Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers (35 page)

So how does society make such abusive parents change? Hard-hitting mothers and fathers somehow manage to blank their actions out, to rewrite history in their heads.

Many people saw Rose West striking her children in the street. Other neighbours thought that she was too severe when it came to discipline. Yet her oldest son Stephen says, truthfully, ‘I think Mum has forgotten the beatings she gave us as a child and how she treated us. She would deny it ever happened in court. I know she would.’

There was also a form of denial in Daisy, Rose’s mother, who seemed surprised that her terrorised children grew into adults who couldn’t cope with life. But how could they be expected to cope when they’d had no praise, no fun, and had been regularly brutalised by their hate-filled father?

Society often makes excuses for spiteful and inadequate parenting or - in the absence of full information - puts a benign slant on child cruelty. The original reports of the West household described it as a disciplined but loving home.

The press also said that Myra Hindley came from a loving respectable home - yet observers said that Myra’s parents had nothing in common and that her father was reclusive and violent. He himself admitted he never had any feelings for the child. One of the websites about Carol Bundy states that her parents did their best for her - their best being to physically, emotionally and sexually abuse her so badly that she made her first suicide attempt at the age of twelve or thirteen.

Elie Godsi has worked with offenders in Rampton, a maximum security hospital for offenders detained under the Mental Health Act. He writes eloquently of his experiences in
Violence
In
Society.
Again and again he found that such prisoners had been repeatedly abused by their parents or carers. He’s all too aware of the fact that ‘various levels of hitting, shaking, shoving, and pulling children is for much of the population an acceptable method of child rearing’ and that there is a fine ‘transition between physical punishment and physical abuse.’

Over ninety percent of parents at some time hit their children - and some people hit them several times a week - so there is a great deal of emotional hurt, fear and physical pain in the world today. Small wonder that violent crime rates are so frighteningly high.

So-called legitimate punishment often turns into abuse. The parents of the serial killers in this book mocked and hit their helpless offspring again and again
- but they believed that they had the law on their side so they continued their attacks.

Many parents refuse to see their own actions as abusive. Catherine Wood’s mother admitted that her husband was ‘difficult’ but was adamant that she wouldn’t have let him abuse Cathy or her siblings. A relative believed otherwise. Rose West’s father moved his family to a different area, rather than change his violent ways, when the neighbours gossiped about his frightened children’s screams.

Other research has backed this up, finding that parents trivialised hitting their children, saying that it was ‘just a tap.’ But when the children themselves were asked they said ‘It feels like someone banged you with a hammer,’ and ‘It’s like breaking your bones.’ Aileen Wuornos grandfather kept the curtains closed so that passers by couldn’t hear her crying as he hit her and Gwen Graham bore the marks of childhood punishments into adulthood.

Many other children are also given more than minor smacks. Dr Susan Forward, author of
Toxic
Parents,
states honestly that ‘any behaviour that inflicts significant physical pain on a child, regardless of whether it leaves marks’ is physical abuse.

Over the past few years many children’s charities have become aware that legal punishments in the home constitute abuse and lead to increased violence in society. In a bid to both educate and legislate, the charity EPOCH was formed in 1989.

EPOCH, which stands for
End
Physical
Punishment
Of
Children
later linked to the
Association
For
The
Protection
Of
All
Children,
generally known as APPROACH. Many religious groups have joined the campaign to stop parents hitting their children, pointing out that though ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ appears in some holy books it does not constitute doctrinal text.

EPOCH have produced a range of leaflets, booklets and posters which show the dangers of hitting children and which emphasise the use of positive discipline. As they say ‘rewards such as praise, approval and hugs work much better’ than smacks and ‘the more
politeness
, consideration and co-operation children get, the more they’ll give.’ The organisation also reports that ‘parents who try alternatives report success.’

Most of the female killers in this book suffered parental shouts and blows rather than the deserved love and hugs and approval. The others were coached by violent men who had once suffered at the hands of
their
violent parents. The results were ultimately disastrous.

As Alice Miller writes in
Banished
Knowledge,
‘When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression
is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.’ She’s describing the repressed memories of being hit and humiliated as a child.

Almost all of the profiled female killers gave birth to children who are now in the homes of foster families or relatives. If the law was changed to make physical punishment illegal then these children would assuredly suffer less than their mothers did.