Murdered women’s children: A social emergency and gloomy reality

Femicide, defined as the killing of females by males because they are females, is be-coming recognized worldwide as an im-portant ongoing manifestation of gender inequality. Actual or imminent separation, abuser’s access to firearms, prior threats with a weapon, prior threats to kill the victim, a stepchild in the household, prob-lematic alcohol and illicit drug use, as well as mental health problems, are associated with a substantially higher risk of femi-cide. Little is known about the number of orphaned children who have instantane-ously lost both parents. Sparse attention has been focused on children whose moth-er was murdered: these are difficult cases for child psychiatry teams. Decisions about protection could be made by judges, the police, social workers or officers that at-tend victims, on the basis of empirical data and not merely by using intuitive criteria.