Mothers Abusing and Murdering Their Children

This from Salon.Com:

"In November 1997, the journal Pediatrics published the results of a terrifying experiment. Doctors at several hospitals in Great Britain had decided to covertly videotape 39 parents -- most of them mothers -- whom medical personnel had begun to suspect were deliberately bringing their young children to the brink of death. What they saw astounded them. In 30 of the 39 cases, the parents were observed intentionally suffocating their children; in two they were seen attempting to poison a child; in a third, the mother under surveillance deliberately broke her 3-month-old daughter's arm. Many of the parents seemed as methodical and as brazen, as scoured of fear or conscience, as any serial killer. "Abuse was inflicted without provocation and with premeditation, and in some instances, involved elaborate and plausible lies to explain consequences," the study's authors wrote. "For example, one mother claimed that she had suffocated her son because of stress related to his crying and continually waking her from sleep. However, under surveillance, the mother was seen, with premeditated planning, to suffocate her infant when he was deeply asleep. The majority of other cases showed attempted suffocation when the child was asleep or lying passively on the bed. Children did not appear to provoke their parents into abusing them."

Read the rest of the article here:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1998/01/cov_26feature.html

Maybe I should have saved this one for Mother's Day, but since it makes such a perfect counterpoint to the immediately foregoing Father's Day post, I decided to insert it here.