Abstract
Intimate partner homicide is a major public health concern around the world and the most lethal outcome of domestic violence. Its impact on the surviving bereaved offspring is immense, yet there is a significant gap in the literature regarding the long-term effects of this type of loss. The current qualitative study is aimed at filling this gap. The study used the constructivist paradigm of bereavement as a theoretical background to reveal the meanings constructed by bereaved Israeli daughters whose biological mothers were killed in acts of intimate partner homicide by their biological fathers. Three main themes of meaning emerged from 12 in-depth semi-structured interviews: “destruction of one’s home”; “blast injury”; and “in doubt”. An examination of the three themes in the current study reveals a deep shatter in participants’ world of meaning to its very basic foundations. In light of intense psychological and social forces, the participants constructed and reconstructed such narratives of meaning in a continuous process of meaning making throughout their lives, years, and decades post loss. Derived from the findings are implications for practice. Mental healthcare professionals must attend to this basic shatter with an extreme level of caution, as they help homicide survivors reconstruct a world of meaning shattered by loss. Moreover, the long-lasting effects emphasize an appropriate legal and political involvement; specifically, policy regulations and rights should provide psychosocial care programs that are suited to the needs of offspring co-victims of intimate partner homicide in particular. In light of the strong social influence on participants’ loss experience, further efforts are required to raise social awareness about this burning social concern and to fight the stigmatization of co-victims of homicide in general and co-victims of intimate partner homicide in particular.
Introduction
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is commonly defined in the literature as the physical, sexual, financial, and/or emotional abuse inflicted by intimate or dating partners during or after a relationship (Center for Disease Control, 2016). It is considered a major public health problem and a violation of human rights. According to the World Health Organization, 30% of women who have been in a relationship report that they have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner in their lifetime (WHO, 2017). Although IPV may vary in type, frequency, and severity, the most extreme form of IPV is intimate partner homicide (IPH), which is often a result of a history of abusive dynamics within a couple and other risk factors that characterize both IPH victims and offenders (see Abrunhosa et al., 2020; Matias et al., 2020). A global systematic review of this phenomenon reveals that one in seven homicides is committed by an intimate partner, and the proportion of women murdered is six times higher than the proportion of men murdered (Stöckl et al., 2013). The fatal consequences of IPH exceed the individual level of the female victim who is robbed of her life, as they adversely affect her family, especially the children who are left behind (Caman et al., 2017). The current research is aimed at examining the meanings in loss reconstructed by Israeli daughters who lost their mothers to IPH.
Loss of a Mother to IPH
The loss of a mother has a deep-rooted effect on her children’s well-being (Himaz, 2013). Losing a mother can shatter the child’s world and trigger strong biological, psychological, social, and spiritual reactions (Mallon, 2011; Websdale, 2020). When a child loses a mother to IPH, the nature of the death is one of the reasons for the intense impact of the maternal loss. Indeed, some themes have emerged in the literature regarding the effects of IPH on bereaved offspring. When a father kills the mother, the children are confronted with multiple losses. Not only is the mother deceased; the father is detained, has fled, or has committed suicide (Alisic, Groot et al., 2015; Steeves & Parker, 2007). If the children are underage, they often cannot continue to live at home: they lose their familiar living environment, sometimes including school and friends (Alisic, Groot et al., 2015). Moreover, a child of an IPH victim is simultaneously the child of a murderer and a victim, and in many cases, has been directly exposed to the killing or to the crime scene (Alisic et al., 2017). The situation is compounded further by the fact that the children have lost not only a loved one but also the person who would usually help them cope with the loss of a loved one (Gaensbauer et al., 1995). Even more so, this loss happened at the hands of the other parent. The homicide often results in an absence of guardianship and can lead to conflict between relatives over the placement of the children and their contact with the perpetrating parent (Harris-Hendriks et al., 2000). When children are placed with relatives of the victim, their own grief and traumatic stress symptoms may have a negative effect on caregiving practices and, in turn, the children’s development (Alisic, Krishna et al., 2015).
Furthermore, IPH constitutes a combination of intense trauma and loss for children, which may bring about a number of persistent mental health and well-being problems (Websdale, 2020). In particular, strong grief reactions, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and developmental difficulties have been observed (Eth & Pynoos, 1994; Hardesty et al., 2008; Harris-Hendriks et al., 2000), in line with reactions to other major traumatic loss reported in the broader literature (e.g. Boelen & Smid, 2017; Christ et al., 2002; Lenferink et al., 2017; Miller, 2009). Specifically, PTSD was found to be a significant risk for children who witnessed one parent being murdered by the other parent (Harris-Hendriks et al., 2000). Kaplan et al. (2001) followed up about two-thirds of the children from this early study, many of whom had not yet reached adolescence, and concluded that those who had received treatment had fewer problems. Children who were placed with the perpetrator’s family did worse than other children on a number of ratings and were more likely to return to live with the perpetrator following his release from prison. From a different perspective, a qualitative account of caregivers of children who had lost their mothers due to IPH found that the children exhibited a range of physical and mental health problems as well as behavioral and academic problems (Hardesty et al., 2008).
