Children Victims of Mass Murders

As a part of the lecture series “New Views, Perspectives and Research on Gender Theory” of the Study and Research Group for Gender Equality and Public Policy of the IDN, Zorica Mršević, PhD, retired principal researcheer of the Institute of Social Sciences, held an online lecture on April 12, “Children Victims of Mass Murders”.

A parallel analysis of two basic categories of children as victims of mass murderers was presented. The first and most numerous type are murders of school-age children, unrelated to the killer, who die in armed / bomb attacks on schools. They occur most often in America, sporadically in Europe, and from third-world countries, mostly in Nigeria. Another type of child victims of mass murderers are victims of mass murder of family members, mostly primarily motivated by femicide. Zorica Mršević pointed out that in most cases they are related to the murderer and / or the murdered, and they fell as victims mostly because they were at the scene of the massacre. These two categories of children victims of mass murder are rarely placed on the same comparative level, as they are considered diametrically different. It was said that this was the goal of the presentation: to point out the similarity of these two types through gender analysis of murderers (always and exclusively men), who belong to hegemonic type of masculinity as a character profile of a mass murderer of both types. They act as masters of the life and death of everyone around them, convinced that they have a “legitimate” right to punish and execute “culprits”. Both types of mass murder of children were raised within social context in which violent model of masculinity was a highly tolerated, even nurtured.

During the lecture, it was pointed out that mass murderers of both categories kill children at once, most often with firearms, expressing their murderous rage in an effort to kill as many people as possible. Due to the suddenness and short duration of the execution, the victims do not have many (or even any) opportunities or time to escape, defend, hide. Both family and school killers usually lose their lives after the massacre, more often by committing suicide after the murders, or less often, by losing their lives in conflict with the police. Mršević especially analyzed the cases of mass murders of children, from foreign ones that shook the public in America, Germany, Finland, Scotland and Nigeria. From domestic, family mass murders of children who follow femicides were mentioned, e.g. recent cases from Leskovac, Horgos, Jabukovac, Velika Ivanca, Mol, Baric, Lucani.

In the discussion there were explained the difference according to which the mass murders of three or more people are in the same place, without breaks, i.e. periods of “cooling off” between individual killings, as opposed to serial killings where there is a time lag between individual killings. It was pointed out that there is no typical profile of a child victim, that children of any age, race, religion, gender or socio-economic status can become victims of mass murderers of both types. Most of the attention in the discussion was paid to the motives of mass murderers, as well as the possibilities of preventing such cases. It was concluded that mass murders of children of both types belong to gender-based violence, because the murderers are exclusively men, especially violently profiled as of violent hegemonic masculinity.