A mother who allegedly drowned her four-year-old son was remanded in custody for nine days by a Tel Aviv District Court judge on Wednesday and sent for a psychiatric evaluation, while police investigators suspected the murder was premeditated.
The boy's death, which is the third similar case that a child was allegedly killed by a family member, scared Israeli society and covered many pages of newspapers, but psychiatrists said the pressure of society and the media's detailed reports led to these terrible killing occurred one after another.
Mother Is Murderer?
Regina Kruchkov on 22:30 p.m. of Tuesday evening called police and claimed that she had murdered her child, Michael, by submerging his head in a tub filled with water.
Policemen, who located her apartment by telephone number, arrived at the scene in southern Tel Aviv immediately, finding the boy's body lying naked on the bed.
The medical team that arrived shortly afterwards concluded the boy was already dead for some time and took the body for an autopsy process.
Later in questioning, the 31-year-old mother admitted to killing Michael but found it difficult to explain the reason. She said sorry for what she had done and said she deserved punishment. The court decided to remand her in custody for nine days while she would be sent for mental observation.
Kruchkov's lawyer said she was in complete shock, crying and unable to explain her deeds. He said Kruchkov was known to be a loving mother to her child by her neighbors and everyone who came into contact with her and the only explanation to her deeds was her mental state of mind. Kruchkov's brother said she had been suffering lately from depression after she broke up with her boy friend.
Kruchkov's parents, who live in a nearby apartment, were also present when police arrived at the scene. Her father was detained for questioning and her mother was in need of medical attention following the incident. The father was released later Wednesday as police found no evidence connecting him to the boy's death.
Reporter Is Accessory?
Kruchkov is not the first parent that shocks Israeli society in recent weeks. On Thursday night 42-year-old Rishon Lezion resident Olga Borisov was arrested on suspicion of drowning her four-year-old son Alon in the sea.
The incident occurred just a few days after the publication of Ronny Ron's case, who admitted to murdering his granddaughter Rose Pizem. The girl's body has yet to be found despite an extensive police search.
A detailed report of a murder in the family or a suicide event might lead some people, who were having the same thoughts, to commit those deeds, a psychiatrist of the Ichilov medical center, told local daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
According to Dr. Shaul Shriver, the phenomenon is known by the expression "social contagion".
Shriver explained that it happens to people who are not mentally stable and the reports in the media gives these people some legitimacy to perform the acts they were already thinking about. A detailed murder case or suicide event reported in the media may loosen completely the "breaks" of such an unstable person freeing him to perform the thoughts that were already running through his mind.
Society Is Answer?
Local psychiatrists pointed out another fact that clearly stands out in these three cases of murder is that these horrible acts occurred in families of immigrants, who may be more subject than the native families to severe stress in the relatively tensions environment.
Israeli society and culture can be at times extremely stressful. Problems from work and families, tangled with the tough geopolitical space Israel occupies, may aggravate anxiety and cause people who are already stressed and unstable to go at certain times over the brink, perhaps unconscious of what they are doing.
Social worker Sandra Kulyuk of the municipality, who had dealt with the Kruchkov's case, said that Kruchkov and her son Michael were declared a single parent family a couple of years ago when she tried to finance the boy's preschool nursery play group.
The nursery attendants said the mother often hugged Michael and at times it was difficult to take apart of him. The boy, however, suffered from a slight speech disability that improved significantly of late.
Source:Xinhua
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