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Ivan Milat case study Jordan Brown S5182170 Word Count-2250 Tutor- Brigitte Gilbert

Ivan Milat was very well known for the backpacker murders, which occurred between the years of 1989 and 1992. Three Germans, two British and two Australian backpackers fell victim to Ivan Milats viscous attacks. All seven backpackers being picked up by Ivan Milat on the long stretch of highway between Sydney and Melbourne. Each victim was taken to the Belanglo forest in New South Wales where investigators discovered bullet and stab wounds on the bodies of the victims with evidence suggesting they have endured hours of torture before succumbing to their injuries. All victims were buried the same way; face down in a shallow grave with hands tied behind their backs (Nunn, 2019).

In 1994 Ivan Milat was arrested after seven bodies were discovered within the Belanglo forest. In 1996 Ivan Milat was finally convicted and sentenced, where he later died in 2019 never admitting to any of the murders (Thomas, 2019). Ivan Milat’s father was an immigrant from Croatia and his mother was born in Australia. Mr. Milat grew up in a large family with 13 brothers and one sister with his father not being around much and when he was, he was grumpy and violent towards the kids. Milat’s mother had a temper of her own and always resorted to violence when disciplining her children; the family was known to police for being violent. Milat displayed anti-social behaviors at a very young age, did his first stint in a residential school by the age of 13 and first appearance in a juvenile prison by the age of 17. Later being released Milat was again sentenced to three years for theft and upon release was charged with the rape and abduction of two hitchhikers. After being charged Milat was involved in a numerous amount of armed robberies while awaiting sentencing for the two abduction and rapes (Fowler, 2019). This essay will explain how his upbringing affected his adult life by using the bases of Bandura social learning theory.

In the early 1990 is where Ivan Milat did the majority of his killings, bodies were discovered along the same stretch of the remote Belanglo state forest and the victims were found to be linked to the same serial killer. Seven bodies in total were found and all buried in shallow graves with hands tied behind their backs. It was found that all victims had considerable stab wounds especially in the torso but victims one and two had been shot several times in the back of the head. It was also believed that Ivan Milat spent considerable time with his victims because the burial sites of the bodies were close to camp sites. As all the victims had similarities in the way they had been killed, it had raised fear within the community that a serial killer was on the loose. With the discoveries of nearby campsites, police started to realize the serial killer had great knowledge of the forest and was most likely a local to the area (Murderpedia, n.a). Research evidence states that 90 percent of serial killers are Caucasian males between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five and struggle to hold secure employment. Serial killers generally come from dysfunctional families and have mental or physical abusive up bringing and the reason for committing these crime come back to their childhood trauma. Many serial killers are medically diagnosed with suffering from personality disorder, which have side effects of being emotionally unstable, self centered and prone to be manipulative (Salvatore, 2020).

Research states that during child hood is the most important part of growing up and learns many things when it comes to what is right and wrong. With childhood abuse heightening the risk of criminal behaviors and also forming antisocial behaviors (Davies, 2018).

It is stated that Ivan Milat had the mind of a killer when he was at the tender age of ten years old; Ivan Milat grew up with 13 siblings in a disruptive and abusive household. Ivan’s dad had a temper of his own and would physically abuse the children with the father once hitting the kids with a knife and almost cutting one of the children’s arms off. Not only did the Milat’s grow up with abuse they also had access to guns, knives and would often play shooting games in the back yard with real guns (Fowler, 2019). It is found that when children are growing up it is important that they receive love and attention, this helps children feel safe and secure as well as feeling valued (Raising children, 2021). With evaluation of the case study, Milat did not receive the nurture he needed or the correct nature provided to grow up in and because of this Ivan has projected the feelings and attributes he grew up seeing onto other people. In studies it is stated that when someone has been through an abusive child hood they try to dominate and control other people and with analysis of this case study and the way Ivan killed his victims this seems like a very likely reason why Ivan did what he did (Pregnancy, birth & baby, 2020).

A study on early childhood trauma linked physical abuse to later on becoming a convicted serial killer, the study found that 74% of convicted serial killers suffered physical and psychological abuse, 35% witnessed sexual abuse and 43% percent were sexually abused themselves. Physical trauma is too linked to being a serial killer with 29% being accident prone when being a child (Lemoyne, n.d.). With analysis of the case study Ivan Milat suffered from physical abuse and psychological stress as he displays signs of anti-social behaviors at such a young age (Fowler, 2019). Therefore with past history of prior traumatic experiences, it is safe to say that Ivan’s

experiences combined with the hatred he had towards his father because of the abuse he watched his mother or himself go through could have shaped him into the person he became; and inevitably shaped him for failure from birth.

Banduras social learning theory applies to serial killers because of the foundation of what the theory lays upon. Banduras social learning theory states that children learn aggressive behaviors through observing family members, role models, or mass media presentations. Parents that abuse other people such as their significant other in front of their children shows them that abusing someone is okay and it is the right thing to do. The same thing occurs if a child is born into a criminal family (Criminology and Justice, 2020). This theory correlates directly with Ivan Milat and his disruptive childhood upbringing around physical and mental abuse. However there is no information available to provide that Ivan Milat saw any killings, though due to witnessing abuse and the effects this has on a child physically and mentally, it would be safe to say that Ivan Milat was not in the correct mindset and could have started killing for pleasure and simply did not think that it was wrong (Simply psychology, 2016).