The effects of IPH on offspring have been found to extend far beyond childhood. In a qualitative study on bereavement due to IPH during adolescence, Steeves et al. (2011) asked American adults aged 29–60 years to reflect on their lives. Many participants reported a history of child abuse (before and after the homicide) as well as vivid memories of the homicide. Most participants reported difficulties with intimate relationships, legal problems, and substance use in their adult lives. Importantly, domestic homicide reviews usually do not provide demographic information on children. Current policies in Britain for example (Home Office, 2016) recommend that a child’s gender should not be identified. This is in part an attempt to anonymize survivors and protect them from stigma or intrusive media coverage, but it may also reflect a lack of attention to children in these families (Stanley et al., 2019).
The current study is the first to our knowledge to reveal the meanings reconstructed by Israeli daughters who lost their mothers to IPH. Unlike prior research focusing on children of both sexes, who lost either one of the parents to IPH—mostly as minors—the current research aimed at interviewing only adult daughters who lost their mothers (even if the murder occurred in their childhood). The decision to focus on the daughter’s perspective is based on empirical studies that recognize gender differences in the bereavement process and outcomes in violent losses, especially with regard to loss of the same sex parent (Cheng et al., 2014; Jeon et al., 2013). Moreover, a gendered perspective on bereavement highlights the unique meaning reconstructions to maternal loss among daughters (Leichtentritt et al., 2018) and urges researchers to gain an in-depth understanding of each gender’s experience of bereavement (Gilbert, 1996). Such understanding will be gained through the theoretical framework of meaning reconstruction in bereavement.
Theoretical Background: The Constructivist Paradigm of Bereavement
In the context of traumatic loss, meaning making entails processes that aim at finding meaning in and making sense of the loss (Neimeyer & Sands, 2011). These processes can lead to changes in situational meanings or in global meanings. Situational meanings are meanings ascribed to the loss event, whereas global meanings are the core schemas through which people interpret their experiences of the world (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). The latter refer to beliefs encompassing broad domains, such as fairness, justice, luck, control, predictability, coherence, benevolence, and personal vulnerability. Meaning reconstruction is aimed at bringing global and situational meanings into alignment. The reduction of discrepancies between situational and global meanings through processes of meaning reconstruction is expected to lead to better adjustment to loss (Park, 2010).
Meaning reconstruction involves rewriting the life story of the individual. The bereaved must relearn themselves and the world, negotiating between the personal psychological system and the external social system. This negotiation process is often more difficult in cases of violent death. In cases of violent death, social meanings can be imposed upon the individual (Neimeyer et al., 2014), as demonstrated by the experience of 12 bereaved Israeli mothers of homicide victims (Mahat-Shamir & Leichtentritt, 2016). Participants in that research internalized the negative messages they received from their surroundings, producing a self-imposed form of disenfranchisement that generated guilt, shame, silencing of their experience, and challenges in reconstructing meanings in their loss. Such reactions result partially due to the disenfranchised experience of homicide survivors (Lichtenthal et al., 2013), as the ability to reconstruct meaning depends on a supportive and validating social milieu. In this regard, beautifully articulated by Neimeyer et al. (2014), it is claimed that “individuals grieve … under the watchful eyes of their family and neighbors as well as those who hold religious and political power” (p. 493). Thus, the survivor’s ability to reconstruct meaning is often limited by the socio-cultural context in which s/he lives, specifically, their stigmatized social status and the meaning given to the death by others (Sharpe, 2015). Therefore, it is essential to examine the participants’ accounts of their experience within the socio-cultural context relevant to the current research: Israeli society.
Research Context
The Israeli family is an institution of great diversity, which has not escaped (post)modernist tendencies including late marriages, cohabitation, rising divorce rates, and new/alternative families of all kinds. However, and despite recent trends of individualization, Israel is still considered very familial in nature. Regardless of different cultural or ethnic origins, Jews of different backgrounds blend together into a melting-pot society. In Israel, great importance is given to family and to familial relationships (Kaplan & Herbst, 2015). Most Israelis, regardless of ethnic origins, live in what can be classified as nuclear family households; however, the familial aspect of Israeli society is also reflected in the importance attached to the extended family as intergenerational ties remain strong, in part due to geographical proximity (Lavee & Katz, 2003). Despite the common traditional familistic nature of the Israeli society, divorce in Israel is a common phenomenon, as well as divorce due to incidents of IPV (Adelman, 2000; Buchbinder & Abu Tanha, 2019). Studies have shown that the prevalence of IPV in Israel is generally similar to other Western-cultured countries (Daoud et al., 2020), yet an exact estimation regarding the prevalence of IPH in Israel is unavailable, although a recent governmental report indicates vague similarity rates between Israeli cases of IPH and worldwide IPH incidents (Israeli Parliament Research and Information Center, 2017). Similarly, there is no clear information regarding the number of Israeli children, male and female, bereaved due to IPH. Nevertheless, the cultural context in which these children’s personal tragedy takes place is characterized by a clear hierarchy of death. At the top of the hierarchy are army reservists, related to the army’s being a major part of the national ethos and the centrality of the republican ethos, which view military service as a supreme civic virtue. At the bottom of the hierarchy are suicide and homicide victims (Levy, 2013). In keeping with this death hierarchy, and the omnipresent and existential Israeli–Arab conflict, it is easier and more acceptable for Israeli society to relate compassionately to bereavement due to threats from the outside, while overlooking and stigmatizing bereavement due to threats from within (Mahat-Shamir & Leichtentritt, 2016). Notwithstanding the hierarchical position of IPH deaths, since the year of 2009, all Israeli homicide survivors are lawfully eligible to receive governmental support either in the form of a small initial financial grant, legal aid, and representation or psychosocial care programs. Nevertheless, these programs are still developing and often limited in their compliance with the survivors’ needs (e.g., time restrains regarding the duration of care as well as eligibility to receive care concerning time since loss; Mahat-Shamir et al., 2020).
