Mum who murdered both her children as they 'got in way of sex' jailed for life

[Ocean]

Mum who murdered both her children as they 'got in way of sex' jailed for life

I just can't believe what goes on in this world now.
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Louise Porton was found guilty on Thursday of killing three-year-old Lexi Draper and 17-month-old Scarlett Vaughan, less than three weeks apart, last year.
A jury at Birmingham Crown Court convicted her of both murders following a five-week trial.

Jailing Porton on Friday, Mrs Justice Yip described her actions as "evil" and "calculated", and told her: "These were blameless young children who were plainly vulnerable and ought to have been able to rely on their mother to protect and nurture them.
"Instead you took their young lives away."


'EVIL': Louise Porton killed the children as they got in the way of her sex life

Porton, who described herself to male suitors as a "model", accepted 41 friend requests on a dating app just a day after Lexi's death.
Before sentencing, the judge told the court Porton had "no medical history or mental disorder that goes any way to explaining what happened in this case".
The judge added: "One way or another you squeezed the life out of each of your daughters, only calling the emergency services when you knew they were dead.
"I am sure at the time of the deaths, you intended to kill each of your daughters.
"Why you did so, only you will know."

She was described as being "calm and emotionless" following Scarlett's death and delayed calling an ambulance for the youngster, even filling up with petrol as the toddler lay dead or dying in her car.


MURDERED: Lexi Draper and Scarlett Vaughan were both suffocated by their mum

When Lexi was ill in hospital, just over a week before she died, Porton took topless photos in the toilets and was arranging to perform sex acts for money with a man she had met through a website.

Warwickshire Police said it was also "clear from the evidence" that callous Porton had tried to kill her three-year-old twice before, in early January 2018, before eventually succeeding.
At the time, she used her Google account to search for "Why did my 3 year(-old) stop breathing", and "How long after drowning can someone be resuscitated?"
The 23-year-old, of Skiddaw, Rugby, Warwickshire, suffocated Lexi in the early hours of January 15 last year and was then heard "laughing" at a funeral parlour two days before killing Scarlett just over two weeks later, on February 1.

At the time, she used her Google account to search for "Why did my 3 year(-old) stop breathing", and "How long after drowning can someone be resuscitated?"

The 23-year-old, of Skiddaw, Rugby, Warwickshire, suffocated Lexi in the early hours of January 15 last year and was then heard "laughing" at a funeral parlour two days before killing Scarlett just over two weeks later, on February 1.
The girls' father, Chris Draper, who never had the chance to meet Scarlett, said he felt "broken", with "nothing to live for".

In a victim impact statement read to court by the prosecution, he said: "Why did Louise do something so evil to our beautiful daughters? "You are their mother, the person supposed to care for them, protect and love them.
"They were just an inconvenience to you; how could you do this?"
Porton sat in the dock throughout the hearing, with her head resting on her hands, looking down at her feet.

Mr Draper added: "I sit and think, day and night, and I can't understand why my two little girls were taken away because Louise wanted to sleep around. "Maybe if social services had listened to me, my girls would still be alive today."
Mr Draper, who was in court for sentencing, said: "I hate Louise.
"No punishment will ever be enough, as I will never get my daughters back."

 

[loreta]

This is incredible and I feel so... angry when I read stories like that that sometimes I have the impression that I would be able to kill this person, this woman, this devilish woman that killed the little kids! Oh, how I wait for the Santa Cometa when I feel like that. Then I breath and feel sad. Then my anger disappears and there is just sadness. A huge well of sadness.

 

[whitecoast]

What a disgusting case.

From the below publication:

Most homicides of young children are committed by family members through beatings or suffocation. Although victims include approximately equal numbers of boys and girls, offenders include a disproportionate number of women (added: especially younger women). Homicides of young children may be seriously undercounted.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/187239.pdf

Mr Draper added: "I sit and think, day and night, and I can't understand why my two little girls were taken away because Louise wanted to sleep around. "Maybe if social services had listened to me, my girls would still be alive today."
Mr Draper, who was in court for sentencing, said: "I hate Louise.
"No punishment will ever be enough, as I will never get my daughters back."

Maybe this is one of the reasons traditional societies promoted monogamy - so fathers could prevent young and emotionally charged women from killing their kids.

I can't help but think of the Brazilian case earlier on this year where 2 lesbians murdered one's little boy. No biological father was in the house there either.

 

[Michael B-C]

Oh my god! Those beautiful children. Such narcissistic, hedonistic evil. No other words.

 

[whitecoast]

If people were interested in reading more about the causes of maternal filicide, this was an informative paper:

Child murder by mothers: patterns and prevention

The tragedy of maternal filicide, or child murder by mothers, has occurred throughout history and throughout the world. This review of the research literature sought to identify common predictors in the general population as well as in correctional and ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

From the abstract:

Resnick's review of the world psychiatric literature on maternal filicide (11) found filicidal mothers to have frequent depression, psychosis, prior mental health treatment, and suicidal thoughts. Maternal filicide perpetrators have five major motives: a) in an altruistic filicide, a mother kills her child out of love; she believes death to be in the child's best interest (for example, a suicidal mother may not wish to leave her motherless child to face an intolerable world; or a psychotic mother may believe that she is saving her child from a fate worse than death); b) in an acutely psychotic filicide, a psychotic or delirious mother kills her child without any comprehensible motive (for example, a mother may follow command hallucinations to kill); c) when fatal maltreatment filicide occurs, death is usually not the anticipated outcome; it results from cumulative child abuse, neglect, or Munchausen syndrome by proxy; d) in an unwanted child filicide, a mother thinks of her child as a hindrance [i.e. the case shared by OP]; e) the most rare, spouse revenge filicide occurs when a mother kills her child specifically to emotionally harm that child's father.

