Filicide - Chapter One
Filicide (Almost)
Filicide (n): is the deliberate act of a parent killing their own child. The word filicide is derived from the Latin words filius and filia ('son' and 'daughter') and the suffix -cide, from the word caedere meaning 'to kill'. The word can refer to both the crime and perpetrator of the crime. In 1969, Dr. Phillip Resnick published research on filicide and stated that there were five main motives for filicide, including "altruistic", "fatal maltreatment", "unwanted child", "acutely psychotic" and "spousal revenge".
Several of these categories are fitting for the household I grew up in. Two stick out the most to me. The fatal maltreatment and acutely psychotic. Acutely psychotic filicide occurs when a parent in the throes of acute psychosis (e.g., experiencing command hallucinations) kills his or her child with no comprehensible motive. Fatal maltreatment filicide may occur as a result of child abuse, neglect, or Munchausen syndrome by proxy. In fatal maltreatment killings, the goal is not always to kill the child, but death may occur anyway. Acutely psychotic is a match for many of our childhood experiences, such as being chased with a knife or threatened with death in the car. But fatal maltreatment is a match for what occurred over the course of my sister’s life.
My name is Victoria and I live with my husband of ten years, Jack, and 9-year-old son, Owen. He’s the happiest kid in the world. I’m sure I’ll take advantage of every opportunity to paste him in this book because he brings joy to my heart. Yours will be warmed too. You’ll see, it’ll be great.
Wait, did I just create an opportunity? I think I did. (Sadly… I had to take this picture out for the sake of anonymity… I so wish I could share his adorable face).
No one would guess I’m the live version of the dead kids in the magazine killed by their mother that shock the nation. But I’m not dead. Neither are my sisters (this was written in the fall of 2024, and Rose passed in January of 2025). That means we are rarely believed. I write this book because I’ve only met one person in my life to report life threatening abuse from a parent. She is much younger than myself and likened the experience to dying inside a little every day, invisibly. And I’ve never met anyone whose mother told them to kill themselves, even with the infamous “why don’t you go slit your throat?” as she said to me Christmas vacation of 2002 (home for the holidays from college. Merry Christmas.), or anyone whose mother told them, as well as their siblings, that they deserve to die. But I do believe and know there are people like me out there (other than my siblings… more on them later), who probably feel all alone in this as I do. So here I sit, lonely, writing to you.
One of the first things I want to say is this book is not about being a victim. Sometimes, when I tell my stories, I feel like people think I believe I’m the trauma queen. Not sure who would want to be the trauma queen anyway. But we all know it’s probably in my head. Moving on.
I am also well aware there are many severe traumas in the world, and my heart goes out to each and every one of you. People who work on and overcome traumas are warriors. Because no matter what, you’re facing a painful uphill battle. And you have been the people who carried me through my darkest days. Severe traumas certainly include fighting in war, sexual abuse, having alcoholic abusive parents, parental abandonment, racial trauma, growing up in a war zone, etc. I have not directly experienced many of these severe traumas. I cannot speak to the impact these traumas have on individuals as I feel it’s comparing apples and oranges. What I will say, is that I’ve often felt alone in my trauma being understood. While we all have our own powerful and unique stories, I often feel some of the broader categories of severe traumas have more community access to others who have experienced the same, more understanding of the impact, and perhaps more general acceptance in society. That being said, society’s understanding of the effect of trauma on individuals with CPTSD is still staggeringly inadequate.
However; what I mean by that is society generally understands that soldiers’ lives were threatened and have a heart for their reactivity when they come back from war (which they certainly deserve). I believe if individuals disclose their parents sexually abused them, they are less likely to hear as adults they should be talking to them. I’ve heard from one individual it still happens… horrible. But I’m guessing less, and I could be wrong! This book is about my experience only, although I love gaining perspective from the experiences and depth of other individuals.
My point is… how am I doing??? Maybe I’ll find out in the course of writing this book. I was essentially thrown out of an insane asylum (or did I run?) at 18, with zero life skills, support, and a wicked case of CPTSD. I started therapy as soon as I started college and have probably spent hundreds of thousands on it by now. Essentially, when I left, I began the process of growing up.
I suppose when you compare me to the paths my sisters’ lives took, I’m doing well overall. But I overreact. I have panic attacks. I sometimes get angry, followed by a lot of guilt and shame. But I’ve done decades of therapy. While I can’t claim to be great at relationships, I’ve managed to build long term friendships for myself that have spanned decades. And I’m really proud of my son! You know how they say that people with trauma either repeat the pattern or go the other direction? I definitely went the other direction and that’s why he looks so happy. I broke a trauma cycle and I am proud of that. But… no idea how to discipline him… my husband counterbalances that… I had to learn on Google and I’m doing the best I can.
But now I’m asking, where’s my comparison on who knows what it’s like to have your “mother” attempting to kill you while your brain was developing? I’m pretty sure my symptomatology is essentially a cross between a veteran and a child abuse victim. Society understands veterans feeling like they are going to get killed when gunshots or fireworks go off. But I seriously sometimes think I’m going to die when someone is mad at me. And threats and attempts on my life were occurring while my brain was developing by the person I was supposed to call “mom.” So even a combo of those two I feel like isn’t the same. My point is, doctors are stingy with the benzos and no one understands.
I was 40 years old when I first learned the word “Filicide,” this year, 2024. I was in search of community. I wanted to know if what I was telling people was, in fact, reality. That I couldn’t easily track down individuals with similar life-threating childhood experiences. I learned the term, but I quickly realized I was right. There is no community that I could find. Anyone to reach out to. Although I learned the term when I found a study of seven live children of attempted filicide. The children either had to have wounds to prove it or the parents had to admit it. I wouldn’t qualify. My injuries are invisible and the idea of my parents admitting fault in the slightest is laughable. I promise, I HOPED and TRIED for a long time to get through to them. It’s impossible and no psychologist would tell me to speak to them.