Considering the Israeli hierarchy of death, as well as the act of IPH being a “betrayal” of traditional Israeli familial values, daughters whose fathers murdered their mothers are a hidden population in Israel, with no voice or proper social recognition. This study aims to examine the unique meanings Israeli daughters reconstructed to the loss of their mothers at the hands of their fathers.
Method
Participants
Participants’ Demographic Characteristics.
Note. Some of the names are pseudonyms, as requested by each participant.
Data Collection
According to Glaser (1978), in the recruitment stage of a qualitative study, researchers will “go to the groups which they believe will maximize the possibilities of obtaining data” (p. 45). Following this suggestion, participants were initially recruited with the help of a nonprofit organization known as Families of Murder Victims whose aim is to assist and support Israeli co-victims of manslaughter and homicide. This strategy for recruiting participants was complimented by referrals from acquaintances as well as by snowball sampling strategy. 1 All participants were debriefed on the purpose of the study and each participant gave her informed consent. Information was obtained by means of individual in-depth semi-structured interviews, conducted by the first author. Each participant was interviewed once, face-to-face, for an average time of 4.5 hours (interviews ranged between 3 and 6 hours), at the participant’s place of choice.
In accordance with the current study’s theoretical background, an interview guide was developed based on Mahat-Shamir et al.’s (2019) guidelines for revealing individuals’ meaning reconstruction in bereavement. First, attempts were made to establish a minimal degree of comfort and trust with each participant. Then, participants were asked to share information about themselves, the deceased mothers, familial context, and the death event. Additional questions were phrased in accordance with the six propositions for understanding bereavement and guidelines for revealing meaning reconstruction after loss (for further details, see Mahat-Shamir et al., 2019). The following guidelines are presented with a few questions as an example to give the reader an idea of the interview content:
Death as an event can validate or invalidate the constructions on the basis of which we live, or it may stand as a novel experience for which we have no construction (e.g., How do you understand or make sense of your mother’s death?). Grief is a personal process, one that is idiosyncratic, intimate, and inextricable from our sense of who we are (e.g., How do you perceive yourself in light of your mother’s death?). Grieving is something we do, not something that is done to us (e.g., Please describe your way/ways of dealing with the loss as it occurred, and over time). Grieving is the act of reaffirming or reconstructing a personal world of meaning that has been challenged by loss (e.g., How did your views of the world/yourself/people in the world change after the death of your mother?). Feelings have functions, and should be understood as signals of the state of our meaning-making efforts in the wake of challenges to the adequacy of our constructions (e.g., How have your feelings, emotions and reactions to the loss changed over time?). We construct and reconstruct our identities as survivors of loss in negotiation with others (e.g., How did your close family, friends and others react to your mother’s death?).
Nevertheless, the guidelines also highlight the importance of creativity and flexibility throughout the interview process, especially when conducting research on complex and sensitive topics, as is the case in the current research. As recommended, the interviews were conducted in an open and conversational manner. The interviewer felt free to ask new emerging questions, explore participants’ new understandings during the course of the interview, and phrase questions in a different way and order, based on the flow of the interview. Each participant was given a chance to add anything before ending the interview and each interview ended on a positive or empowering note. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Importantly, the entire research procedure involved the recognition of our own prejudgments, as researchers. Our preunderstandings became discernible by confronting our own perspectives on IPF, on offspring of IPF, on meaning reconstruction in bereavement and by considering the opinions of others with different understandings. Long discussions regarding morals and ethics, among other relevant issues, were also held by our research team.
Data Analysis
In order to glean meaning from the data, a thematic analysis was applied using the six steps described by Braun and Clarke (2006). The method of thematic analysis offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach for identifying, analyzing, and reporting common patterns across qualitative data. Each pattern or theme captures an important aspect in relation to the research questions (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The process of thematic analysis involves writing and starts at the very early stages of data collection, as researchers begin to notice and look for common patterns in the data. Accordingly, field notes were made after each interview and all authors were constantly engaged in a shared discussion of their understanding of the data.
