Intensive Caring Responsibilities and Crimes of Compassion? 1

In this chapter our focus is upon recent criminal cases where a parent has killed or assisted the death of a child, who may be an adult, and at the time of death that child was suffering from severe disabilities, debilitating injury or chronic illness. We include within our discussion cases where the parent has provided assistance that has enabled the child to commit suicide, although not those where the assistance has taken the form of accompanying them abroad in order to be assisted to die. We thus explore the relationship between criminal and family responsibilities through an examination of recent cases where parents have acted to end their child’s real, ² or imagined, suffering in what could thus be understood as an altruistic or compassionate act. In doing so, it will be necessary to consider the nature of both family responsibilities and responsibility as understood by the criminal law, the reasons given by the parents ³ and the way in which the criminal law categorizes and responds to such behaviour. It will be suggested that the current categorization into murder, manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and assisting suicide, while appropriate for some cases, does not allow for the full story of other cases that we explore to be both told and taken into account. It will be argued that there is a gap in the options available to the courts and that consideration should be given to how best this gap might be bridged.