Hagen.
A child and adolescent psychiatrist explains how it can happen that children kill children – and how the perpetrator and the perpetrator’s families learn to live with it.
Freudenberg’s act continues to cause horror nationwide: two girls, 12 and 13 years old, are suspected of having killed a girl of the same age. Prof. Marc Allroggen is senior consultant for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University Hospital Ulm. He deals with young offenders, for example assesses young people when it comes to the question of whether they are guilty or not.
When children kill children, it always causes particular consternation. How can it come to this?
First of all, I would like to say that this is an absolute rarity. Homicides by very young children – in this case under 14 – are numerically very, very rare. Even with young people, this tends to be isolated cases. It is not possible to say in general terms what exactly is behind it. And it is important to mention that many questions have remained unanswered in the public eye, and for good reason. This serves to protect the alleged perpetrators. Speculations about motives or processes are forbidden.
What are your experiences from your work?
What we know from many cases is that a certain dynamic in the development of the crime often plays a role. This means that certain situations – often from within a group context – build up and escalate. These are rather isolated cases in which targeted action is taken because someone wants to take revenge on their victim. It is typical that the victim and perpetrator know each other.
How can it be that a child feels no inhibitions about inflicting pain, even death, on someone?
We have to keep in mind that younger children in particular are very strongly affectively controlled. Such acts usually arise from an impulse that cannot be controlled. It is not uncommon for there to be precursors to the act, such as feelings of insult, which outsiders or adults would consider trivial. Against this background, we have a criminal law that automatically provides for incapacity for children under the age of 14 – no matter how terrible the act may be.
Is there no regulation at the moment of fact?
This cannot be explained rationally. Children and young people are in an affect tunnel and can no longer grasp the consequences of their actions, even if they otherwise know that one should not hurt other people and know and feel that they are causing someone harm.
What happens when the perpetrators exit the affect tunnel?
The same applies here: every course is individual. But for many young people who have done something like this, remorse or regret sets in very quickly. Some, in turn, try to justify the crime.
What happens to the child when insight into the crime begins? Can children appreciate that murder is an act that cannot be cured?
Children definitely develop feelings of guilt as a result of the crime and young people also realize that making amends is only possible to a limited extent. When dealing with the crime, perpetrators need psychotherapeutic and child psychiatric support. However, the development paths are very individual and depend on many factors.
Which ones, for example?
Juvenile offenders usually receive a prison sentence after a homicide. How does socialization succeed after that? Could imprisonment be used to graduate from school? How is the social reception room after confinement? How could psychotherapeutic offers be used?
+++ Also read: Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst: “It pulls the ground out from under your feet” +++
What do you know about the biographies of very young offenders? How do you live with such guilt?
The situation is appalling first and foremost for the victims’ families. But the perpetrators and perpetrator families are also exposed to severe stress that can last a lifetime. It is necessary to take a very close look at how they can be supported and accompanied in order to learn to live with the deed.
What happens to parents whose child becomes a murderer? Can you still love your child? Or do they get trapped in a spiral of rejection, a bad conscience and distrust?
Dealing with the actions of their own children is an enormous challenge for parents. Parents react very differently, from total rejection of the child to justifying their own child’s actions. With many Parents feel guilty too and they wonder what they did wrong. However, it is particularly important for young offenders that their parents continue to try to support them, even if they recognize the terrible nature of the crime.
Is there a scientific basis for the fact that children are only criminally responsible from the age of 14?
no Of course, this age is first and foremost something normative, something that has been legally established. It is similar in most European countries because by age 14 most children have reached a certain level of maturity. Much younger children also know that you are not allowed to injure or kill other people. But reliably converting this knowledge into action, or better yet, non-action in response to aggressive impulses, only becomes more likely with increasing age.
What can be said about children’s behavior before they become perpetrators?
Of course, there are children with a long problematic development for whom early intervention was not possible or was neglected. But it does not necessarily have to be the case that the children are conspicuous or difficult. Something like this can happen out of nowhere. Therefore, the call for preventive measures as a direct consequence of this act is only partially understandable. What is important, however, is that we as a society ensure that children grow up in a violence-free environment, both inside and outside the family.
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