According to Braun and Clarke (2006), phase one (familiarization) involves immersing oneself with the data to the point of familiarity with the depth and breadth of the content. Each interview was read several times and notes were jotted down as initial ideas. Phase two (generating initial codes) involved identifying interesting aspects related to the research questions of the current study. Each relevant segment of information was marked, extracted, and given a code. All codes were listed together, and extracts were collated in separate “word” documents. Phase three (searching for themes) was jointly analyzed by all authors, as all codes were sorted out, reviewed, and discussed. Each code was written on a “post-it” note and all authors systematically organized and re-organized similar codes together into broad candidate themes. Phase four (reviewing themes) involved reviewing candidate themes for their validity in terms of internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity. All collated extracts for each theme were read and ascertained as forming a coherent pattern. Those that did not fit were discarded and others were collated together into a new theme, creating a new and more accurate “thematic map.” The final revision resulted in a condensed version of all candidate themes into three main ones. Phase five (defining and naming themes) included defining and refining the themes. Each theme was reorganized internally into a coherent narrative by putting relevant extracts in a meaningful thematic story-telling order with regard to the research question. Theme names were redefined for accuracy. Phase six (producing the report) aimed at providing a concise, coherent, non-repetitive, logical, and interesting account of the meanings constructed by all of the participants to their loss experiences. Vivid examples and extracts which capture the essence of points demonstrated were chosen, and the writing took an analytic form of narrative. The translation of participants’ quotes to English was done by the researchers and was professionally reviewed in order to maintain the wording and meanings. All analytic claims were grounded in participants’ words yet went beyond the descriptive aspect of what had been said.
Trustworthiness
To ensure trustworthiness, efforts were made to follow Braun and Clarke’s (2006) 15-point checklist of criteria for good thematic analysis throughout the whole process (see Nowell et al., 2017). Researcher triangulation took place from the moment of conceptualization and up to writing the report, by means of written correspondence, telephone, and face-to-face meetings. 2 All researchers were deeply immersed in the data and theoretical, reflective, and codes/themes related thoughts were shared and discussed. All records of the raw data, field notes, and transcripts were kept, and a reflexive journal was documented by the first author in order to keep track of personal impressions and conclusions emerging from the triangulation process. Furthermore, a final thick-detailed description of the findings was presented in a way that tells a clear and coherent story of each theme and the overall data set; rationales for theoretical and methodological choices along the way were presented as well.
Ethical Considerations
Before beginning this research, we applied for and received approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Ethical issues were addressed and discussed throughout the research process, starting from the research planning stage and continuing until publication. We provided detailed information to all participants concerning the research process, the interviews, and how the narratives were likely to be used. We provided this information both orally and in written form. Careful attention was given to issues of confidentiality as well as to protecting participants’ well-being. We informed participants of psychological support that would be available to them should they feel emotional distress at any point during the research project; none of the participants, however, made use of this service.
Findings
The results of the data analysis yield three main themes common to all participants: (a) destruction of one’s home, (b) blast injury, and (c) in doubt.
Destruction of One’s Home
When asked for the meaning of their loss, participants referred to a loss exceeding the loss of their mothers. Many of them shared Shira’s (37, 9)
3
reply: “It means much. Destruction of one’s home.” It is common to believe that a home is supposed to be built on cornerstones of love, safety, trust, and belongingness, laid by the parents. However, when the father murders the mother, total destruction occurs, including the destruction of one’s home, its foundation, and the loss of caring adult figures. It is not merely the fact that participants had lost both parental characters (Alisic, Groot et al., 2015; Steeves & Parker, 2007) but also the fact that the loss was caused by one of the parents, the father. This fact created difficulty in meaning making in a way that participants were unable to grasp the reality of the loss.
Father killing mother is, I think, the worst thing that can happen to a child. Eventually, there are no terrorists to be angry at, no forces of nature. No higher force. For a little child, both and only safe things in life are father and mother. And when father kills mother, you lose both. No father and no mother and no nothing. No foundation. Everything collapses in a way I think one cannot talk about. (Talya, 48, 8)
As the daughters’ homes were destroyed and they were left with no foundation, their most basic trust in the world was severely undermined and remained uncertain. Almost all described a feeling that they must always be prepared for the worst, as reflected in Orly’s words: “It had taught me to be ready for everything. Always” (36, 35). This anxiety was a living reminder of the traumatic moment of destruction, when the murder occurred and participants’ foundation collapsed. What “cannot be talked about,” stated in Talya’s quote above, was re-enacted and manifested in participants’ lives in the form of a hovering sense of anxiety.
