Learning Objective #1: The learner will be able to describe the issues a girl who must deal with her father after her father has killed her mother.

Learning Objective #2: The learner will be able to explain three public policy recommendations that arise from this research on daughters of interparental homicide.

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Purpose: The effect on children of the murder of a parent by the other parent, uxoricide, is immediate and devastating.  Usually in a single act the child loses both parents.  The purpose of this study is to add to the understanding of the experience of uxoricide from the perspective of an adult who had this experience as a child.  This data is part of a larger study of adult survivors of uxoricide. Eighty-six people have been interviewed.  Data in this presentation is specific to a select subgroup of participants, specifically women participants whose mothers where killed by their biological father who did not subsequently commit suicide.
Method: Data were collected with two interviews from 31 informants. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using hermeneutic phenomenology. 
Findings:.  The daughters had a wide range of experiences with their father.  Many adult daughters purposely choose to have a relationship with their father following his release from prison.  For some daughters this provided an opportunity to learn more about the only parent they still had, others wanted to learn more about their father’s motivation. And many believed their mother’s would have wanted them to take care of the father. Most of the daughters struggled with the issue of forgiveness.  Policy implications include (a) the necessity of providing psychological counseling for daughters of uxoricide to help them decide how to relate their fathers, (b) financial support for these victims that will allow them to have near-as-possible to normal childhoods and visit their fathers if desired, (c) reentry programs for fathers and daughters after release from prison.