There is no greater act of violence against a child than filicide - the killing of a child by their parent. Despite a gradual decline in other forms of domestic homicide, the prevalence of filicide persists in Australia, with around 20 cases each year, making it the second most common form of domestic homicide after intimate partner homicide. Australia’s filicide rate is higher than that of countries like England and Sweden. However, research interrogating the intersection between intimate partner violence (IPV) and filicide is limited, highlighting the urgent need to better understand the circumstances that lead parents to kill their children in Australia.

In 2020, ANROWS and the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network (the Network) commenced a unique partnership involving the collection, analysis and reporting of national data concerning DFV-related deaths. The data captured victim and perpetrator characteristics, and the DFV context for each filicide case. This year, ANROWS and the Network completed a national project reporting the first-ever national figures on filicides that occurred in a DFV context.

This presentation will provide an overview of this unique collaborative project, highlighting the critical contribution of DFV death reviews in creating and building a national evidence base. It will also explore the project’s key findings which revealed a striking 76 per cent of filicides occurred within a DFV context (meaning there was an identifiable history of child abuse and/or IPV prior to the filicide); the intersection between IPV and filicide; the gendered-nature of filicide offending; and issues around service contact and visibility.

The project's findings demonstrate the importance of recognising children as victims of DFV in their own right and understanding the context of filicide perpetration in Australia in order to inform more targeted and effective DFV intervention and prevention efforts.

Key Learnings:

1. The intersection between intimate partner violence and filicide:
-Around 9 in 10 cases had a history of IPV, and 8 in 10 had a history of violence against the filicide victim(s) and/or their sibling(s).

2. The gendered nature of offending:
-Over two thirds of filicide offenders were male, and 97% of primary perpetrators of prior IPV were male.

3. A preliminary understanding of the multiple legal, healthcare and education services that were involved prior to a filicide:
-The potential to gain insight into how these services may be more effectively positioned to respond to DFV.