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Tuesday, May 29, 2007 Posted on Tue, May. 29, 2007 Who kills a child? It’s shocking when death comes at the hands of a caretaker — but more often, experts say, it is parents who kill their own children By ISHMAEL TATE itate@thestate.com When young children are killed, more than half the time their parents are responsible. It’s “exceedingly rare†for the killer of a child younger than 5 years old to be a baby sitter or caretaker, said Geoffrey R. McKee, clinical professor of neural psychiatry at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. The federal Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics doesn’t even have statistics on baby sitters who kill. That means Columbia has seen more than its share of such investigations in recent years. Gail Cutro was convicted in 2000 of the deaths of two children at her home day care in 1993. She was sentenced to life in prison. Last month, a Columbia woman, 39-year-old Andrea Person, was charged with two counts of homicide by child abuse in the deaths of two children at her home day care in 1998 and 2001. Police are investigating the death of a third infant at her home. Homicides of children younger than 5 increased during the 1990s but have decreased in recent years, according to the 2005 federal Child Maltreatment report. Each year, 1,100 to 1,300 children die as a result of child abuse and neglect, McKee said. But some experts think the true number is three times as high, with cases incorrectly labeled as sudden infant death syndrome. SIDS is the designation for unexplained infant deaths. Who’s most likely to kill? Mothers. Who’s most likely to be killed? Baby boys. In 30 percent to 33 percent of child deaths, mothers are the killers, McKee said. Infant boys, defined as younger than 1 year, were most likely to be killed, according to the federal report, which studied deaths of children investigated by public child protection services agencies. Studies show that when a young child dies, parents are the most likely suspects. Parents kill 60-65 percent of the time. Some years, fathers commit more of these crimes; other years, mothers do. But experts say mothers probably kill far more infants whose deaths are never ruled homicides. Live-in boyfriends or de facto dads kill 23 percent of the time. Other relatives, including siblings, are responsible 9 percent of the time. Strangers — including day care workers — account for only 3 percent of child murders, said McKee, who last year published a book on the subject, “Why Mothers Kill.†Stepmothers rarely kill their stepchildren. But the older the child, the more likely the victim is a boy and the killer is the father or stepfather, McKee said. Mothers rarely kill children older than 8. Experts explain the phenomenon of parents killing their children in a single word — access. Young children, especially infants and toddlers, typically spend most of their time with caretakers, primarily parents. “As children get older, they are allowed further from the home and that exposes them to other dangers,†said State Law Enforcement Division profiler Michael Prodan. NO PROFILE Women who kill children have a variety of motives, as with any other subgroup of murderers, Prodan said. Often children die as a result of neglect or excessive punishment, and then parents, fearing an investigation, cover it up, McKee and Prodan said. Then there are women who “because of their inability to deal with the constant rigor of particularly infants and because of low tolerance for stress,†injure the child to stop a behavior, like crying, he said. “They don’t realize that these aren’t adults ... (Babies) are fragile, fragile things,†Prodan said. A mother’s narcissistic personality disorder may be a factor: In such cases, her needs come before and even at the expense of her child’s needs. Financial gain and mental illness are other possible explanations. It’s not uncommon for mental illness or a personality disorder to be used as a legal defense for a mother charged with killing her child. In some cases, Prodan said, this may be a strategy to make her actions seem more understandable. “Most people can’t identify with a woman who would kill her own children,†Prodan said. The prosecution in Cutro’s 1999 and 2000 trials asserted that the mother of three suffered from a rare mental condition called Munchausen syndrome by proxy. People with Munchausen syndrome by proxy injure children, typically their own, to gain attention for being the parent of a very sick child, Prodan said. The jury acquitted Cutro on charges that she severely injured another infant in 2000. McKee, a board-certified forensic psychologist, evaluated Cutro before her first trial in 1994 and said he found a history of depression made worse by the deaths of the two children she has since been convicted of killing, according to court documents. Defense attorneys in Cutro’s case maintained the two 4-month-old children were victims of SIDS. Prosecution experts testified the infants were victims of shaken baby syndrome, a traumatic brain injury that often results in death. While there is no one category for women who kill their children, there are risk factors, especially in deaths of infants 1 week old and younger, McKee said. Children born to mothers under the age of 15 and to mothers with at least two pregnancies before 17 are at great risk of being killed, he said. In such cases, it helps if the woman does not try to keep the pregnancy a secret, McKee said. That gives the mother and her family time to figure out things like where the child will be born and if she will give it up for adoption. At the far end of the spectrum are child deaths meant to cover up other crimes, such as sexual abuse. “That type of motive we don’t see until the child is verbal and capable of informing that they have been assaulted in some way,†Prodan said. MORE STUDY NEEDED Some researchers believe the least well-documented murders involve children younger than 5 years, McKee said. The people who would report such deaths are typically the perpetrators. Forensic pathologists attest to the difficulty of even differentiating an accident from a homicide in such cases, McKee said. Sometimes only the mother, especially in cases of teen pregnancies, even knows there has been a birth. “The bottom line is that we really don’t know what the prevalence of child homicide is,†McKee said. Locally, authorities are trying to make sure child homicides don’t slip through the cracks. SLED in 1993 began keeping statistics on and investigating the deaths of all children 17 and under. The agency pulls together a complete case file from each state and private source that serviced the victim and family, said Lt. John Belk, with SLED’s child fatality unit. Each case is presented to the State Child Fatality Board for review. In 2001, newly elected Richland County Coroner Gary Watts instituted a procedure that called for all child deaths to be treated as suspicious. Under this system, law enforcement is immediately notified of the death and goes to both the hospital and the suspected crime scene with the coroner. Andrea Person remains in the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center after a circuit court judge denied her bond April 23. Watts ruled the April 2 death of a third infant in her care a homicide. Police are investigating. Reach Tate at (803) 771-8549.