Why We Fail to See the Warning Signs When Women Become Dangerous (feat. Anna Motz)

Why are we more afraid of a violent woman than a violent man, even though men commit the vast majority of violent crimes? 

This week, forensic and clinical psychologist Anna Motz joins Dr. Kerry to pull back the curtain on one of society's most carefully avoided truths: women are capable of real violence, and we've been trained not to see it. 

PODCAST EXTRA EXCLUSIVE SEGMENT 

Find the exclusive second segment and weekly newsletter here: https://substack.com/@breakingfreenarcabuse 

🔹 What are the warning signs that a woman is moving toward danger — and why do we keep missing them? In this members-only bonus, Anna and Dr. Kerry break down exactly what to look for and why our instincts fail us. 

ANNA MOTZ is a consultant clinical and forensic psychologist with decades of experience working with violent women in prisons, secure units, and child protection settings across the UK. She is the author of If Love Could Kill: The Myths and Truths About Women Who Commit Violence. 

Book:  If Love Could Kill: The Myths and Truths of Women Who Commit Violence: 

Resources

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• The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources
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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism. 

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This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

Transcript

Why We Fail to See the Warning Signs When Women Become Dangerous (feat. Anna Motz)

Dr. Anna Motz: [00:00:00] The fact is boys are sexually abused. The stats say up to 40% of the sexually abused victims who pulled up Childline had been abused by women. 

Dr. Kerry: Why do you think we don't recognize a woman's potential for harm? 

Dr. Anna Motz: The idealize society, idealizes, motherhood, it tells every woman, this is your absolute aspiration and goal.

It idealizes femininity. It creates these completely unrealistic, unreasonable pictures of women. So it's almost like women aren't allowed to have ordinary feelings of anger, aggression, despair. So vital cues about a woman's potential to do harm to others is often missed. Women who are violent are seen as extremely terrible.

Dr. Kerry: What causes a woman to become violent? Is it always due to a relational threat or [00:01:00]are there evil women? Anna Mots joins me. The author of If Love Could Kill and we get into the dynamics of violent women. So Anna please tell me how you got interested in violent women. 

Dr. Anna Motz: I guess my interest in violent women came through the fact that I'm a clinical and forensic psychologist, so I work a lot. I've worked a lot with violence and men and women, but what I noticed was that the women I was seeing were in a real minority and the targets of their violence were really different.

Uh, they tended to be. Violence against either themselves or intimate partners or their own children, and. These women. What really struck me is I would never have known from kind of first meeting them that this was a violent offender. The women presented very much in quite feminine ways, you know, traditionally stereotypically, and yet there was this, this [00:02:00] very uncharacteristic bit of violence there.

Sometimes, as I will talk about, the women were violent in their. Already volatile, toxic relationships. But other times it was going quite underground, quite secretive, and I really wanted to understand more and also understand how women's disturbance, trauma violence could just be hidden. Hidden from public view, hidden from their friends and family, and sometimes resulting in tremendous tragedies.

So I guess. In my many years in the field, I also wanted to look at the unconscious patterns that were being revealed through these violent acts. Wanted to understand this different manifestation of rage and despair that I was seeing in the women I worked with. 

Dr. Kerry: So describe a typical violent woman. What is she like?

If you ever can, or maybe there's categories of them. 

Dr. Anna Motz: I think there are [00:03:00] categories, but I suppose. Some of the first really extreme. Cases of violence. Were in a secure unit that I was working in in the uk and there was one woman who made sense in terms of our stereotypes about female violence in that she had been severely mentally ill and delusional, and she believed that her baby was being possessed by Satan and tragically in order to save this baby, she had killed the baby.

So now, not only was she well in terms of the delusion had abated, but she was facing the tremendous guilt of what she had done, but also having her whole life and her freedom taken from her in a minority situation in a secure unit where. There were maybe four women and 12 or 15 men, so quite [00:04:00]marginalized.

Her own pain and grief not really addressed. That was part of the work I tried to do with her. So there's that kind of clearly mentally ill mother who killed out of delusion. And then there was another woman who is much more like a kind of. Badass, if you don't mind my saying, but like a really feisty, quite confident type person who didn't have any mental illness but who had killed her husband's mistress.