Something bad is always about to happen because something bad has happened in the past. In a moment, something again will collapse. I know what it is like to experience such wrong … so I’m always anxious that it is coming. (Miri, 51, 20)
Although participants tried to build a home for themselves and replace the home that was destroyed, having to establish new foundations out of the wreckage was described as a frightening task. As their basic foundations were decimated, they are afraid that the new foundations may not be firmly grounded and that the destruction will extend to the next generation, their children, or even their grandchildren:
When I suspected that my grandchild’s boyfriend was the kind of man that can batter … I immediately stood my ground and guided her to be aware of things … when my daughter got a divorce … I was so anxious that I treated him [son in law] as if I were a psychologist … I did everything to make it all go calmly. (Carmel, 70, 20)
Indeed, the destruction of participants’ homes echoes through the generations. Nevertheless, this echo, although felt, remains wordless or limited due to the socially stigmatized discourse surrounding participants’ traumatic loss. Thus, they attempted to construct meaning to their loss in socially and culturally understandable and acceptable terms. Their personal traumatic loss was often analogized to the only other grave and immense traumatic loss to which they could relate: The Holocaust.
When you watch Holocaust Memorial Day and Holocaust movies you say it’s inhumane. It’s an inhumane act. It’s the most intense tragedy the world has ever experienced.… Children left with no home, no parents, no safety … the Holocaust is the most suitable analogy to our case. You have nothing. (Miri, 51, 20)
The word “nothing” appeared many times across all 12 interviews and was often used when participants described the utter and existential loneliness resulting from the total destruction of their homes. Participants were forced to enter a “survival mode” as they understood that they were all alone.
I remember having this mantra. You are alone. You are alone. You are alone. Don’t think otherwise, don’t get confused, you are alone … from the moment the murder occurred, I am alone in the world … you survive the day. I understood no one cared about me and that’s it. It’s to be or not to be. The worst has happened. (Shira, 37, 9)
As participants understood the extent of their losses and that they are alone in this world, they also deduced that their survival depended on themselves. Nevertheless, the task of survival with no foundations demanded much mental strength and some degree of detachment, as evident in the words of Carmel (70, 20), who also used the Holocaust analogy:
People went through the Holocaust and overcame it … there’s some degree of denial … you must keep your sanity. Despite what happened, I finished my Ph.D. with honors … you can do one of two things: decline or rise. I chose to rise … you decide if it controls your whole life. And you decide how much of it you bring into your life.
Indeed, all participants, regardless of their age, marital, or parental status, time since the loss occurred, or other personal differences, described a life filled with moments of joy and fulfillment. They have magically built a life out of total destruction. Each found something “to hold on to”: a satisfying relationship, their own families, careers, personality traits, beliefs, or values. However, the incredible survival forces, which demand some “forgetfulness” of the loss and its consequences, were unable to fully erase the pain participants experienced. As Viola-Eilat (50, 3) concluded: “I’m proud of me. I did not turn into a devious, angry person. I have a smile on my face, most of the time, with closed (ATZUMOT), um, sad (ATZUVOT) eyes.” Interestingly, in Hebrew, the word “closed” is pronounced as “ATZUMOT,” and the word “sad” is pronounced as “ATZUVOT.” This unconscious slip of the tongue may indicate the relationship between forgetting and remembering, both necessary for the participants’ survival following such destruction. The inevitable remembering of the pain which echoes throughout participants’ lives will be presented in the following theme.
Blast Injury
Physical blast injuries are often caused by a powerful explosion that may lead to serious and often internal physical injuries and death (Jorolemon & Krywko, 2019). Taken into the context of the current study, the metaphor of blast injury can be considered as the ongoing psychological damage which reverberates throughout participants’ lives. In other words, the fatal injuries sustained by participants’ mothers created a blast wave effect that hit and injured the participants’ souls. While the participants attempted to dismiss the lasting effects of the tragedy as much as possible, succeeding in doing so seemed to be impossible. The powerful blast wave of violence had caused injuries beneath the surface that had not and may never heal over time. Similar to physical blasts cause injuries, the damage can sometimes be hidden to the eye, yet actively and painfully present.
It’s a life story, not a life-history, it molds your life. It even runs your life a little. We [siblings] didn’t want it to run our lives, we even tried that it won’t … we created our own families, we are functioning, but if you look closely under a magnifying glass … you can see the fracture. The damage is grave, and it carries on. (Emuna, 46, 6)
All of the participants described the reverberating effect of their tragic blast. Therefore, the damage caused by the blast of having one’s mother murdered by one’s father precedes, and the loss remains confusing, unbearable, and incomprehensible, indicating that time does not heal all wounds. Interestingly, it seemed that most participants were unable to say, “My mother was murdered by my father”, even years after the murder. Many used the words “killed” or “died”; some did not use the phrase “my father/mother”; and others termed the act of murder and loss as “the accident,” “the disaster,” “the event” or “it”. As Mimi (25, 10) explained:
I don’t say my mom was murdered. I say my mom is deceased [pause], inside I know the definitions of it.… If I think about myself as a little girl, I understand that it can’t be said … but um, [pause] regarding today, years after, I can’t understand the inability to say it. Um, [pause] something there becomes silent [pause].
