MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
Mar 9, 2005

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- The woman remembers that she was just getting home from church with her mother and four siblings when her father drove up and shot her mother dead.
She remembers that her father drove straight to the police station, leaving his children behind as they frantically tried to save their mother.
This is one of 47 stories told to University of Virginia researchers studying adults who lost a parent to domestic homicide when they were children. The hope is that the survivors' stories will shed light on how to help children cope when one parent kills the other.
"No one has looked at this before," said Barbara Parker, a U.Va. nursing professor conducting the study. "No one has given these people the opportunity to tell their stories."
An estimated 4,000 American children are affected by parental homicide annually, Parker said.
"These children not only lose their mother, they basically lose their father as well," said Kathryn Laughon, a U.Va. assistant professor of nursing and an investigator in the study.
The assailant is usually the father. In 1998, there were 1,839 homicides attributed to intimate partners and almost three out of four victims were women, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The U.Va. investigators say officials who work with the children involved in domestic homicide cases are anxious to learn from the study, which was funded by a $750,000 grant from the National Institute for Nursing Research. Since it began a year ago, they've been contacted by judges wanting to know if children should be encouraged to visit the assailant in jail, or if it's wise for the killer's side of the family to be granted joint custody.
The researchers expect to have most of those answers when the study is finished next year.
The data have not been analyzed, and the team at U.Va. still needs to find and interview additional survivors. Even so, some common themes have emerged.
"What has surprised me the most is that many of the adults find they need to reconnect with the assailant," Parker said. "At some point they want to find out about everything that happened. They'll pull the police reports. And they'll try to locate the assailant."
"I had one man tell me, 'I didn't do it for him. I did it for myself. He had become so big in my mind. When I met him, I realized he was just a person,'" she said.
Parker said early findings suggest that children who have an adult mentor fare better in life.
"Even if they didn't have daily contact, they knew they could count on that person and that made a difference for them," she said.
Rick Steeves, a U.Va. associate professor of nursing and an investigator in the study, said another common theme is that survivors sometimes have problems with intimate relationships. Some reported becoming abusers or being abused. Others have had multiple marriages or have decided to stay single.
Steeves said the study's biggest surprise is how well-adjusted many of the children have become.
"They describe the most horrible events, events I can't imagine surviving," he said. "And they are doing fine."
The U.Va. researchers are planning to conduct a follow-up study on children ages 6 to 17 who have recently lost a parent to domestic homicide.

Claudia Pinto is a staff writer at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.