Is the graphic of "Parental Child Homicides by Gender of Perpetrator" based on a real 2016 paper by Ribaux, L., et al.? No, that's not true: No such article appeared in the journal Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, as cited in the graphic. The issue's table of contents contains no article by an author with the last name Ribaux, nor is there any article on the topic.
The claim appeared in a post and image (archived here) by the @cirnosad account on X on Aug. 26, 2026. It read:
You absolute wh*re, women are the primary murderers of children. Always have been, always will be.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @cirnosad on X.)
The graphic above cites a fake paper said to have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, Volume 17, Issue 3, in July 2016 (archived here). However, the issue's table of contents contains no article by an author with the last name Ribaux, nor is there any article titled "Parental Child Homicides by Gender of Perpetrator" or any article on the topic.
Lead Stories did find similar results in a real article (archived here) published in the peer-reviewed journal BMJ Paediatrics Open in August 2017, titled "Child homicide perpetrators worldwide: a systematic review." When the same three categories used in the fake-paper graphic are applied, the real article found:
1. All Child Homicides (under 18)
The paper does not break perpetrators down by mother vs. father. It reports parents as a combined group: parents committed just over half of all child homicides (56.5%). It does split by the child's sex -- parents committed 58.4% of homicides of girls and 46.8% of homicides of boys.
2. Infants (under 1 year)
As with all child homicides above, no mother-versus-father breakdown is provided, but the paper reports that parents committed the large majority of infant homicides -- 77.8%.
3. Neonaticide (under 24 hours after birth)
This paper does not report on this category at all.