And it was, she was seen very much as a kind of protective mother bear because she, this woman had come in and, and her mind destroyed the family. So this was a one-off loss of control, quite passionate, um, driven out of rage and jealousy. Those were the really quite extreme cases, but ironically it was while working in child protection, doing reports for the social services and the courts that I [00:05:00]came across.

Many women who seemed very ordinary and lovely and calm and kind, but who had been hurting their children. So that was another form of violence. And that was extremely distressing to see. And sometimes the women who had committed those injuries and harmed their children were themselves the victims of really, uh, intimate partner terrorism, I would say.

And in a strange way, it seemed to me that these women were communicating. The horrors of their domestic situation through harming the children, which then not only release some of their own pain, but also could attract the attention of protective agencies. So yeah, I don't think there is one type of violent woman, but I think there are many situations in which we can see reasons for the violence and.

What's very interesting is how society just [00:06:00] doesn't wanna see that, wants to deny it. Or if a woman does step out of line and is violent, they wanna see her as like an evil monster or an aberration, rather than someone who may have acted either in desperation or 'cause of her horrendous situation or a, a repeat of previous trauma.

Dr. Kerry: Yeah, there's some thoughts out there that. I kind of see them. To me they're almost simplistic because they're such, they're so blanketed that I really get concerned about, there's one thought, and this is coming out of more the those who are feminists. And I'm not saying that I'm not, I am, but there's this belief that all women have reason.

It's due to misogyny and patriarchy. And that's the only reason women are violent, which to me, I think like, and I don't think it's that simple. I do think that certainly defines a lot of women's violence, but it's not all of it. And then there's this other thought that just women are. Emotional irrational creatures, and that violence is sometimes an expression of their personality, which is more of the conservative perspective of the patriarchy speaking.

So help me [00:07:00] understand more of where the truth actually lies. 

Dr. Anna Motz: That's a fantastic question and it's complex, but absolutely women, you know, if women are human beings, we have rage, we have aggressive impulses, and sometimes. Violence can be a manifestation of something like real personality disturbance and sadism and a wish to harm, and that isn't necessarily to do with the patriarchy, that's to do with personality disturbance.

Generally we look at child rearing and we can see that that person who behaves in such a cruel way may herself have been tortured or treated very badly. But I would say there are individual differences and certainly there are some women with whom I've worked who haven't had a. Particular trauma, but who have gone on to take pleasure out of harming others.

And similarly, to some men, there's a degree of excitement, power control. They may have felt [00:08:00] bullied or powerless and helpless, but it's still in their childhoods. But it's not necessarily severe trauma. It's something about by becoming violent and harming others, I can achieve a sense of. Power and triumph, and I'm no longer the helpless victim.

There are other women who may be reacting to misogynistic situations, but I would agree with you. I don't think everything can be just attributed to the patriarchy. I do think that women who've been sexually uh, and physically traumatized and exploited often by men, sometimes by women as well, can find themselves in other situations reenacting that.

Yeah, but that what, what's most shocking, I think, to society in general is that women can be perpetrators of violence without male coercion and without being hormonally imbalanced or just irrational. There's a third kind of violence, which I think is very much a due with social circumstances, so [00:09:00] young.

Girls primarily who may find themselves pregnant, who may be very frightened of the social stigma of an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. They can unconsciously find themselves not even aware of this pregnancy, and when it becomes obvious they are pregnant or going to give birth, they can kill that baby.

And that, I think. Is not an act of, obviously morally it's very wrong, but it's an act of desperation to do with social stigma circumstance sometimes to do with tremendous shame or ignorance. So we can look at evil at and not say the person who committed them is evil, but certainly. Lots of the young women I've worked with who've done some horrendous acts of violence, like tortured vulnerable people were almost to the letter repeating what had been done to them.

Dr. Kerry: Hmm. [00:10:00] So why do you think we don't recognize a woman's potential for harm? Because I don't think a lot of people are totally surprised. Yeah. They, yeah, they claim this kind of came out of nowhere, but yet I think they're missing critical cues. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Absolutely. And I think that's a brilliant point. They're missing critical cues.

