children's crime

History is full of children who kill their parents. Some cases are famous and spend months in the news and some are not so newsworthy. Newsworthy or not, it doesn’t take from the fact that parricide is a spreading cancer within today’s adolescents and has been for over a century. From Lizzie Borden to the Menendez brothers, there are many reasons why kids kill their parents. Although Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders, it is said that she suffered from petit mal seizures during her menstrual cycle and may have killed her parents unwittingly. The Menendez brothers claimed that they were physically abused. It is reported that there are actually three types of children who commit parricide. One type of child suffers from mental illness. Another is the physically and emotionally abused child that is pushed to the breaking point and the third type is the precariously antisocial child. Unlike adult children who kill their parents, the adolescent child who is abused is basically trapped in the home with the parents. Adult children can move away or just simply leave their abusive homes but adolescent and preadolescent children cannot. They can run away but to where? The streets? A relative’s house? Running away is against the law and when caught by law enforcement, the children are usually return to the abusive home and since they ran away, the abuse will likely to increase because they are disobedient. It’s this constant abuse that could cause a child to snap and commit parricide.