Banduras social learning theory goes on to state that when a child observes someone’s wrong doing they are also observing the consequences of the wrong doing to see whether there are any consequences for doing so. If a child sees an individual acting physically towards another person and gets away with it, then the child is going to believe that this as the right thing to do (Simply psychology, 2016). With analysis of the case study, Milat saw his father on multiple occasions physically abuse his mother and siblings without getting into any trouble. Over time Milat would start to think this

is the correct thing to do due to his father not receiving any form of punishment (Fowler, 2019). Ivan Milat being in the surroundings of this environment could also explain the feeling of inferiority and watching someone feel satisfaction when harming others.

It is believed that when Ivan Milat killed the hitchhikers, he took trophies home to remember his victims. It is reported that Milat took the camping gear and clothing of the seven hitchhikers he had murdered. When police raided his home, shirts, sleeping backs, water bottles, portable stoves and also backpacks were found (Sutton, 2014). As part of the Banduras social learning theory is the modeling process of retention where it states that the behavior is not always remembered and that a memory of a behavior is formed for later (Mcleod, 2016). With analysis of Ivan Milat’s case study he could have taken the trophies for later to remember the murders, to remember how the murders make him feel or why he commits the murders in the first place. Keeping trophies also prove the fact that Ivan Milat perhaps did not think that he was ever going to get caught.

Banduras theory goes on to explain the different effects environments can shape a person. Banduras explains that cognitive development can alter behaviors and behaviors can then alter the cognitive effect of a human. The four cognitive theories of Banduras include attention process, retention process, motor production process and motivational process. The attention process explains that children will primarily behave how people around them behave and process what they think is good and bad through observing others. Bandura indicates that the child will act the same way as the people it is surrounded by and it is bad for a child to always be kept in the same

environment because the child never gets to observe how others behave. The second cognitive function is the retention process and this links the child’s mind from being aware of it’s own behavior to the way a child retains a certain behavior for later life. While Milat was learning from observing his surroundings, this is commonly called image coding. A lot of behaviors as a child also are remembered through verbal coding, children put actions to words and a trigger word could trigger a bad experience or a bad mental picture of an occasion (Fatchan, Harinie, Rahayu and Sudiro, 2017). The motor reproduction process is also pivotal when it comes to a child’s mental and behavioral development. Motor reproduction process is a stage that helps children transform the mental pictures into actions. With the child having a mental vision of an experience, the child will always perform the behavior it links the word or picture to; without constructive criticism such as being told no or being told what they are doing is bad, the child will continue repeating this action. Banduras final stage of a child’s cognitive thinking is the motivational process. This stage determines the success of the learning process, including the results of a child’s memory, the translation of the motoric skills, behavioral models and relaying them into what the child thinks is an acceptable behavior based on the environment they are in. When performing an action, the child needs motivation to perform these acts and bandura says a child would never perform an act without receiving reward. These rewards are known as boosts; and there are three of them. The first would be giving reward to the child; the second would be recommending the child to tell himself to do an act and thirdly is to physically demonstrate to the child how the behavior would bring reinforced results (Fatchan et al., 2017). On analysis of Banduras social cognitive learning process, these processes explain how Milat has been surrounded by bad people, had ways of retaining bad behaviors, which then would help him put these

experiences into actions and lastly give Milat motivation to commit crimes. Ivan keeps trophies from each murder, this links to last cognitive process, which is motivational process. This explains why Ivan kept trophies and could have motivated him to repeatedly commit murders.

In conclusion, the serial killings committed by Ivan Milat had put an entire city on edge with the amount of bodies that were discovered in Belanglo forest. With the investigation findings that all the victims had been killed the same way and undergone brutal torture before being killed, police decided to thoroughly investigate the murders with great interest. The analysis of Banduras social learning theory has provided indepth explanation on Ivan Milat’s unfortunate upbringing, which sadly provoked him to the murders he committed. The disruptive family life, the physical abuse he and his siblings endured and witnessing his mother receiving the same form of aggression and violence from his father, influenced Ivan’s behavior dramatically. On the evaluation of the key concepts of Banduras cognitive processes it is easy to see that Ivan Milat did not receive the love and care that a infant and child should have received at such a young age. There were many negative outcome brought onto Ivan as a result of not receiving the love and care he needed, however having 12 other siblings to grow up with would not have made it any easier on his mother. With Banduras social learning theory and the four cognitive processes of the attention process, retention process, motor production process and the motivational process along with the explanation of Ivan Milat’s upbringing; it is easy to see how Ivan Milat lacked every valuable concept of these four cognitive processes. What cannot be left out of the investigation is the fact that he never admitted to any of the murders, even

on his deathbed. This leads investigators to really think, did Ivan Milat really commit these outrageous and gruesome murders?

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https://www.pregnancybirthbaby.org.au/recognising-signs-of-abuse-inchildren Raising Children. (2020). Positive attention and your child. Retrieved January 1, 2021 from https://raisingchildren.net.au/toddlers/connecting-communicating/ connecting/positive-attention#:`:text=Why%20positive%2-attention%20is%20impor tant&text-Positive%20attention%2C%20reactions%20and%20responses,people%20 in%20your%20child’s%20life. Salvatore, T. (2020). The Serial Killer’s Psychological Motivation for Killing. Atmostfear Entertainment. https://www.atmostfear-entertainment.com/health/psychology/serial-killerspsychological-motivation/ Sutton, C. (2014, May 21). Trophies of a serial killer: New photograph from inside Ivan Milat’s house as Australian’s most notorious murderer marks 20 years in Prison. Daily Mail UK. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2633599/Trophies -serial-killer-new-photographs-inside-Ivan-Milats-house-Australias-worst-murderermarks-20-years-prison.html Thomas, S. (2019, October 27). Australian serial killer Ivan Milat dies in Long Bay prison aged 74. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-27/ivan-milatdies-in-sydney/11342686...