What happens to children when they lose a parent to domestic homicide? A question rarely asked, and a lack of awareness for the victims left behind.
The innocence of children is one of the most sacred things left in society today; something to be preserved and nurtured. In an environment embedded in abuse, children are exposed to violence at the earliest stages, making them the ‘forgotten victims’ in cases of family violence.
Lucy Rothery was six years old when she experienced what no child should ever have to endure – her mother was violently stabbed to death by her father in front of her eyes.
In the early hours of February 18th, 2008, Lucy, alone in the house with her mother, was asleep in bed when she was awoken by the sound of the front door being kicked down.
Wayne Forrester, armed with a kitchen knife and meat cleaver dragged her mother, 32-year-old Emma Rothery, out of bed and down the stairs before tearing chunks of her hair out, beating and killing her as Lucy watched helplessly.
“I followed them the whole way down [the stairs]. I remember running into the hallway and trying to pull him off my mum, to which he simply placed me off of him and continued.
“I remember asking her what the liquid was [on the floor beside her], she screamed it was blood and screamed for me to call the police.
“The house phone was just off the entrance to the hallway, and I remember dialling 999 and crying for help because my Daddy was hurting my Mummy.”
Emma Rothery was just a child herself when she met Forrester, engaging in an unstable relationship over a 15-year period from the age of 17.
Describing her father as a man who “had his claws [in her mother],” Lucy explained that the turbulence of the relationship led them to move in with family on various occasions, even having to move countries to escape the abuse at one stage.
Recounting him as always being an abusive man, after witnessing years of him abusing her mother, Lucy explains that it was not that Forrester’s violent nature was unusual, but she recalls it escalating to be particularly volatile leading up to the murder.
“The nights previous my grandparents had stayed [overnight] due to fear of him coming to the house as my parents had been arguing on the phone and he had threatened to kill her multiple times.”
Lucy emphasised that this fact in combination with his actions that night, proves that the attack was premeditated, adding that Forrester drove from Lisson Grove in North London to Forestdale in South Croydon without breaking a single driving law, sticking to the speed limit and not running a single red light.
“He tried to use the fact that he was on cocaine and under the influence of alcohol to claim diminished responsibility, but he was also armed with some of the weapons he used to murder my mum.
“If [the drugs were responsible], the hour-long drive would have made him see rationality.”
In another attempt to reign terror over the family, Lucy revealed how Forrester pushed for custody of herself and her sister who was twelve years old at the time, when her grandparents were trying to take legal guardianship. As unhinged an attempt at this may sound, “he had legal guardianship over the both of us until we were sixteen,” she said.
“This meant we were not allowed to leave the country for over three months without his permission, change our last name without his permission or have major surgeries or dentistry without his permission.”
She believes that the sole reason he did this was to reinforce that his presence was still known, that despite the fact her mother was gone, he still had this sense of power and control that he now had to inflict elsewhere.
“The house phone was just off the entrance to the hallway, and I remember dialling 999 and crying for help because my Daddy was hurting my Mummy.”
LUCY ROTHERY
Though headlines from the time of the attack saw ‘Facebook killer’ plastered all over the media due to Forrester claiming the killing was motivated by Emma changing her marital status on Facebook to ‘single’, it was not made clear that the abuse was not an isolated incident.
It was not a response to a social media profile, but rather the final act of violence that he could possibly inflict, after more than a decade long-span of it.
Like many other domestic abuse cases, using this as a justification for the killing meant that the crime would be dubbed a ‘crime of passion’, which Lucy feels is hugely problematic in gaining more lenient sentencing and can also be used as a way of giving the papers more ammunition to sell a story.
“If he had gone and killed a stranger in the street in the same way he killed my mum, [I feel] he would have got a much longer sentence.”
Forrester was sentenced to life with a minimum of 14 years in October 2008 with the judge stating: “You committed a terrible act. There is no possible excuse or justification,” he said. “This is a tragic killing and what you have done has caused untold anguish.”
Today, Forrester has been free for two years, though he still has no contact with either of his children. Lucy describes the grief she carries of her mother as “harrowing”, adding that whilst she is now 22 and has come a long way, it is a pain she will endure for the rest of her life.
