The Monash Deakin Filicide Research Hub has carried out pioneering work on filicide, a tragic area, and one where little research internationally had been undertaken
The hub has been developed and led by Professor Emeritus Thea Brown AM, an academic teacher, researcher, and policy and program expert, who has worked in the field of family violence for some years, from the university base of the Department of Social Work at Monash University, Caulfield, Australia.
Her research and reform work in family violence to children among separating parents, while heading the Monash Family Violence and Family Court Research team lead to publications such as Brown, T., and Alexander, R. (2007), Child Abuse and Family Law, Allen, and Unwin, but more importantly to new national family law court programs and a restructuring of the national family law supporting services. Her team’s subsequent research on the changes lead to new legislation being introduced to further improve family law’s response to children experiencing violence in the context of parental separation.
Most recently she developed the Monash Deakin Filicide Research Hub, addressingfilicide.org. The Hub is led by Professor Emeritus Thea Brown and her colleagues Associate Professor Danielle Tyson, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, and Dr Paula Fernandez Arias, Department of Social work Monash University, Melbourne.
Ground-breaking filicide studies
The Hub has conducted three ground-breaking filicide studies, including state and national studies, which have laid a foundation for the development of prevention. The studies have shattered the many myths around filicide including that it is a rare event and therefore incapable of being researched and overcome.
It is not rare, and it occurs regularly in the many nations across the world. The research shows that in Australia one child is killed by a parent almost every fortnight. Nor are fathers or mothers the most common perpetrator, they are both equally responsible, but stepfathers are disproportionately perpetrators.
Beginning in 2013 the Hub held a series of biennial international conferences at the Monash Centre in Prato, bringing together filicide researchers scattered across the world to expand knowledge quickly. The conference series has produced the book, When Parents Kill Children, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, edited by the directors of the Hub.
The research and publications continue with the focus now being on identifying risk profiles for the various perpetrators and finally moving to the creation of research based early intervention models.