One can interpret the participants’ inability to fully comprehend, and therefore express, the meaning of their loss, as a defensive way to psychologically survive this reverberating blast. Participants’ inability to understand and articulate some aspects of their loss begins at the very moment the murder occurred, or the moments they learned about what had happened. For example, Talya, who was sent away from the house, moments before the murder occurred demonstrates the incredible mechanism aimed at protecting the fragile psyches of these then young girls:
I heard boom, boom, boom, it was gunshots … I thought he [father had hit] the baking pan against the floor. I remember saying to myself, um, OK, it’s not so bad, the cake is gone, at least dad is home.… It could be that I understood that something is happening, but I wasn’t aware of it. I didn’t understand that a meter away, my world had been completely ruined. (Talya, 48, 8)
A blast injury may critically damage specific organs or collapse entire bodily systems (Jorolemon & Krywko, 2019). Similarly, participants described the various psychological injuries they sustained and the ways that these wounds remained open. For example, some participants felt that the blast had deeply damaged potential growth and development: “I was supposed to have so much more self-esteem, but since all that I’ve been through, I don’t” (Lee, 26, 7).
Having to face the devastating fact of the fathers’ murderous acts and their loss of their mother, often emerged among the study’s participants as shock, agonizing pain, fear, and disbelief. However, this wave of painful feelings, which started moments after realizing what had happened, seemed to return repeatedly throughout the participants’ lives, even years after the murder occurred. Many of them expressed that time has stood still, as they re-live the painful fact of their loss.
At the time I thought that I can’t go on living. I don’t have the strength. I was a wreck. An empty body…. Until this day, [50 years later] when I see on TV that a woman was murdered, I get sick. Everything comes back to me, you know. It’s hard. It’s been years, years … but it doesn’t go away. It’s always in our lives, and every time, it comes up.… This experience continues to run our lives all the time. (Rivka, 72, 22)
The participants’ inability to fully process the loss and thereby heal some of their psychological blast injuries were affected by familial and social discourses. Although the participants engaged in a limited dialogue with significant others, an unjudgmental friend, or a close family member, most of them described their great caution when talking about their loss to others. None was fully able to share her pain freely, as it seemed that most people were too afraid to be themselves hit by the stigmatized or painful blast. The following three quotes demonstrate an exemplary limiting discourse of various types of “others”:
Thus, as years or even decades passed, participants were left with their pain and were forced to learn how to cope with the initial blast injury, as well as with the wave blast effect which reverberated throughout their lives. This, as evident in the following quote, is described by Talya (48, 8) as a life-long journey: “Not all is resolved … after much work, I can say that there’s an abyss inside of me and that I can look at it, and I keep away from it…. It has a pulling effect and caution is necessary”. As participants avoided falling into the abyss, they felt compelled to keep their distance from its pulling force, as they directed all efforts toward creating and maintaining a life. For this task to succeed, participants kept a doubtful relationship with what they knew and understood about the loss. This will be described in the following theme.
In Doubt
Much of the participants’ meaning construction of the loss was built around a theme of doubt. Many participants expressed doubts regarding their own memory and knowledge of the time before the murder, of certain incidents, thoughts, and feelings. For example, while attempting to reply to a question regarding her father’s whereabouts before the murder, Mimi (25, 10) said: “Um, I don’t remember exactly. Um, maybe not. Um, [pause] yes. Possibly not. I don’t recall exactly. Um, [pause] but I think so, I think.” Other participants doubted other people’s narratives of what had happened and why it happened.
There’s this myth that my grandmother told her [mother], leave him, leave him, he will kill you or something like that and my mother’s answer was it couldn’t be. I don’t know how much of it is true and how much of it is a myth. (Shira, 37, 9)
Unwittingly, the participants constructed and maintained these doubtful narratives in order to protect themselves from what they knew, remembered, or feared. In the same vein, the participants expressed much doubt in their understanding of whether the murder was preventable. Participants’ presented conflicted narratives between what could and could not be done to save their mothers’ lives, and therefore, themselves from the coming blast. Many of them described “warning signs” preceding the murder, and yet, immediately after or later in the interview, expressed the sense that these “warning signs” could not be fully noticed, acknowledged, or acted-upon.
He told her, you will leave this house only in bags um, black, black bags. He showed her how he is going to do it. We went with her to the police, after a month he was released to a house arrest. My mom complained a few times that he’s walking free in the village. And, um … that’s it. She left the house in a black bag.… We, I did not believe that it will happen. I remember myself, sitting in front of a therapist [before the murder], telling her that I don’t believe it will happen. That I can’t, I can’t believe that he’s capable of such a thing. I said, I’m scared but I’m not scared. It’s like I don’t know how to deal with it.… I believed, believed that it won’t happen. And also believed that it will. It’s the fear that it might happen and the belief that there’s no chance that it will. That’s the absurd. (Avital, 42, 33)
The “absurd” in Avital’s words reflect the inability to be fully aware of and act on both possibilities; fully believing the murder can happen is not possible, either due to the participants’ young age at the time the murder occurred, or since such understanding that one’s father can murder one’s mother is simply not something an offspring’s psyche can accommodate, As Avia (21, 15) describes: “I couldn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything. I wasn’t expecting anything. I never thought that this thing would happen in my home. What kind of a person can think that such a thing would happen in their homes?” On the other hand, being fully aware of and acting upon the other possibility—that the murder will not happen—is also not possible, as all participants knew something or sensed that something was wrong. While many of them rightfully blamed the authorities or other significant individuals for not taking the necessary protective acts, this interplay between knowing and not knowing created in some cases intense feelings of guilt. Participants felt guilty for not acting upon their knowledge or their feelings, and even felt guilty for not knowing enough about the gravity of the situation, although most of them were minors at the time and were not able to impact the tragic outcome. Nevertheless, many of them concluded that nothing could have prevented the murder from happening.
