems he was struggling to deal with. But before leaping to his death ferom a sixty-foot cliff, , the unhinged father murdered his three young children. His son, Samuel, was just 12 years old, whilst his girls, Rebecca and Charlotte, were only eight and seven-years old, respectively. The three children were stabbed to death with a hunting knife by the man they trusted most in the world.  It was  a case which shook the British nation.

In 2013, Philpott, his wife Mairead and Paul Mosley were jailed due to their involvement in the deaths of six children. The thoughtless trio had set fire to a house in Derby, UK, that had been the Philpott family home. The plan was to set fire to the house, rescue the children sleeping inside and then frame one of Philpott's former partners. Tragically, Jade (10), John (nine), Jack (seven), Jesse (six) and Jayden (five) were all killed in the arson attack, whilst their half-brother Duwayne (13) died a few days later from the injuries he sustained. Philpott was jailed for life; Mairead Philpott and Mosley each earned a sentence of 17 years.

At a later date, I will give you more cases where parents killed their children, however in this article, I will try and explain what causes these evil people to do these crimes.