baby.me:

As a mother,i will protect and defend my child if he/she is in trouble. But i won't defend him/her if the case concerned is a crime like killing, stealing or any act in that line.

As my people will say, enyen awana mkpa ye eka nanga asineke ke idib( A child only shares death with the mother when he is still in the womb). As an adult,i will allow you to face the consequences of your actions.

NAJALYN:

If we raise our children in the ways of the Lord they will never depart from it. Give your children the right training, all the while giving them to God in prayers, to help them grow to become  God-fearing and responsible children. Thereafter you can vouch for them. That does not mean that they will be 100% perfect. But they can never associate themselves with murder or other heinous crimes. Having said that I wish to say that it is only natural that parents would want to defend their children when they do something wrong. They would naturally protect them, but when they get home, they deal with them. Afterall the children are theirs, and in their custody. However the one who is unfortunate to have a murderer for a child can not afford to pretend that all is well because it will not be in their best interest to do so.

IyaBasira:

To be honest I have noticed this trend as well , especially among Nigerian parents. When their child does something bad, they try to defend them and make up silly excuses.

In other continents it's just as bad, if not worse. There was a news story not too long ago about an 11 yr old who was gang violated by up to 17 young men. And the most sickening part of the whole thing was that one of the mothers was saying " Well everybody's talking about the boys and what they did, but how about the girl? What about the girls parents and why weren't they supervising her? " Essentially she was trying to say that the parents were to blame for what happened to the girl , forgetting the fact that she wasn't supervising her son when he was despoiling another woman's child. That's how dense some parents are.

I think that no-one ever wants to admit that their child did something wrong, because it automatically makes them look like a bad parent. I can understand this because  people always think that a bad child equals a bad parent and that's not necessarily true. There are good parents and bad children, the same way there are bad parents and good children. Everyone has a choice to turn out good or bad, it's not necessarily down to the parents and the upbringing of the child in question.

But I have noticed that women are more guilty of this than men. A lot of women like treating their sons as if they are kings and never make them realize that they have to be responsible for their actions.

On the other hand, with regards to the murderers you mentioned, it's possible that the children told their parents that they were innocent even though they were guilty. I was watching a show the other day about a man who had committed a murder. He was put on the death row for 18 years and he was about to be executed  in a matter of weeks. Throughout the trial and their 18 years he was in prison, his wife stood by him, why?  The man on death row told his wife that he was innocent. And it was only when he was two days away from being executed that he told her the truth, and his reason for lying was because he was scared that she would leave him.
This is obviously a slightly different example, but the reality is that people do lie to their loved ones and to themselves. Parents convince themselves that their children can do no wrong , and eventually the children convince themselves of the same thing.

MRbrownJAY:

@poster
STANDING BY YOUR CHILDREN DOESN'T MEAN THAT YOU AGREE WITH WHAT THEY DID.

Whatever your child does (whether good,bad or heinous) you should stand by them. Standing by your child, as any parent should, is what is important here, regardless of the crime. It is too easy to stand proud when they do good and quickly dismiss/disown them when they don't.

As I always say, if your child fukcs up then YOU (as parents) are partly responsible for that failure, whether you like it or not.

I will ALWAYS stand by my children whether they have done a killing spree or som' worse.

Outstrip:

Not my mother. I remember as a child anybody could walk into that home and say anything about us and my mom will believe it. I really hated that. Everybody else seemed to only have good things to say about us but my mother was always critical. It made me who I am today though. I hate to make excuses for myself till today. If I fail at something I take steps to fix it. The example you gave is so extreme though. I think you have to be mentally unstable to defend such