So for example, earlier today I was giving a talk about violence in the perinatal period and how so many women who have had. Real disturbances either in their personality or in their childhood themselves and their social circumstances can find themselves absolutely horrified by the situation of either being pregnant or they can have fantasies in pregnancy.

I bet this is gonna make them really. Loved and cared for and whole. And when an actual baby comes into the world, they feel totally horrified, persecuted, depressed, despairing, and may end up harming that baby. Some of the reason that will have gone underground is 'cause we idealize society, [00:11:00]idealizes, motherhood.

It tells every woman, this is your absolute aspiration and goal. It idealizes femininity. It creates these completely. Unrealistic, unreasonable pictures of women. Women are meant to be gentle. Even today, look what happens in certain ways. The media depicts women who stray from the social stereotype of being, you know, kind, gentle, nurturing.

So it's almost like women aren't allowed to have ordinary feelings of. Anger, aggression, despair. And so vital cues about a woman's potential to do harm to others is often missed because of this sentimental denial really, of female violence. And that may look like we're doing women a favor, not seeing the bad in them, but actually we're not seeing that they have a whole range of ordinary human emotions and that when.

Pushed and pressurized, they can act out violently. Now, if we have a, [00:12:00] a society that says it's natural. To feel despairing or even have violent fantasies. If this is, for example, your first baby, you're a single mom, you are struggling financially, um, and there's no one around to support you. You can say, you can turn to someone and say, I don't wanna be a mother.

I don't wanna have this baby. I don't like this baby. The baby thinks I'm ugly and stupid. But if we're conforming to this notion that this is the greatest joy any woman can have, then. It really hard. That makes it really, really hard for women to say, I'm feeling desperate. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. Yeah. It almost feels, I'm gonna go circle back for a second.

'cause I do appreciate the focus on postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis and all those nuances. By the way, that was one of my specialties when I was in practice. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Oh, really? 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. Yeah. I, I worked a lot in hospitals and with about a quarter of my practice was with new moms trying to help normalize the experience because it is such a.

[00:13:00] Difficult transition and there is, so, at least in the, in the United States, not great support for women who are new moms. We do idealize it, but an intimate partner. Violence. Yes, it's, I've noticed that it's almost as if there's a fear of women's feelings and a fear of a woman's power and potential. Can you speak more about.

What's happening at a cultural level around that? We're not shocked when a man acts out, but we're horrified and almost like, we'll almost vilify women, all women, when a woman acts out. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Absolutely. Well, I think that's right. I think we're still in the thra of these very unit dimensional views of womanhood and.

Women in violent relationships can sometimes be the main perpetrator. Now there's a whole body of research and my book also does deal with, with intimate partner terrorism and violence, as well as women who do kill and torture. You know, people who are very vulnerable, who they project. [00:14:00]Onto their own feelings of helplessness.

But in terms of intimate partner violence, I think these stereotypes about, it's always the man who's the violent one are very pervasive. And we have, I guess, a vested interest in thinking our sisters, mothers, we ourselves as women are fundamentally, you know, gentler, kinder, well. It's not the case that if you are a person who has been starved of a sense of power, control, comfort, feel yourself to be very unwanted.

You can become in a intimate. Relationship, extremely fearful, jealous, controlling, Savage. And one of the women I described was possibly one of the most frightening people I've worked with because of her level of, I can only describe it as, you know, sadism really, but was born of fear. So. She felt so [00:15:00] nothing.

She felt so unwanted and unlovable that when she was met with, uh, a loving partner, she, she found it very wrong. She couldn't deal with it. She's very frightened whenever he's left the house and with her children and her partner, she, she displayed this level of extreme control, coercive control. In other situations where there's intimate partner violence, um, women can respond.

It's called situational, really, where they're responding to a particular ongoing argument about finances or how the children are to be treated, or jealousy, you know, going both ways, but intimate partner violence when committed by women tends to have less serious physical consequences, so you won't find as many.

Battered men as it were in kind of women's or refuges. Some refuges won't allow any domestically abused men to to be there 'cause men are dangerous women or victims. But [00:16:00] these are really false and unhelpful dichotomies. And what's fascinating for me working in a women's prison as I now do, is that we get many.

