Welcome back!
Hi readers! I hope everyone had a good week.
This week we were asked to read the first chapters of a couple of books concerning themselves with evil (The Science of Evil by Simon Baren-Cohen, Evil by Roy Baumeister and The Lucier Effect by Philip Zimbardo). These books all discussed a different aspect of evil, save for the fact that they all used awful, violent and hateful acts to illustrate evil. During our class discussion, we spent quite a bit of time discussing where the onus for an evil act lies. Some of us thought that the social circumstances surrounding an evil act were to blame, while others wanted to blame the individual entirely.
In my opinion, there are TWO sets of circumstances that can set the stage for an evil act. There is either 1) an evil act, 2) an evil intention (or both) and A) an evil social setting, and B) an evil person who should take all of the responsibility (or both). One may commit an act of evil, but may not have the intention to cause harm (i.e. killing someone in a car accident unintentionally), or they can have the intention to hurt someone but fail to do anything. Similarly, someone can find themselves completely responsible for the evil act, or they may just be a victim of social circumstances, or both. For example, the case of Josef Fritzl stuck out to me from the readings. He lived in Austria and kidnapped his daughter, keeping her captive in their basement for 24 years. Throughout this time, he raped her repeatedly and got her pregnant, which resulted in 7 children (Baron-Cohen, 2011). Josef is one of the individuals who committed an evil act with an evil intention. He selfishly wanted someone who he could rape for his own benefit. His acts of kidnapping, imprisonment and rape were thought out and planned, they were not a result of adverse social circumstances. I think that the purest form of evil is someone who takes it upon themselves to commit an evil act with complete intention.
Our class discussion got me thinking a lot about instances where evil acts could be understood and even forgiven. I tend to lean towards forgiving those who committed an evil act without intention, or those who fall victim to evil social circumstances. It is for this reason that I picked a CBC article that covered the case of a women who killed her husband. The only reason why I think that this murder is justifiable is because the husband was physically and mentally abusing his wife.
Debbie Doonanco
I will post the link so you can read the article, however, I will provide a small summary of the case to give my argument some context. The couple, Debbie and Kevin, lived in Alberta at the time of Kevin’s murder. During the weeks and months leading up to the homicide, Kevin was using illicit drugs and was being physically abusive towards Debbie. It culminated on May 25th when Kevin, who was high on drugs, loaded a gun and fired a shot at Debbie. He was threatening to kill her and her parents if she ever reported the abuse, and so in an act of what I can assume is self-defence, Debbie shot Kevin. Debbie was subsequently charged with shooting Kevin twice and then burning his remains.
I don’t condone what Debbie did, but it is easy for me to understand her mentality. Murdering Kevin was an act of defense on behalf of herself and her parents. It is likely that if Kevin had not been abusive, he would still be alive. Debbie found herself in a set of evil social circumstances.
Who do you think is more evil?
Interviews with Women Convicted of Murder: Battered Women Syndrome Revised
In order to help me gauge whether Debbie should be held accountable, I searched for some psychological research that looked at women who kill their intimate partners.
For some context, I learned that women are more likely to be killed by their intimate partner than all other types of assailants combined (Stevens, 1999). This last statistic makes me wonder why women are always warned to run from evil strangers, yet the really evil ones are those that we’re closest with.
The research also states that it’s not uncommon for women convicted of killing their husbands to experience brutal and repeated assaults, failures to escape, exposure to alcohol or drug abuse, and death threats prior to the murder (Stevens, 1999). Common emotional feelings felt by battered wives include depression, terror, isolation, low self-esteem, and helplessness. Convicted wives who are guilty of their husband’s murder explain that they killed their male partners in an attempt to avoid further abuse. In summary, homicide is often used as a last resort mechanism of self-defence to avoid further victimization (Stevens, 1999).
This research illustrated something I saw a lot throughout the readings; people who kill in an act of self-defence. It was clear that in these stories, these individuals would be completely innocent if they found themselves in a different set of circumstances. In his book, Baron-Cohen writes about the rape of Mirindi Euprazi from the Congo. Mirindi’s son was forced to rape her by rebels who were threatening death (Baron-Cohen, 2011). This case is similar to Debbie’s as both of them committed unthinkable acts but were just trying to escape their own demise. Can we truly blame them and call their acts evil?
