Behavioral Profile of Killer Katherine Knight - Case Study Example

Behavioral Profile of Katherine Knight Katherine Knight was born in the town of Aberdeen, New South Wales to a family that was well known in the conservative town. The circumstances of her birth may have played a role in her subsequent relationships with men as she was a daughter of her mother, who was married at the time to Jack Roughan, and Ken Knight, Roughan’s co-worker with whom she had an affair. Katherine’s mother was often a victim of domestic violence meted out to her by her partner Ken Knight, and it is stated that there were times when Katherine witnessed her father raping her mother up to ten times a day, a situation which was most likely not only traumatizing for the young girl but also made a lasting impression. Barbara, Katherine’s mother, was quite open concerning her opinion of men stating how much she hated them and how they could only be tolerated. In addition to such declarations, Barbara also used to give her daughter intimate details concerning her sex life, and to such a young person, it must have made an impression. It is most likely that the impression that she received from the relationship of her parents resulted in her unstable relationship with all the men that came into her life later on. During her childhood, the Knights lived with their Ken’s family and this might also have come to influence Katherine’s behavioral attitudes in later years. She was very close to one of her uncles, who was a well known horse man, but his untimely death as a result of suicide devastated Katherine and to this day, she claims that his ghost visits her often. There was a history of abuse from her relatives from the she was quite young to the age of eleven and while this was doubted at first, her family has since confirmed it. The abuse that she suffered at the hands of her relatives must have been traumatizing for her and it is possible that such abuse is partly responsible for the attitude that she developed towards men. It is possible that such abuse resulted in the development of her violent nature which may have come about as a reflex to defend herself against any form of abuse of perceived abuse. Her ability to adapt to the abusive environment in which she lived with her relatives may have resulted in her shunning any sense of permanence in her subsequent relationships, which were often mired in violence, separations, and reconciliations (Puniskis, 2010). While she may have adapted to the violent nature of her upbringing, she seems to have lacked the skills which would have been necessary for her to survive in a regular environment, which had set norms and expectations. In addition, she seemed obsessed with having stability in her life through her being with quite a number of men in her subsequent life, perhaps as a means of compensating for the distance displayed to her by most of her family. Despite her attempts at having a stable relationship, it can be assumed that she was not well equipped to handle the responsibilities which came with such relationships, because she had no role model within her family who she could emulate. The paternal presence in the life of a child is extremely important because the child gets to have a balanced upbringing due to the availability of both parents. This is true in cases where the mother of the child has done all the things that she can for the child but cannot take on the masculine role in the child’s life, as seen in the case of Katherine, who had a negligent and intimidating father. This is where the presence of the father is needed because without it, the void which could have been filled by its father will remain vacant for the rest of the child’s life, resulting in the lack of development in certain characteristics. The presence of the father ensures that the child has a rich upbringing because since both parents have their own ways of parenting, the child will be able to have and learn in diverse ways. Where one parent can be considered to be extremely strict, in such cases the mother, the other will be mild, ensuring that there is a balance between the ways in which a child is treated. This was not the case in the life of Katherine Knight, who barely received any parental attention, especially from her father, and as a result of this, in addition to the sexual abuse she suffered from her relatives, she ended up developing a violent nature that would be with her for the rest of her life. In addition, had Katherine’s parents been actively involved in her life in a positive manner, then she would not have suffered from the lack of attention that many children who are raised in such situations tend to have. Among the latter, the lack of parental attention in their lives tends to make them attempt to compensate for this deficiency, and the majority of them end up being extremely violent in nature. The active presence of a parent, however, ends up countering such incidents and this eventually leads to the bringing up of the children into responsible people in society. The educational history of Katherine Knight is mired in controversy and this is because of the fact that she displayed a very violent streak from an early age. While in school, she was accused of attacking her fellow students in sudden bursts of anger and at one point stabbed her schoolmate. In addition, she was considered in general to be a bully by her school mates, who often did their best to avoid her. However, it was noted that whenever she was in a good mood, she was a model student who was diligent in her school work and served as an example to her fellow students. While this may have been the case, it seems that her true nature was one based on violence which tended to erupt suddenly and often ended up badly for those who were her targeted victims. During her time in school, she was a loner, preferring to spend time alone than in association with her fellow students and this can be attributed to her need to protect herself from an environment in which she thought that everyone was out to get her. It is possible that her nature as a loner was based on the sexual abuse that she experienced in her home, making