Gay relationships, you know, same sex relationships where the same patterns of intimate partner violence that were happening in the community, in heterosexual relationships are being played out so that the women are forming these same sex relationships with intimate partner violence between them. And so that just shows, I think that they're, these are, these are.

Normal human instincts, which of course we try and control and regulate, but they are not confined to men. And because of these stereotypes, because of these wishes that women are gentle and kind and don't have aggression, when a woman does step out of line, out of that social stereotype, she is, as you say, totally vilified and seen as somehow.

You know, stepping out of [00:17:00] womanhood, the class of womanhood altogether, and sometimes out of the realm of humanity. She's just seen as an aberrant monster. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah, I have seen that. And it gets kind of applied universally to women as a whole saying, women are dangerous because a woman could become violent.

Well. Yeah, ev, everybody has a potential to become violent. That's not unique. It doesn't make all women toxic. In fact, I was telling you before we went on air is that there's this conversation that's going on. It was, I think it was a podcast where a guy was saying women lack accountability and that women need to be silenced.

And again, it was a blanket statement about all women's dangerousness. And I, I think it's interesting, I'm not. Quite for sure. What's motivating that? Other than the loss of control, I guess, I don't know if you have any thoughts about that. 'cause I know you probably haven't seen this podcast, but why are men so afraid of women's power?

Dr. Anna Motz: Mm, that's a fantastic question. I mean, just to say, just contextually only 5% of the criminal population who is. Behind bars [00:18:00] in the United Kingdom is female, and of those, you know, women make up a much smaller percentage of violent criminals, they're much less likely to attack members of the public, much more likely that the violence will go.

In words against their own bodies and self-harm, or against the bodies of their children or intimate partners. So in a way, the public can rest assured that most violence, and in fact most violence victims will be male. However, women who are violent are seen as extremely terrifying. And I think your point about women's, mm-hmm.

Power is really well taken. Women do have agency, women do have power, and I think that's just a very, very threatening position for men to occupy that they are taught, I suppose it's social conditioning for them as much as for women, that they are supposed to be the powerful, strong in vulnerable ones.

Men don't, big boys don't [00:19:00] cry. Boys can't be sexually abused. We know that's a complete myth. In fact, boys are sexually abused and in some cases. The stats say up to 40% of the sexually abused victims who called up, uh, chow offline, which is a helpline here, 40% of them had been abused by women. So I guess female power is always very much feared by a society that still is very much run by men.

We still haven't had a female president, the 

Dr. Kerry: No right. 

Dr. Anna Motz: United States. 

Dr. Kerry: Right. 

Dr. Anna Motz: But it's not. What we need to do is figure out how we can change that and not equate female power with female violence, but something about just those gender stereotypes don't help anyone. Yeah, they cut men and they entrap women.

Women are accountable. In fact, sometimes women are blamed way beyond what a man would be, and even in the UK we see women having very [00:20:00] long sentences longer than would be the equivalent for a man committing the same crime because their offense is seen to be so unusual and therefore they have to be punished three or four times as much.

Dr. Kerry: Fascinating. I'm not surprised. So I have a feeling this is my suspicion, is that women's violence looks different than male violence. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Yes. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. Can you speak to how it manifests in a different way that's more typical to a woman and atypical to a man? 

Dr. Anna Motz: Yes. So female violence, well, if you wanna talk about actual bodily violence women.

Generally have the same strength as men. So for example, an intimate partner violence where a woman kills her husband. She, and this has been a really important situation in terms of legal defenses. That woman who may have been battered and abused and humiliated and controlled for years may take action when her husband is asleep.

And then that looks like a [00:21:00] premeditated crime. But we can argue that it is in fact self-defense. But it's called just kind of slow burn where she can't just with a blow or even with an assault involving a weapon kills in the same way. So there can be a different method. We don't have the same degree of gun crime in the uk, but certainly here most female fatalities will.

Will occur with knives. But like I say, because women can't overpower men in the same way, they may have to find opportune moment. Sometimes the violence will also be very emotionally driven. Now in our prison and across groups of young women and girls, the violence is very much around exclusion and tormenting.