It was very hard for me, that it’s like I didn’t do enough, I didn’t go there, I wasn’t there, I didn’t, all of the things that I supposedly hadn’t done. If only I had gone there, if I hadn’t gone with my friends that day, it’s endless. But deep down I also know that I couldn’t really change the way things happened … even if I were there that day … perhaps no one could have stopped him. However, on the other hand, if I were there then maybe I would have intimidated him a little. (Orly, 36, 35)
As demonstrated in the quote above, just like Orly, all of the participants were engaged in counterfactual thinking: How things could have been different had they acted differently, had the mother or the father acted differently or were different, and had others and the world been different (Neimeyer et al., 2019). Yet, they have repeatedly doubted that they could have altered the result, and eventually concluded that many questions remain unanswered:
Ever since I’ve been through this experience I was always intrigued to know why. In hindsight, I know why, but to hear it. Why did you do it? And today I understand that there is no answer. There’s no answer why. There is no why. (Avia, 21, 15)
However, some participants, such as Mimi (25, 10), reflected on their doubts, and concluded that perhaps it is better this way, as it allows them to not know everything, or to know some of the things, in a way that helps them to not be completely immersed in their tragic loss: “Some things I ask, but I don’t really dig into it. It is like, perhaps [pause] I think that there are some things that deep down I still do not want to know. So, I do not ask.”
Discussion
Human-beings are inveterate meaning-makers, weavers of narratives that give thematic significance to the plot structures of their lives (Neimeyer, 2005). However, a profound experience of loss, especially violent and traumatic loss, may disrupt one’s life narrative and shake one’s constructions about life, sometimes to their most basic foundations (Currier & Neimeyer, 2006; Janoff-Bulman, 1992).
In accordance with the above, an examination of the three themes in the current study reveals a deep shatter in participants’ world of meaning to its basic foundations. The participants experience the loss of their mothers due to IPH executed by the participants’ fathers. From the moment the murder occurs, the participants’ whole world collapses. Both parents are gone, as the mothers died, and the fathers are either incarcerated, institutionalized, or dead. They are removed from their homes and in some cases separated from siblings or other significant figures in their lives. These accounts are in congruence with previous studies of the harmful consequences of losing a parent to IPH (Alisic, Groot et al., 2015, 2017; Gaensbauer et al., 1995; Kaplan et al., 2001; Steeves & Parker, 2007; Steeves et al., 2011). Nevertheless, an examination of the participants’ words from a meaning making in bereavement perspective offers an understanding of both the meanings and the processes through which these meanings were constructed.
Woven into our life stories are others with whom we are intimate. When a loved one is violently ripped away, the fabric of one’s life’s story is also torn apart. S/he must weave a new life story that is challenged by the loss (Attig, 2001; Neimeyer et al., 2014). The participants’ world of meaning was tethered to their relationship with their parents and to the secure base provided by them. Their homes provided the basis for self-construction through relations with significant figures in their lives. In this regard, research described the experience of “home” as a type of attachment that is special to women given their social context (Barry et al., 2018; Moloney, 1997). Women tend to ascribe positive meanings to the home, seeing in it a source of love, affection, intimacy, independence, and power. The home is linked to their personal identity and to important sets of relationships (Saunders, 1989). Once actually and symbolically gone, their whole world of meaning is ruptured, including the most basic global meanings regarding the world and their place in it. As participants feel alone and unsafe in the world, they construct the loss as a “destruction of one’s home.”
The continuous effects of the destruction of participants’ homes carries on throughout their lives. The loss abruptly terminates the participants’ childhood, adolescent years, or early adulthood, and launches them immediately into a struggle for survival. In that sense, the results demonstrate that the violent act of murder not only robs the mothers of their lives (Caman et al., 2017) but also violently robs the participants of their basic assumptions regarding their past, present, and future. The participants’ narratives reveal the reverberating effects of the murder throughout their lives as the loss is constructed as a “blast injury.” As the physically and psychologically secure base upon which most participants grew up is utterly undermined, the world remains unsafe, and participants anxiously anticipate further unexpected tragedies to again destroy their current or future security. In that way, the injury caused by the loss still lives years, and sometimes decades, later. Participants’ focus on survival and the task of rewriting a new life story, leads to the construction of the loss as “in doubt.” Generally, women, in contrast to men’s, are often marked by tentativeness and uncertainty. It is suggested that those doomed to inferior status within a society would express themselves equivocally (Gilligan, 1982). Nevertheless, beyond the inherited gender-related doubt constructed into the women’s narratives, it seemed that the doubt protects participants from painful memories, knowledge, agonizing guilt, and thoughts, as the loss is so utterly inconsistent with prior assumptions.