In developing countries, the preference for male infants may lead to sex-selective killings (12,13). Cultural and legal differences across countries may affect research findings. For example, one country's correctional sample may be similar to another country's psychiatric sample, depending on the laws and attitudes toward prosecution.

More details:

MATERNAL FILICIDE RESEARCH FINDINGS

Countries represented in the English literature filicide search were Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition to studies of mothers who have committed filicide (3,4,15-55), several studies have investigated the prevalence of filicidal thoughts in various populations.

Infanticide
An American macro-level study of infanticide (victims in the first year of life) found increased rates with economic stress (24). Although England and Wales have Infanticide Acts, and Scotland does not, the countries experience similar rates of infanticide (3,38). Maternal infanticide studies in the general population (20,38,44,45) found a predominance of unemployed mothers in their early 20s. Many cases occurred in the context of child abuse (4), though some mothers had associated suicide attempts. Often they experienced psychiatric disorders (36 to 72%) (44,45). In Japan, the infant victims frequently had physical anomalies.

General population studies of maternal filicide
The mothers were often poor, socially isolated, full-time caregivers, who were victims of domestic violence or had other relationship problems. Disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and primary responsibility for the children were common. Persistent crying or child factors were sometimes precipitants for the filicide. Some mothers had previously abused the child, while others were mentally ill and devoted to their child (41). Neglectful or abusive mothers were often substance abusers. Many of the perpetrators had psychosis, depression, or suicidality (15,16,18,20,28,40-43,45,48,51,52).

Correctional samples of maternal filicide
In the correctional population, filicidal mothers were frequently unmarried, unemployed abuse victims, who had limited education and social support (29-33,46-47,53,54). Some had decreased intellect, and a few considered the child victim to be abnormal. Several correctional studies noted frequent depression, psychosis, substance abuse, suicidality, and prior mental health care (33,46,47,53,54). Multiple stressors (economic, social, abuse history, partner relationship problems), primary caregiver status, and difficulty caring for the child were frequent.

Psychiatric samples of maternal filicide
The filicidal mothers in psychiatric samples had frequently experienced psychosis, depression, suicidality, and prior mental health care (18,19,22,25-27,34-37,39,49,50,55). Their mean age was in their late 20s (18,19,22,25,34-36). Some were diagnosed with personality disorders and some had low intelligence. Significant life stresses were often noted. Our recent study of mothers found not guilty by reason of insanity in two U.S. states found that the perpetrators were often depressed and frequently experienced auditory hallucinations, some of a command type. Over one third of the homicides occurred during pregnancy or the postpartum year. Almost all the mothers had altruistic or acutely psychotic motives (22). A small New Zealand study that interviewed the mothers after their filicides found that psychotic mothers who had committed filicide often killed suddenly without much planning, whereas depressed mothers had contemplated killing their children for days to weeks prior to their crimes (49).

Maternal filicide-suicide
A significant proportion (16-29%) of filicides end in completed suicide by the mother (56). Many other mothers make non-fatal suicide attempts in association with their filicides. When mothers of young children commit suicide, about 5% also kill at least one of their children (57,58).

Filicide-suicides have much in common with filicides committed by severely mentally ill mothers (15). Most frequently, these mothers have altruistic motives (15,23). Similar to results of other studies (15,20,48), our recent American study found that maternal filicide-suicide perpetrators killed older children more often than infants (mean age of children killed was 6 years old). The mothers often had evidence of depression or psychosis (23). These mothers often take the lives of all their young children.

Prevalence of filicidal thoughts
A relatively high incidence of filicidal thoughts has been found in mentally ill women. Jennings et al's (59) study of depressed mothers with children under age 3 found that 41% had thoughts of harming a child, compared with 7% of mothers in the control group. A pediatric study of mothers in the general population found that 70% of mothers with colicky infants experienced explicit aggressive thoughts toward their infants, and over a quarter (26%) of them had infanticidal thoughts during colic episodes (60). An Indian study (61) of hospitalized severely mentally ill postpartum women found that 43% had infanticidal ideation. Thirty-six percent of these women engaged in some type of infanticidal behavior. Their behavior was associated with negative maternal reaction to separation, psychotic beliefs about the infant, and female sex of the infant.

Our recent survey of psychiatrists at two American academic institutions found that many psychiatrists do not specifically ask their patients who are mothers about thoughts of harming their children, but rather they inquire generally about homicidal thoughts (62). The surveyed psychiatrists frequently underestimated the prevalence of depressed mothers who have thoughts of harming their children.

I found it noteworthy that in offering solutions they mostly mentioned social programs for these single and isolated women. They didn't mention having a father in the house. Of course step-parents themselves greatly increase the probability of a child being abused or murdered, but the situation I think is the reverse if the father and mother are both the biological parents.