U.Va. offers help to orphans’ caregivers

In September, a 24-year-old Chesterfield County man shot and killed his estranged wife then himself. The couple's two children, ages 3 and 1, lost both parents.

For relatives or others who assumed care of the children, it might be hard to know what to say if one day they are asked what happened and why.

University of Virginia researchers are testing a Web-based support program they believe can help guardians or caregivers who step in to take care of children orphaned when one parent kills the other.

"These people have a lot of questions, so our Web site includes things like 'ask the expert,'" U.Va. nursing professor Barbara J. Parker said.

"Someone can send in a question, and the expert will get back to them," Parker said. "Eventually we will make those into a frequently-asked-question component. There is also going to be online support where people can anonymously give support to each other."

Parker and nursing professors Richard H. Steeves and Kathryn Laughon received a two-year, $275,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to develop the intervention model.

The researchers are seeking adults taking care of children 16 and younger who had one parent killed by the other. The death could have occurred at any time in the past.

"No one has focused on these families at all," said Laughon, lead investigator for the study. "Each family feels alone."

Nationwide, about 4,000 children lose a mother or father each year when one parent kills the other, the researchers said.

A Virginia Department of Health report on family and intimate-partner violence noted that in 2005, 56 children were present during a homicide in which one family member killed another, including eight who saw the homicide; five children who were attacked by the alleged killer and survived; five who heard the injury being inflicted; and four who found the homicide victim.

The U.Va. research will focus on the caregivers -- measuring their stress, coping behaviors and use of resources. In the study, some guardians or caretakers will get referrals to traditional resources. Others will get the study intervention, which includes access to private chat rooms, access to experts, and information learned from previous research.

Previous work by the researchers has examined how the survivors of such trauma cope years later.

Parker said one of the biggest issues is that adults who lost a parent talk about how as children, they were not allowed to talk about what happened.

"There were several aspects to that," Parker said. "For some of them, they would be adopted by an aunt and uncle in another part of the country. The family would say to them, 'It was a terrible thing that happened, but just get over it, start a new life, don't look back.' . . .

"Sometimes if the children were in any way a witness, they were told by the courts not to talk about it until after the trial. The trial is usually in a year. After the trial, no one ever says, 'Now it's OK to talk about it.' Plus, the families have gotten into the habit of, 'This is something we don't talk about.'"

There also was a sense that guardians did not know what to say and were uncomfortable. She said that in their interviews, the adults who had been orphaned talked about wanting to know what happened.

"It wasn't until they were adults that many went to get court records, old newspapers," Parker said.

Contact Tammie Smith at (804) 649-6572 or .