Product Description

A comprehensive study of juvenile homicide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87521 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 396 pages

Review
"Davis has a serious agenda. Her aim is to show that, without exception, these children suffered lives of appalling mental and physical cruelty, and that in most cases, this, and this alone, was what most likely led them to kill. The crimes these children committed are at least matched, if not overshadowed, by the things that were done to them by their parents and carers." -- London Times Educational Supplement

Tangled Web
A serious and sensitive account of a topic which is, surely, among the bleakest imaginable.

Crime Magazine
Complex yet so simple,these stories implicate abusive parents and other irresponsible adults who might have saved these kids but didn't.

Customer Reviews

Brutal but honest
Video nasties, porn and heavy metal music don't make happy children turn to murder. Children Who Kill shows exactly what these youngsters survived before they fought back. Carol Ann Davis tells us everything from their parents ages and occupations to their school experiences. She interviewed a detective about one British serial killing case to provide pages of information I haven't been able to find anywhere else.

Did the reader who gave this book a one star review read the same book as me? The quotes simply showed that the author hadn't made her information up, that other criminologists share her awareness of what shapes these youthful killers. The TV show she refers to is an episode of Kilroy where a sexually abused girl spoke of wearing a wire to trap her abuser. And the women's magazine reference was to a parenting column.

My only criticism of the book is that after a while you know how the case is likely to end: that is, the children who were tortured went on to torture, those who were raped went on to rape and those who were beaten went on to beat. But I guess that isn't the author's problem. She is simply telling the harrowing truth.

Conventional readers may not like this book as it shines a spotlight on many of society's sacred cows and finds them wanting. It's also scathing about the way many adults treat their young.

Young but deadly
This book opens with the author telling of her childhood friendship with a boy who stabbed a girl, and that got me hooked. You wouldn't believe how young some of these killers are. There are ten year old sexual assaulters and eleven year old stranglers and twelve year old torturers. By their early teens some of them have moved on to rape. The older teens often killed more people, eg battering their parents to death then wiping out kids at their school. Although disturbing, I found this a very readable book which made me think differently about why children kill.

a valuable study
Many true crime books seem like a thinly disguised excuse to trot out sensational details of gruesome murders. There will always be the sort of audience who used to gather around the public gallows but some readers may wish to move on from the sensationalist approach and read this cool, lucid account. Carol Anne Davis spares us no detail of a number of recent cases but has also tried to find solutions to the tragedy of children who kill. You would never realise from reading tabloid reports on these cases that these children have usually been abused by parents or carers. They have not been posessed by the devil or born evil: they have been made that way. Often subject to harsh discipline or a fanatical religious upbringing these children are hardly likely to benefit from the twenty year sentences that are often demanded. Often they are suffering from too much discipline rather than too little.While this book may be a lone voice amid the tabloid chorus for harsher and hasher retribution it is certainbly worth listening to. The information is presented in short easily digestible chunks without sacrificing any depth. Highly recommended.