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The murder of children is considered a particularly abhorrent crime in most societies; their physical and emotional vulnerability requires that people in general are strongly protective of them.
A great many murderers of children are relatives or caretakers.
In ancient times, a possible successor of a king or his supporters may try to eliminate other potential challengers or a coup d'etat to overthrow a child king would both result in child murders.
In modern times, the killing of children often follows on from child abuse which started as attempts at discipline through corporal punishment: as, for example, in the Victoria Climbié case which occurred in London.
Some murderers of children are pedophiles who commit lust murder or commit murder to cover up their other crimes. These latter cases are more notorious, although killings by family members are more common.
There have been a number of moral panics related to child murder, of which the most notable is the satanic ritual abuse phenomenon, where reports of organized killings of large numbers of children by satanic gangs have failed to be corroborated in spite of decades of investigation.
These moral panics have tended to obscure those rare cases where actual pedophile gangs have acted to prey upon children.
Several cases of exorcism carried out by family members or religious groups have resulted in the murders of children.
In most countries, there are very few cases where children are killed by other young children. One was the killing on November 24November 24 is the 328th day (329th on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 37 days remaining. Events 380 Theodosius I makes his adventus or formal entry, into Constantinople. 642 Theodore succeeds John IV as Pope. 1639 Jeremiah Ho, 19931993 is a common year starting on Friday and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003 Events January January 1 Czechoslovakia divides. Establishment of independent Slovakia and Czech Republic. of the almost three-year-old boy Jamie BulgerFor the American wanted by the FBI for murder, see James J. James Bulger ( March 16, 1990 February 12, 1993) was a toddler who was abducted and murdered by two ten year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson on Merseyside, in the United Kingdom. The m by two ten-year-old boys in LiverpoolFor alternate uses of "Liverpool" see Liverpool (disambiguation Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside in north west England, on the north side of the Mersey estuary. Liverpool is governed by Liverpool City Council, one of five council, EnglandEngland is the largest, the most populous, and the most densely populated of the four " Home Nations" which make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). Occupying the south-eastern portion of the island of Great Britain, England, UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly. He was beaten and stoned to death and his body left on the train tracks to make it appear that he had died by being hit by a train. Also there is the Mary BellMary Flora Bell (born in 1957 in England) is a child-killer, in both senses of the term: she killed children, but did so as a child herself. Mary's mother, Betty Bell, was a prostitute who often went to Glasgow on "business". She was also a disciplinarian case in the UK, although the verdict was manslaughter, not murder. These cases were regarded with national shock and revulsion, fed by the tabloid press.
Although the United States certainly has an unusually high number of killings of children by other children, it is most often the case that the perpetrators and victims are teenagers, not children. In many such cases, the youthful perpetrator is tried as an adult for their crime.
In 1992, after the fatal shooting of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis as he left the Cabrini-Green public housing project for school, the Chicago Tribune put every child murder on the front page (generally no murders were front page news). 62 child murders were reported that year.
Multiple deaths in one incident, such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre or the 1996 Dunblane massacre tend to gather the most media attention.
It is often claimed that due to media bias in the United States, a relatively small number of child killings in white, upper-class suburbia are given an inordinately large amount of attention, while the majority of victims that are minorities, urban-dwelling, and socioeconomically disadvantaged receive little or no media attention.