“It is like [the grief] that started as a boulder on my back, is now a rock in my pocket. It might be smaller, but it is there a constant reminder of what I had but no longer do because, yet another man has taken the life of a woman.”
In cases of domestic homicide, either where a child has grown up around abuse or witnessed the extreme forms of violence that Lucy fell victim to, it is easy to forget that they are inevitably handed their own life sentence.
Though she describes herself as “the lucky one”, Lucy explains that she was fortunate to have siblings and family members that she could hold onto, when she lost her mother. However, for other children, they become a product of the system; often being put into care with “no idea where they will end up.”
Eva Alisic, a researcher in child trauma and recovery, and co-author of the Journal of Family Violence explains that in instances where a child has lost a parent to domestic homicide: “It feels like an understatement to say that life is turned upside down for [them]; all of a sudden every single aspect of their life is different.
“They have lost a parent [to murder], often they have also lost the other parent (to prison or suicide) […] there is this mix of profound loss, sometimes the trauma of witnessing the killing, and not being seen the same by people around you as well.”
“All of this has consequences for children’s mental health, wellbeing and views of themselves, both in the short and the long term.”
To date, one of the only studies in the UK exploring this subject When Father Kills Mother was conducted in 2002, identifying that children who lose their mother at the hands of their father are not going through the typical ‘grieving process’.
Additional layers of losing the other parent, either to prison or suicide, often being removed from the home, and having previous experiences in an abusive household can lead to a highly increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and can cause issues later down the line.
“It is like [the grief] that started as a boulder on my back, is now a rock in my pocket. It might be smaller, but it is there a constant reminder of what I had but no longer do because, yet another man has taken the life of a woman.”
Lucy ROTHERY
Taking protective measures is key to controlling these factors as they begin, Alisic explains: “We know that trauma can have an intergenerational effect (e.g. finding it harder to build trusting relationships).
“It is important that children get good support in every step of their development, including evidence-based mental health care, and develop their own narrative about what they have been through and how they want to engage in life.
Recounting years of PTSD and suffering from clinical depression, social anxiety and suicidal thoughts from the age of 12, Lucy has expressed how many children feel so much pain that “they do not know what to do with it.”
This then spirals into behaviour imbalances, and many children are written off as just another ‘naughty kid’ or ‘a teenager with an attitude problem.’
“I think a measure that could be in place [to help with this] can be actioned by schools, in making sure that the child has a network of teachers who are aware of the situation and want to help to make sure that [despite the circumstances], they still get the best education they possibly can.”
“I also think we need to teach domestic violence and its signs more in schools. The more we educate people on [the signs] and the support in place to help women and girls in these situations, the less people will end up in them.”
Research surrounding the number of children left ‘hidden behind the headlines’ in instances of domestic homicide remains unclear. Alisic explains that the lack of numbers of bereaved children due to domestic homicide is “indicative of how little attention there has been for their needs.”
The Femicide Census reported that over 147 women were killed by 144 men in 2021. Of these, 28% of these women left behind children under the age of 18. This would mean an average of 40 children being left motherless and in situations where they must navigate this grief.
When it comes to the most effective methods of support for bereaved children, Alisic explains that the best model is that which gives support options, including mental health care, peer support and legal support.
She acknowledges that though not all children and caregivers need the same, they should be entitled to the mix of things that they need to move forward most easily.
Focusing on the adults and caregivers in these situations is also important “caregivers often don’t get a lot of support either and [they] definitely deserve it.” They are a large part of the healing process for children, and so they need to be nurtured too.
“I think we owe it to our Mums to make sure their memory is still alive.”
LUCY ROTHERY
As many children navigate the grief of losing a parent in the most traumatic of ways, the question is, is it possible to move forward with hope?
“That song ‘She Will Be Loved’ by Maroon Five, is how I remember my mum,” Lucy says as she talks about the beautiful vulnerability and purity of her mother’s memory.
“I think we owe it to our Mums to make sure their memory is still alive. I will talk to anyone about [her], tell them how funny she was, how she loved going out and partying and how fiercely she protected and loved my sister and me.
“I want [people in this position] to know that there are loads of us out here, and there is a life after it all, however much it may not feel like it. We are not alone.”
Feature image courtesy of kieferpix via iStock.