And anyone who's worked with a group of women will know that the women are very. Good at reading one's. Emotional states and cues. So there's [00:22:00] definitely a much more relational form of violence. Uh, and then as I say, in terms of actual bodily violence, the targets of female violence are very different from the targets of male violence.

So hidden, hidden parts of the body, if it's self-harm, violence towards children. Sometimes in the really extreme disturbances, we see munchhausen type violence, which is yeah. Itself a very, very, you potentially fatal form of disturbance, but also takes this very. Secretive kind of form. Lots of deception, lots of trickery.

And because of that guise of being, you know, women or carers who would ever distressed a mother or a grandmother or a nurse, female violence can occur in ways that are really hidden and that. For happened behind closed doors or under the guise again with sexual abuse. A lot of that can take place, which I would consider quite violent under the [00:23:00] guise of care.

Dr. Kerry: Explain to those who don't know what Munchausen is and Munchausen by proxy, 'cause I know you use that term and a as probably most people don't exactly know what that is. Well, 

Dr. Anna Motz: if you probably come across the case of Gypsy Rose Blanche chard. 

Dr. Kerry: Mm, 

Dr. Anna Motz: Blanchard. So this little girl whose mother disguised her as being a cancer victim and having all kinds of illnesses for which she was putting her daughter in a wheelchair and taking her from lots and lots of medical attention, and then in the end.

Her daughter killed the mother, Didi, because she said she had been so abused. Um, it's very interesting because it really exemplifies the Munchausen is where you would present yourself for medical attention, for illnesses and ailments. You don't actually have, because of this desperate need for attention and care, and it's actually not just an abuse of one's own body, it's an abuse of the whole medical.

System, uh, munch cha [00:24:00] implied proxy is where you would use someone else. You would use your child's body, or in very rare cases, perhaps an elders, you would present them for fictitious illness or fabricated illness. So you would. You know, be putting substances into their food that are like poison that then they present with all these awful symptoms that doctors believe is to do with an organic illness rather than something that the mother herself has poisoned the child with.

And sometimes that's done for financial gain, but sometimes it's done to. Become this the object of adoration. You are the angel mother. You're presenting, you're a sick child. Look how devoted you are. Or in fact, that child isn't sick at all. You've and I, again, I've worked with mothers who've done this, putting perfectly, physically able children in wheelchairs, putting them in helmets that they don't need, and then deriving tremendous.[00:25:00]

Gratification from the kind of attention they receive. Meanwhile, the poor Charles is completely abused. 

Dr. Kerry: Right, right. Did you happen to see the Netflix. Documentary. It's just a single episode. It was called Unknown Number. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Oh, no, I haven't. 

Dr. Kerry: Oh, you need to check it out. It's based on a real case. They interview the real people.

So you meet the actual individuals in this situation. I'm gonna ruin it for you. Can I ruin it for you? Go on. Okay. So this daughter is stalked for 18 months by a terrible texter who's doing the most vile graphic? Texts basically destroys her dating relationship and really starts to destroy her friendships.

She's the only child in this family, and it's revealed, I mean, you, you see all the trauma, all the drama going on. You meet all the characters, they're interviewing everybody, and then they reveal in the back third that it's the mother. Who's done this all along? She's been [00:26:00] torturing her only child. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Wow. 

Dr. Kerry: Oh, it was devastating.

And mom obviously served time for it. And then they interviewed the mother on her thoughts about why she did that, and she completely doesn't understand. 

Dr. Anna Motz: No, 

Dr. Kerry: no reflection. She basically says everybody does bad things. She just got caught. That was her sort of a summary. But the daughter at the end, I think the thing that disturbed me the most was still didn't grasp what has been happened and longs for a relationship with her mother without really.

Internalizing the fact that this mother has enacted this sadism. It was sadistic what she did to her. Vile. Vile things were, I mean, these are vile things that were said to this girl for, for months, and that the way that this woman, her mother, has destroyed her life and destroyed relationships. Anyway, it was extremely painful.

I highly recommend the movie, but yeah, I thought that they didn't actually name that as mushawn by proxy, but I, I thought that was probably a great example. And it was mystifying because. The mom, the, the cruelty was, it was when they, they revealed the, what? The [00:27:00] father found out that it was his wife. I mean, the guy was devastated.