Why do I still feel like I have to explain this at this point??? Because, unfortunately, I probably do. I promise, many people are ready to say my parents really love me, I should calm down, stop being so angry, I’m vengeful, just forgive, reconcile (with the people who tried to murder me???). I’ve heard it all.
Even after I tell them my worst stories (which until recently, was rare). That my “mother” chased my sister and I with a knife and our father gaslit us for decades (alongside his delusional wife) over a replaced basement door with nearly a dozen knife marks/holes. And that she threatened to run myself and multiple other family members into trees killing everyone in the car. I remember it twice happening to me and both times it was due to a music choice (Incubus “Drive” and Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss” are my murder songs in case you wanted to know). I always want to say the Incubus song is called “Water over Wine” because that’s what I recall the lead singer repetitively crooning out as I contemplated whether or not I was about to die.
Even after all this, so many people tell me I should reconcile with my “parents.” It’s fucking weird. I understand where everyone is coming from, but I feel like no one hears me. Honestly I really do, parents should love their children. I’m biologically wired to adore Owen. It just makes sense. But I’ve had a different experience. Also, they have been abusing my sister, Rose, for 42 years. There is a real-life example of what they want to do to me. It’s not pretty. And I do not see it as her fault given the abuse she’s endured. Many judged and will continue to judge, but in a just world, most would realize absent a trauma history of death threats from parents, there is no room for judgement of my sister. And regardless, comparing trauma histories always seems a foolish task.
I know what you’re thinking. I must be leaving something out. There is good and bad to everybody right? I’ve heard that a lot. And while I work hard myself not to see things in black and white, I genuinely cannot point to any actions my “parents” took in raising us that was out of the kindness of their own heart. We got expensive presents, sure. Shopping was one of Beth Balcom’s favorite things, but it was clearly for her. She wouldn’t give receipts and even if you hated it, you owed her. Strings were attached to everything. Sure, we received pets, but if those pets are later abused or utilized to threaten children with putting them to sleep or giving them away, were they truly a gift? So, when I look back, it’s impossible to tell if any truly kind action was taken by these two. And while I don’t want to think in black and white, are you supposed to look for the good in people who repeatedly threaten your life and pretend it isn’t happening??
My parents are Gary and Beth Balcom. I strongly speculate, after 40 years on this planet in my weird little world, that the reason I’m rarely believed has to do with Gary’s career. I have taken out specifics on Gary Balcom and will simply tell you he had an Ivy League education and worked as a top executive for an international food/beverage company for decades. In 2011, Gary was supposed to retire. But I think he quickly realized that retirement meant more time alone with Beth Balcom, and began a new role consulting with an international company.
You see, despite the above, how do I explain to people this is a delusional man? A doctor recently described his condition as a highly likely case of Folie de Deux, or Shared Delusional Disorder, which is psychosis passed from a psychotic person to a non-psychotic person. Perfect description, I just wasn’t aware it had a name. My middle sister, Rose, recently described it as trying to explain to people a Chihuahua in total control of a terrified Great Dane. How do we explain this? How do I explain to people that this man, who made all this money, refused to divorce a woman with no job, skills, or anything to offer other than spending all his money and severely abusing the entire family? How do I explain to people that it doesn’t seem that he’s especially smart, it’s just every brain cell went to his career field while he has the emotional IQ of a potato?
I don’t know how to explain it. Perhaps this book will help. I truly get why so few understand. I don’t understand why “religion” was important enough not to divorce the woman who was threatening the lives of his children. Unfortunately, not only did he not protect us, he used us as human shields. At very young ages, in some of my earliest memories, I recall them fighting in the kitchen. She would scream late into the night, often four to six hours at a time. We would sit at the top of the stairs, three small girls up way past our bedtime, trying to comfort each other as plate after plate hit the cabinets above his head. Sometimes Gary would yell back, but it was rare.
By the way, I want you to know there aren’t words in the English language for me to describe the ferocity, length, volume, cruelty, and explosive rage of Beth Balcom’s screaming. Please just accept it’s beyond anything I could put on paper. Although I’m an adult, the memories still strike fear to my very core. For a young child, so dependent on cruel adults, with no protection in the world, those memories are terrifying and they have haunted me for life. One of my earliest memories is this huge, gaping, wide open, screaming mouth on my “mother’s” face at I’m guessing about 5-years old, towering over me, scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. This memory still haunts me. The reason she was screaming in such a horrifying fashion is because the fat, black cat we had at the time had peed on a stack of freshly washed towels. I’m not sure what I could have had to do with this thinking back as that cat had a cat door. Further, we had just inherited the cat from Beth’s mother, whom we called “Granny” after she recently passed. Granny was a joyful alcoholic from how she’s been described, and well loved. She was not abusive per Beth’s sister, Anne Green. I’m not sure how long we had that cat before Beth decided to drop her dead mother’s cat at the animal shelter.
One day, though, Gary Balcom stopped yelling back and the dish sets no longer needed replacing as frequently. I suppose it would have been in the early 90’s, when he started his position as an executive with a top international food/beverage company. Gary Balcom figured out that if he agreed with everything Beth Balcom said and did, no matter how delusional and no matter how harmful, she would go after his children instead. And that’s exactly what he did.
References:
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-030-85493-5_7-1
https://jaapl.org/content/33/4/496