[Filicide]. / Filicidium.

ABSTRACT

Filicide is the term denoting murder of a child by one of his (her) parents. The authors analysed the autopsic material of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Belgrade related to a sixty-year period (1920-1980) and found 26 cases of filicide. On the basis of this finding, the authors concluded that filicide was not very frequent in this area. The motives of filicide were as follows conflict between parents, child's disease or anomaly, illegitimate child, social and economic problems, parents' mental disorders. The murderer of a child was mother in 15 cases and father in 11 cases. Thus, mother was more frequently murderer than the father (1511). However, these data are not in accordance with data from literature where mother is emphasized as "almost the only" murderer of her child.