References
Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). The Science of Evil. Philadelphia: Basic Books.
Johnston, J. (2016, October 19). Women on trial for murder had battered wife syndrome, lawyer says. CBC News. Retrived from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/woman-on-trial-for-murder-had-battered-wife-syndrome-lawyer-says-1.3811274
Stevens, D. J. (1999). Interviews with women convicted of murder: Battered women syndrome revisited. International Review of Victimology, 6, 117-135.
Jessica's Evil Psychology 
Hey Jessica!
I loved how clearly you explained your belief and provided examples for better explanation of what you exactly meant by act / intension and social setting/ responsibility.
To be honest with you, I never truly had a certain perspective or belief on ‘evil’ or just looking at ‘intentional acts’ as you had named them. I believed there were circumstances and situations that we might find ourselves in (from either perspective – victim or perpetrator as it may be). As a female, and having spoken to a lot of females about their situations, it is fair to say that the majority of women have been in a certain situation, that one could describe as ‘evil’. Do you think that perspectives might change from then on out on what or what acts are evil or not?
Reflecting on Josef Fritzl, when I was living in Germany, the media coverage and social outcry on this particular act of cruelty was incredible. What I mean by incredible, is thinking about how people were obviously angered by Josef and what he had done, but what was very interesting to me, was how horrified people were, of the thought that his wife did not know or do anything about this situation. The anger for his wife was at times even more intense than for Josef himself.
Now, thinking about your definition of evil, do you think her ‘not acting’ in this case, would be considered an evil act? Would this be the intentionality you were speaking about?
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Hi Marley! That’s very interesting about Josef Fritzl and it really angers me, honestly. Assuming the wife did not know he was keeping their daughter in the basement, it isn’t her fault. While I do think she is naive, I don’t think it was a situation of willful blindness. I do however think that there are shades of evil, or dimensions, and that if she did know, that’s one of the lesser shades of evil. She didn’t really have the intention to harm anyone, nor did she fail to cause harm, so I think that would fall somewhere in the middle.
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Hi Jessica,
I agree with your stance that the purest act of evil is done by an individual who has a specific evil intention and carries out that evil act. However, it’s important to consider the role of society and circumstances in setting the stage for that person to harbor those evil intentions in the first place.
The majority of people who commit evil acts do not do it for the pure fun of it: this is part of the myth of pure evil. There is a small minority who do (and likely have a corresponding difference in their brain stracture, like a sadistic psychopath who lacks the capacity for empathy), but most people have been shaped in some way by their experiences. What made Josef Fritzl feel the need to imprison and rape his daughter? Perhaps something he had experienced in the past, something that he perceived as an injustice or blow to his ego, led him down the path that ended in his evil behaviour. Society likely played a role as well, perhaps shaping his perception that part of being a man is expressing dominance over others. So, the question is, would Josef be a case of “pure” evil? Evil is always more complex than meets the eye!
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I agree with your opinion about the circumstances that could set the stage for an evil act, however, I disagree with the clear lines drawn between act and intention and the scenarios in which evil can occur. There’s no hard and fast definition of evil, but the consensus we’ve derived in class is more along the lines of “you know it when you see it.” Josef Fritzl is a great example of a horrible person, generations of people who know that story will never call him otherwise. However, from his point of view, what he was doing may not have been evil, so can it really be considered evil intention? I’m not sure. I think in the case of Debbie and Kevin, they are both evil in different ways, but the evil that Debbie participated in can be more easily justified than the selfish sort of evil we see from Kevin. I think that the article you discussed provided a lot of insight into what Debbie may have been going through and why she made the choice to kill Kevin. I think that in these cases where a spouse kills another, we can never get a full picture of the evil because one party cannot tell their side of the story. Very insightful blog post… this gave me a lot to think about regarding acts of evil that can be justified in the minds of society.
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