Expert: Desperation leads kids to kill their parents

By Steve Silverman
The Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL)
February 16, 2002

BLOOMINGTON – The vast majority of children who kill their parents do so out of desperation rather than malice, says a leading expert on such slayings.

Most children in “parricides” – the killing of parents – are victims of chronic abuse who believe they are trapped in unbearable situations, said Paul Mones, an Oregon defense attorney and author of “When a Child Kills.”

“These kids typically have a sense of hopelessness so severe that they’ll take extreme actions,” he said.

Feelings of helplessness tend to intensify when the child’s cries for help are ignored by authorities, school officials and others. A typically passive child may be driven to violence after his or her allegations are disregarded because they believe it’s the only way to stop the abuse, Mones said.

“The kid gets the clear message that they’re on their own,” Mones said.

One of the seemingly chilling aspects of parricides is that they tend to be highly premeditated, he said. The parent usually is killed while in a defenseless position.

Fourteen-year-old Adam Nutter, for example, set his alarm clock for when he knew his father would be asleep and then shot him as he lay on the couch of their Melvin home in September 2000.

Mones stressed that children who kill their parents often do so under those types of conditions because they fear an abusive parent will seriously harm them in a confrontation.

He added that 75 percent of children who kill a parent use the parent’s own gun – as Nutter did.

Mones said many circumstances surrounding the Nutter case are consistent with a “classic case” of parricide.

Mones emphasized that children in such cases have an exceedingly low rate of future violence. They tend to be submissive to authority, only lashing out due to confusion and despair, he said.

Increased public awareness of child abuse in recent years encourages Mones, but he said greater sensitivity to the problem is needed.

“It’s very difficult to really know what goes on behind closed doors, and these cases should be wake-up calls to the community,” he said.