This set of reconstructions is partially the result of the loss’s magnitude and also results from the loss’s position at the bottom of the Israeli culture’s death hierarchy (Levy, 2013). Homicide losses are often stigmatized (Mahat-Shamir & Leichtentritt, 2016), including IPH-related losses which contradict the Israeli traditional familial values (Kaplan & Herbst, 2015). The loss is too overwhelming, painful, frightening, or irrelevant to others to allow participants’ expression of meaning and experience to be truly or fully heard. The participants are often confronted with others’ interest in hearing either “juicy” details of the murder or heartbreaking or heroic success stories. In other cases, the participants are met by judgmental and reluctant responses. As a result, participants’ loss experience remains disenfranchised (Doka, 2002), and their words are not fully heard. Therefore, this study aimed at giving voice to participants’ meanings in their own words.
Nevertheless, the attempt to give voice to the participants’ meaning constructions should be interpreted in light of the position of the researchers as outsiders to the researched loss phenomenon. Although not necessarily a critical limitation, this positioning may affect researchers’ interpretation and writing of the data (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). In contrast, an insider view, perhaps an autoethnography, may shed more light on the loss experience of IPH. The issue of diversity is of particular importance for the reader’s understanding of the results and ability to apply and responsibly transfer the conclusions to different contexts. The participants in the sample shared a similar loss, yet ranged significantly in age at the time of the interview, age at the time of the murder, time since loss, familial status, socio-economic status, and ethnic origins. Nevertheless, all of the participants were adult Israeli secular to religious Jewish women. Although individuals outside of the sample’s characteristics may share some aspects with the participants’ loss accounts, this fact does derive several limitations and recommendation for future studies. First, in order to gain a broadened gendered perspective of this experience, future studies should examine meanings constructed by sons whose biological mothers were murdered by their biological fathers. Furthermore, other forms of IPH should be investigated, namely the meaning-making experience of sons and daughters whose fathers were victims to IPH, or the experience of other family members such as the perpetrator’s and the deceased’s parents, siblings, and so on. With regard to cultural and religious transferability, it is important to investigate other cultural and religious sectors such as ultra-religious individuals as well as individuals that belong to the Arab, Christian, Druze, or Bedouin sectors. And lastly, there is still a significant gap in the literature regarding the short and long-term consequences of IPH and an expansion of theoretical, empirical, and clinical knowledge is encouraged.
Regardless of these limitations, this study supports the notion that meaning reconstruction in response to loss is a central feature of grieving and a necessary component in adaptation to loss (Park, 2010). It emphasizes and confirms the difficulty in reconstructing meanings in cases of traumatic and violent losses (Currier & Neimeyer, 2006; Mahat-Shamir & Leichtentritt, 2016), such as loss of a mother due to IPH, and highlights the harmful effects of silencing or limiting social discourses regarding disenfranchised and stigmatized losses (Doka, 2002). Moreover, the findings also stress the notion that grieving is a continuing journey of processing and re-processing of the loss (Gillies & Neimeyer, 2006), as participants vary extensively in number of years post loss, yet all are still actively engaged in processing the loss. Nonetheless, although a desired goal in grieving is to construct a coherent life story of the loss (Neimeyer & Sands, 2011), the findings also demonstrate the defensive function of fragmentation (such as doubt) in cases where the loss is so traumatic, sudden, and unbearable. Therefore, practitioners are advised to examine the transferability of the current study’s findings and attend such fragmented narratives of destruction with extreme levels of caution, as they help their clients reconstruct a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss (Neimeyer et al., 2014). As evident from the findings, due to the magnitude of the loss and its surrounding stigma, some participants took years and decades before they could talk about their experience. For some, the interviews were the first time they ever shared their experience with another person. This fact supports a legal and political recommendation for policy regulations and rights related to offspring co-victims of IPH, as it emphasizes the need for a psychosocial care program which has no time restraints. Our recommendations may contribute to the development of better-suited care programs which are so necessary with all homicide survivors and those effected by the homicide (AbiNader et al., 2020) and particularly with children survivors of IPH (Websdale, 2020). A further implication of such facts is to bolster social awareness of the need to fight stigmatization of homicide survivors and of IPH survivors in particular. Indeed, the current research has attempted to fulfil grief researchers’ mission to vocalize the disenfranchised voices of bereaved individuals (Pitcho-Prelorentzos & Mahat-Shamir, 2020). We hope their voices will continue to sound.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Ariel University and the Israeli multi-disciplinary forum for crime victims research for the encouragement and support. We would also like to thank the research participants for sharing their experience with us.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