He, he really didn't see this capacity in his wife, so it was a very disturbing example of how hidden these 

Dr. Anna Motz: Yeah, 

Dr. Kerry: how hidden this can be. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Absolutely. And I, I certainly will watch it and it sounds like a very heartbreaking but powerful illustration of maternal narcissism where this kid doesn't even see her daughter as a whole person.

She just sees her as an object from. To torture really, and presumably derives a great deal of pleasure, not just from the successful deception, but from also the harm that she's doing. And that it's no wonder that we find that hard to accept because it's a level of cruelty that is for some, it's quite unimaginable.

And I remember when there was a nurse called Beverly all here in the uk, um, the Barris, she was. Killing the babies in her care. Obviously there are other cases that have been very high profile [00:28:00] and this is the kind of crime that just, it just shatters taboo, booze. We hold most dear about motherhood, about health professionals, and I think about womanhood in general, but it exists and we have to be able to acknowledge that to, to find those signs and to protect the vulnerable.

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. So let's turn back and look at women who are violent to their children. Can you sort of categorize that type of violence? You know, I was even, I'm trying to, been trying to think of the name and I'm sure people listen to me will know who I'm talking about. The woman who had had six children and then she tried to drown them, and 

Dr. Anna Motz: Andrea Yates.

Dr. Kerry: Yes. Yes. Thank you for that. Yeah, I, I was at the time practicing and seeing a lot of postpartum depression clients in my practice, and my heart broke for her. I mean, I, I think to me, she exemplified somebody who probably when she got well, would've been horrified and will live in deep pain and regret for the rest of her life.

But sort of the case that you were talking about, they'll be institutionalized or in prison for the [00:29:00]rest of their life, but. It really was a manifestation of a mental illness that just needed treatment. So, but let's, let's kind of talk about the categories of mothers who do this. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Yes. Well, I mean, Andrew Yates is, is a tragic example of a woman who absolutely was psychotic.

She had visions of Satan. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. 

Dr. Anna Motz: And she, as you say, I mean, I think even her husband said, she sounds incredible, but he said she was a good mother. Yeah, this almost as if this wasn't her who was committing these crimes, and I have seen that, you know, if you've worked with people in the throes of delusion, they absolutely.

You know, they believe they're killing to save. 

Dr. Kerry: Yes. Right, right, right. He knew that she was at risk. But to me, he got away with not taking better steps for her care 'cause he recognized something was wrong and he left her unsupervised. I think like why would anybody, anyway, there was a lot that went wrong, I thought in the care and the, in that, the prosecution of that case.

Dr. Anna Motz: So that's one example. The extremes of mental illness and postpartum [00:30:00]psychosis really. Uh, also postpartum depression where women sometimes in very impoverished social situations or without. Support and in a state of, I guess what you could call almost a psychotic depression belief. 

Dr. Kerry: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Anna Motz: The world will be better off without me, but I can't leave my child.

Alone. So I'll take my child with me, and then they kill themselves and their children. So that's another kind of category. And then there are women who, and this is a very hard one again for us to find empathy for, but there are some cases where women will kill their children and what they call Madea crimes, really, which are revenge against a partner.

Who will leave them. And uh, certainly in some cases the defense will argue this is postpartum depression. Or, or even if the children are older, psychotic episode where they thought the children were. In [00:31:00] need of being killed to be saved. But the prosecution will argue this was a revenge killing because there was gonna be a divorce.

Dr. Kerry: Yeah, 

Dr. Anna Motz: so that's a very, very difficult kind of case. Then there were these other cases where a child becomes scapegoated within a family as seen as demonic or bad, and gets punished and punished and punished, and that. I have to say, some of those mothers are deriving some satisfaction from the power and the cruelty and then stop seeing that child as a human and, and it just becomes, they feel persecuted, it gets completely distorted.

They think the child is the demonic. Dangerous one and that they're just either teaching them or they are protecting others. And it becomes, once you've broken that body barrier the first time, it becomes easier and easier to repeat. And so this child may not [00:32:00] have been intended to, a mother may have intended to kill the child, but has done so through just continuous.

