Filicide in Italy: results of an empirical study on the national press during the period 1992-2004

Abstract

In a twelve-years review (1992-2004) of all articles appeared in one of the most important Italian newspaper (“Corriere della Sera”), the authors found a total of 223 cases of filicide. The analysis of the data allows to outline, taking also in account the results of the most recent international literature, the main features of the phenomenon. Through the construction of a model based on multiple regression and discriminant analysis, a profile of “paternal filicide”, as compared to “maternal filicide”, has been drown up, showing the “paternal filicide” being described by the following significant variables: 1) the author is older than 34 years; 2) the authors are more likely employed; 3) the authors have no psychiatric history; 4) the victims die more likely by use of a firearm or a knife; 5) the victim’s age is more than 24 hours of life; 6) the victims more likely come from the Southern regions of the country. The results of the discriminant analysis, carried on to the end of verifying the possibility of a correct classification of the cases within the two groups considered (“maternal filicide” or “paternal filicide”) confirm the statistical significance of the model (Wilk’s λ=.47;χ2=124,14; df=11,N=172; p=.000) which allows to correctly classify 91 cases of “paternal filicide” and 54 cases of “maternal filicide”.