An archival research of the causes, nature and nuclear family destructiveness of uxoricide as revealed in some newspapers

Abstract

This research used a general inductive approach in analysing qualitative raw secondary data from the newspaper archives on the causes, nature and nuclear family destructiveness of uxoricide. The raw data from the newspaper archive cases revealed that uxoricide is ubiquitous and has been occurring since the period before Christ to date. Analysis of data from the 35 national and international uxoricide incidents reveals that couples' strained marital relationships, anger, rage (including jealous rage), upset and loss of temper, arguments, uxoricides having propensities to violence, financial and material gain overwhelmingly provided the basis for wife murders. The findings also indicate that victims of uxoricide were stabbed to death, shot to death with guns, strangulated/asphyxiated to death, murdered with excessive force (over-kill), and premeditatedly and calculatedly murdered. The study also highlighted that the effects of uxoricide on children is immediate and devastating. Usually in a single act, the children lose both parents, one to death and the other to the criminal justice system or suicide and they become the social responsibilty of either the extended family or governmental social agency systems or remain uxoricide orphans in child-headed families. In this way nuclear families are destroyed. It also emerged in this research that it is relatively uncommon for a husband to kill his wife and children in the same incident, thus uxoricide taking the form of a familicide (a multiple-victim homicide incident in which the killer's spouse and one or more children are slain). In this respect, victims of uxoricide are murdered together with their children, another tragic complete destruction of the nuclear family. Overall, the results demonstrate that the causes, nature and nuclear family destructiveness of uxoricide in the whole world are common in many significant ways. The only unique and exclusive cause of uxoricide in this research was honour uxoricide which occurred when a wife refused "seizure of her share of the family land by his husband and his brothers"; wore "westernised, tight-fitting clothes" and planned to "provide alcohol at the terminally ill son's 181 h birthday party" and having been sexually "molested" by her brother-in-law. The United Nations (2002) reveals that honour killing is revered among some people in the Middle East, South-West Asia and some migrants in Western countries such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Women's groups in the Middle East and South-West Asia suspect its women victims could be ±20 000 annually (Fisk, 201 0). Finally, recommendations for psychological and social practice with the potential to contribute to the development of sound ecosystemic programmes to remedy uxoricide were made.