Physical abuse and cruelty. Then there's obviously the mo, the Munchhausen's mothers who are poisoning and injecting and doing all kinds of things that could be fatal under the guise of caring for a sick child. And then we have, uh, something more like an explosive loss of control. And this happens a lot.

In, in the sixties, there were these battered babies who we learned about battered baby syndrome, where particularly a new mother would not know that shaking a newborn baby could lead to major brain injury or even death. So there were very many different categories. There's also women who in conjunction with a violent partner who might have actually started out having a decent.

Bond with their baby, but the partner becomes more and more jealous and more and more controlling and [00:33:00] finds the baby an intrusion into his relationship with his partner. And together they end up torturing or. Killing a baby. Again, losing all sight of the humanity and vulnerability of that baby. But without that violent partnership, they wouldn't have killed or harmed.

So those are the kinds of really distinct categories we see. And then I suppose another one is that altruistic. So a mother who has a very so-called altruistic fillic side. So a mother who will have. A profoundly disabled child or baby and won't see that that child is still worthy of life and feels that mm-hmm.

You know, to, to help. I'll put that in quotes. The child needs to be killed. And again, in most of these cases, when the women are convicted, when they have come out of the terrible relationships or back into a sense of reality and mental stability. The pain and heart and [00:34:00] guilt of what they've done is, is horrendous and is something we have to work with.

And be aware that homicidal urge can also flip over into a suicidal one. 

Dr. Kerry: I'm thinking of two cases, and they were two separate cases. One I read years ago about a mom who basically didn't care for her child. She had a baby in and then toddler and she didn't feed her regularly. And this child died at four years old based on starvation.

And then there's another case where recently in the United States where the mother actually went away on the trip, leaving the child back. This is a like a toddler infant back home alone. And then the child die. The child died. You know? Yeah, I agree. There's something deeply disturbing, and I think that's part of what bothers us, is that we do have this inherent idea that women should be above this.

It should be perfect that the maternal object, and when we fail in that due to whatever reason, lots of myriads of reasons, then we as a society don't quite know what to do with that. We don't know how to hold space for that very well. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Absolutely. And things like untreated mental [00:35:00] illness, untreated postpartum psychosis.

Or situations. I know one tragic case in New York where a woman who had been calling up the police saying, my husband is gonna kill me and the kids, I have to get away, and the police didn't interfere or intervene or protect her. She ended up driving into the Hudson with her. Dying and three of her four children drowned.

And that was an act of just pure desperation. No one would say she was, you know, a bad mother, but she felt she had no other recourse. Right. We can sit back and say, you could have done this or that, or why didn't, right, right, 

right. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Child protective services get involved, but, so there are many different acts, uh, many different motivations.

And the neglect you describe is also the kind of part of the mind of the mother that thinks she can go away for. Several days and leave a child unattended and then come back and the poor child has died, but has also been suffering during that time. Again, that's been that, [00:36:00] and you just think, well, part of your mind doesn't see this vulnerable human being, and what else could we as a society have done to notice that blind spot to help.

But at the end of the day, a Charles is. Died and that's, 

Dr. Kerry: yeah. Yeah. Well this is a fascinating discussion. I can tell you, and I can go a long time on this topic, so I'd love to jump over to the podcast extra and talk about what are some of the signs that we are failing to see that a woman has a potential.

'cause you talked a lot about the hidden or the way that women disguise the signs that they have a potential to be, that they're moving into trouble or to be violent. So let's talk about that in the podcast extra, but how can people learn more about you and your work? 

Dr. Anna Motz: Well, thank you. I mean, I suppose the easiest way is to look at my book, which the US version is called, uh, if Love Could Kill, and it's about the myths and truths of women who commit violence.[00:37:00]

And it covers a whole range of topics, including intimate partner, terrorism, and this notion of altruistic killing as well as other perhaps less. Potentially less fatal acts like stalking, although that can also unfortunately lead to fatalities. So that's one really great way, I think, for people to learn more about the work.

Dr. Kerry: Well, thank you for that. I'll be sure to put that in the show notes. And thank you so much for joining me today, Anna. This has been a fascinating discussion. 

Dr. Anna Motz: Oh, thank you. It's been a great pleasure to talk with you.