Gary Bell ... who had a history of violence against his wife, killed his three children and himself in Bega, in 2008. Credit:Nine MSN Men are more likely to kill their children in order to take revenge on ex-partners and make them suffer. Women are more likely to kill because they intend to kill themselves and can't imagine leaving their children without a mother, it says. Infants and children are killed unintentionally by parents through abuse or neglect, or in beatings that go too far, or by being shaken. Debbie Kirkwood's study Just Say Goodbye focuses on children intentionally murdered by their parents at the time of parental separation. It is well known separation is a dangerous time for many women when violence by ex-partners can escalate or be ignited. It is less understood that children can be at serious risk, too, says the research officer at the Domestic Violence Resource Centre, Victoria.

''People assessing the risk to the mother can assume if there's been no prior violence towards the children, even if there's been violence towards the mother, the children will be OK,'' Dr Kirkwood said. The study draws on court papers to analyse cases in which children have been killed by parents whose relationship has ended. The hope is that knowledge gained could lead to better preventive strategies and improve risk assessment. Ramazan Acar's motives were spelt out on Facebook, in texts and phone calls that Ms D'Argent received even while in a police station with officers who listened in as their colleagues tried to hunt him down. ''I killed her to get back at you,'' Acar said. ''I don't care. Even if I go behind bars, I know you are suffering.'' As in many - but not all - such cases, violence had been a feature of the couple's eight-year relationship. At the time of the child's murder, there was an intervention order out against Acar, who was to plead guilty to her murder and be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Other cases showed how violence during marriage, and revenge and vindictiveness towards ex-partners after marriage, motivated other fathers to kill their children. Rajesh Osborne, who shot his three children then himself in 2010, had been violent towards the children's mother, who fled the relationship. His second wife also took out an intervention order against him, and in his suicide note Osborne reportedly blamed her for his actions. Behind the murder of Jayson Dalton's two children in 2004 was a well documented history of his violent and controlling behaviour towards his wife, Sonia, and a failed bid for a shared care arrangement. ''He knew the only thing I cared about were my children,'' Sonia Dalton later said. Even more than violence, a history of obsessive, controlling behaviour - a masculine sense of entitlement - can be a pointer to a man's inability to accept separation, research shows. Enduring anger towards his ex-wife who had re-partnered appeared the motive for Robert Farquharson's murder of his three children in 2005. They died when he drove them into a dam. ''I'm going to pay her back big time,'' one witness reported him as saying of his former partner. ''I'll take away the most important thing that means to her.'' Arthur Freeman, who threw his four-year-old daughter from West Gate Bridge, Melbourne, in January 2009, was described by his ex-wife as vengeful enough to kill their children to punish her for the separation.

About 27 children are murdered by their parents in Australia each year, according to National Homicide Monitoring Program data. This includes those who die from maltreatment and neglect. It is not known how many children died in the context of parental separation. Between 1997 and 2008 there were 110 filicides committed by fathers or stepfathers and 106 by mothers (none by stepmothers). * Many maternal filicides are believed to be filicide-suicides or involve the killing of a baby on the day it is born. The small number of children murdered in the context of tens of thousands of separations, including many involving violent or controlling men, makes it hard, Dr Kirkwood says, to know which children are in danger. But in most cases given in the report, the perpetrator had prior contact with police, courts, mental health services or men's behaviour change programs - missed opportunities for prevention. ''Awareness and understanding are the first step,'' Dr Kirkwood said. ''These are not inexplicable tragedies as is often said." Blame for men's actions is often ascribed to the Family Court system with the women implicitly held responsible. But usually the men have access. The Farquharson and Freeman children were killed on access visits; in Osborne's case, the children lived with him. "There is no logic to thinking that if fathers feel they don't spend enough time with their children, they would kill them," Dr Kirkwood says.

Mental illness is also often cited but often obscured is the father's attitude to the mother before and after the relationship, the sense of his entitlement to control the family, anger with the mother over separation and threats to harm the children. When mothers kill, there is little indication their primary motive was to hurt their partners. They appear to believe the fathers were uninterested in or incapable of looking after the children, the study says. Typically, Cathy, who killed one of her children, and intended to kill the other two and herself, told police she could not cope after the breakdown of a second relationship. She said her major dilemma was that: ''If I died my children would be left on their own … they would wonder why their mum had to die. Would they blame themselves?'' She was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Samantha killed both her children, one of whom was severely brain-damaged, with carbon monoxide poisoning. She had made several suicide attempts and, after her husband moved out, took the action she had foreshadowed. ''I cannot leave my children behind, who would take care of them and love them like I do?'' she wrote in a note.

Donna Fitchett, sentenced to 27 years for the murder of her two sons in 2005, wrote to her husband saying: ''I didn't do it because I'm angry with you … I just couldn't abandon our beautiful boys.'' *Editor's note: An earlier version of this story carried this sentence: "Killings of newborns is believed to be behind a high incidence of maternal filicides." Lifeline 13 11 14

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