Saturday, August 11, 2007

Statistics on Child Murders -- Refuting Candace Delong

Recently on a Larry King Live show (Wednesday, August 8), Candace Delong was one of the guests discussing the Madeleine McCann abduction which happened in Portugal while her famiy was on vacation. Delong said:

KING: Candice Delong, is it logical for people to hint blame at the parents?
CANDICE DELONG, FORMER FBI PROFILER: Well, it's certainly not unusual, statistically, Larry. When children of tender years, such as Madeleine is, disappear or are murdered, around 75 percent of the time the person responsible for that is the parents. Now we don't know that she was murdered, but in answer to your question, no, it's not unusual.

We checked, and found these statistics:

Of all children under age 5 murdered from 1976-2005 --
31% were killed by fathers
29% were killed by mothers
23% were killed by male acquaintances
7% were killed by other relatives
3% were killed by strangers
Of those children killed by someone other than their parent, 81% were killed by males.
NOTE: Parents includes step parents Source

31 + 29 = 60%. Not 75%.

Why doesn't Delong accurately report the statistics? They are bad enough as it is, why exaggerate them? What purpose does it serve? Does she just pull a number out of her hat and assume that everyone will believe her? Perhaps so, because no one ever questions her statistics when she appears on these shows. She is definitely accepted as an authority.

Larry King should do more to keep his guests honest and accurate.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dear Ms. Newell,

I am interested in where you had gotten your statistics from? You give no mention to the sources.

The fact remains is that mothers and women kill their children at unprecedented rates, not men or fathers.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have accurately concluded that mothers, female acquaintances and au pairs kill their child(ren) between 1980-2010 70.8 % compared to 29.0 % from the father or any male present in the household alone or not alone. The victims are mostly boys, 60% either by drowning, smothering, strangling or poisoning and the remaining 30% are girls.

The reason for women/mothers who kill their children is that the vast majority are raising their children and 77% are single mothers with or without another female present in the household, such as a grandmother.

TV shows and movies likewise hardly ever tell the true stories of abusive mothers or mothers who kill their children, leaving the viewing public with the misimpression that fathers are a far greater danger to their children than mothers. TV shows and movies are also far more likely to portray girls as victims of maltreatment than boys.

Please check FBI reports.findings/statistics (there are plenty) to explain and show that mothers and women in general kill their children not fathers/men.

Sincerely,

Yusuf