Let's not forget murder in murder-suicide

UNACCEPTABLE: Bradley and Ellen Livingstone, of Dunedin, were gunned down by their father - who had been served a protection order by their mother for violent behaviours.

Happy New Year, readers.

Unfortunately, 2016 is barely two weeks old, and we've had an unthinkable tragedy on our doorstep.

In the early hours of January 4, Damien Little bundled his two boys, aged four years and 10 months, into the family station wagon before driving the car head-long off a wharf into the swells below. Father and sons perished, devastating their community of Port Lincoln, South Australia.

In the days that followed, Damien Little's family gave interviews with news media, describing him as "top bloke", "loving husband", "perfect father". His "spiral into depression" was hinted as a motive.

This made me uncomfortable. Why the glowing accolades for a man who killed the very things he swore to love and protect? As Australian anti-violence campaigner Phil Cleary put it "[He drove] his car at high speeds off a wharf, terrifying the children and left them to drown in the sea. It's an ... appalling brutal, violent act."

Little is not the first of his kind to receive the 'misunderstood victim' treatment. In 2014, New South Wales man Geoff Hunt, who shot his wife and children, was framed in early media reports as a devoted family man, who snapped from the stress of caring for his disabled wife.

In the UK, marital troubles were blamed for tipping Michael Pederson, who stabbed his kids to death, over the edge.

Here at home, the coverage surrounding Edward Livingstone who, having several protection orders issued against him by his wife, shot his young son and daughter, turned into a debate about access to adequate mental health services.

This seems to be the privilege of being a white male in our society. He kills his family, and he is humanised. A decent bloke, who acted out of character. There must have been a reason -- financial stress, a cheating wife, depression.

But, says Professor Carolyn Harris Johnson, a expert on familicide from the University of Western Australia, such crimes are usually caused by "violence, a need to control, and a proprietary attitude" -- an attitude upheld by a society which still sees women and children as an extension of the men they're related to.

Familicide is often sanitised in media reports, Prof Harris Johnson said, as being an act of extreme devotion or of someone who wasn't in full control of their actions as this is easier for the public to swallow. Child murder is too confronting.

As for Damien Little, we don't yet know the full picture. But we need to stop tip-toeing around the issue of family violence. Framing a killer of children as a tragic, unfortunate victim of circumstance only feeds into a cultural attitude which routinely minimises and excuses such cruelty.

If we want to make change, we need to ditch the excuses and say we do not condone any violence. Maybe then wee Koda and Hunter Little's deaths won't be in vain.