Volume 35 Number 6	Edmonton, Canada	November 7, 1997
http://www.ualberta.ca/~publicas/folio

Educational psychology professor Richard Sobsey, right, and PhD student Richard Lucardie, left

Killing children with disabilities remains fairly common in contemporary society, says Dr. Richard Sobsey, director of the U of A Developmental Disabilities Centre. Society also seems to find it more acceptable than killing other children, he says.

Addressing the recent Canadian Childhood Conference 1997, October 31, Sobsey said there are good reasons to believe child protection services, law enforcement agencies and the courts fail to protect the lives of children with disabilities with the same vigor as the lives of others.

"It results, in part, because people in those organizations lack training and because of organizational limitations," he says. "For example, social workers for child protection services and services to children with disabilities may work with the same family, but the child protection workers have little training or knowledge related to the unique needs of children with disabilities. And the disabilities workers have no authority to apprehend a child they know is in danger."

Sobsey's research has revealed another disturbing trend: The relative social acceptability of killing children with disabilities appears to increase the incidence of such killings. "Cases often occur in clusters when new cases occur amidst supportive publicity for previous cases."

So who's killing these children? Sobsey and PhD student Richard Lucardie say there are two primary groups: care providers and parents. Care providers sometimes kill children with disabilities without consulting the victim's family. Passive euthanasia is more common than active euthanasia. An example could be health-care workers withholding medical care. These are rarely treated as crimes, says Sobsey. Active euthanasia is less common and tends to be more covert.

Sobsey says it's difficult to get a handle on the numbers. Over about a decade, North American newspapers reported on roughly 100 deaths of disabled children. Since the highly publicized case of Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer, about six cases have come to light.

There have been two cases of medical murder of babies recently reported at Toronto's Sick Children's Hospital. A Texas Hospital reported the deaths of 50 children over a number of years in the intensive care unit.

Medical murder seems to be most common and cases often go undetected or are detected only after very large numbers of victims are killed, as in the case of the babies in the Texas hospital.

"Parents who say they kill their children to spare them from abuse or other difficulties rarely receive sympathy and are often disbelieved. Those who say they wished to spare their children from a life with a disability typically receive considerable sympathy," says Sobsey. Latimer, who admits to killing his daughter Tracy, who had cerebral palsy, has certainly elicited sympathy, although Sobsey says the press and the public seem more circumspect about the circumstances today, than during Latimer's first trial.

Three types of parents kill their children with disabilities: abusive, stressed and "compassionate" parents. Robert Latimer would be among the last category, says Sobsey.

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