her distrustful of other people as well (Haggerty et al, 2013). One of the most interesting things about Katherine Knight is the fact that despite all her years in school, she never knew how to read or write and this was starkly displayed in the note that she attempted to write to implicate someone else for the murder of John Price, her partner. Katherine Knight’s father was exceedingly incompetent and tended not to take his responsibilities seriously, at times completely neglecting his daughters. Along with childhood neglect through the abuse of alcohol that was the way of life for her irresponsible father, she was sexually abused by her relatives, who started doing this soon after the family moved in with them. In addition to this, her father was an alcoholic and aside from her very early exposure to alcohol, the Katherine’s father created a situation or environment where it seemed fine for the children to take alcohol alongside him and this is perhaps the reason for her own teenage and adult alcohol use. Through the description of this state of her upbringing, one is able to make a connection between the genetic and environmental influences on Katherine Knight that might have made her into the violent woman that she later became. The detachment that her mother displayed towards her predicament may have also led to the development of her attitude towards life, where she most likely believed that all of her problems could be solved through violent means (Kocsis, 2004). While this may be the case, Katherine Knight seems to have an inaccurate opinion that, outside of her violent nature born out of minor insults, she did not have any behavioral health problems. The fact remains that after leaving school, she managed to get a job at a local abattoir, which she claimed was her dream job and it is through her work that she developed the obsession of keeping butcher knives close to where she slept in order to defend herself. She became pregnant at the age of nineteen after she married David Kellett, a man that she completely dominated, often getting involved in his fights. Because of her failure to connect with her father, it seems that the same became the situation with her husband, and this may have been the reason why she often sought to dominate him and all subsequent men in her life (Hanson, 2009). Perhaps it was an attempt not to go through the rape and intimidation that her mother went through with her father. Despite the fact that she was heavily pregnant, because of her husband coming home late on one occasion, she burnt all of his clothes and hit him over the head with a frying pan, Kellett barely escaping with a badly fractured skull. Thus, her violent nature was carried to her adulthood and this caused much turmoil in her life especially after the birth of her daughter when her husband left her for another woman, moving away to another state to be with her. From this time onwards, Katherine seems to have quite a long legal history because she had been arrested on numerous occasions for her violent behavior, but somehow, she often managed to convince those she had assaulted, normally her husbands or partners, to drop the charges. Despite the fact that she was arrested on numerous occasions for assault, the time she spent behind bars appears less than might be expected, since she was often ruled a mental case and sent to psychiatric institutions for treatment. It can be said that it was through the behavior displayed by Katherine Knight throughout her life that she came to be tied to the murder of her partner John Price. The violence that she had displayed from childhood well into her adult relationships ensured that there could be no doubt concerning her murder of Price (Crofts, 2012). From the way in which she, murdered, butchered and cooked parts of the body of John Price, it can be said that it was a display of the treatment that she had suffered at the hands of her relatives who had sexually abused her. In addition, it can be said to be a manifestation of the way in which the abuse and intimidation that her father had put her mother through. The violence which Ken Knight meted out to his wife had a lasting impression on their daughter and this can be accounted for through her long history of violent behavior towards those involved in her life. The murder of Price and his decapitation was a sign of the hatred that she felt not only towards him but also towards other men. This may have come out of the fact that she had failed to completely dominate him as she had once dominated David Kellett, a situation which would most likely have been possible for an individual such as Katherine, who was used to getting her way. The psychological condition in which Knight was found after the murder showed that she was a condition of denial, having blocked the memory of the murder which she had committed. There was an attempt by her lawyers to plead guilty for manslaughter but this was denied, and the resulting trial led to her being given the harshest sentence to a woman in Australian history. While there has been a lot of public condemnation for her actions, one would say that Knight’s case, in a psychological viewpoint is completely misunderstood. It is the various circumstances in her life, especially during her developmental period, which led to the violent tendencies that she came to display in later life. Thus, her case has to be handled with as much understanding as possible, and in addition to her incarceration, she has to be accorded psychiatric help to help her realize the consequences of her actions. References Crofts, P. (2012). Monstrous Wickedness And The Judgment Of Knight. Griffith Law Review, 21(1), 72-100. Haggerty, K. P. et al. (2013). Parent and peer predictors of violent behavior of black and white teens. Violence and Victims, 28(1), 145-60. Hanson, R. K. (2009). The psychological assessment of risk for crime and violence. Canadian Psychology, 50(3), 172-182. Kocsis, R. N. (2004). Profiling the criminal mind: Does it actually work? The Lancet, 364, 14-5. Puniskis, M. J. (2010). Profiling violent crimes: An investigative tool. Crime Prevention and Community Safety, 12(4), 287-290. Read More