On August 24, 2025, a father set himself on fire with his children to oppose his wife's divorce request. The incident took place in Kantène, a neighborhood of Mandina Mancagne, in the commune of Niaguis in the Ziguinchor department. He and his 2-year-old son died instantly, before his 13-year-old daughter succumbed to her burns on August 29.

The specialized educator and head of the Departmental Social Action Service of Bignona, Serigne Mapathé Samb, analyzes this tragedy through a contribution entitled: "The Medea syndrome or the art of sacrificing one's own children to take revenge on one's spouse!"

"On Sunday, August 24, 2025, in the village of Kantène, located less than five (5) kilometers from the commune of Ziguinchor, an unheard-of and unprecedented tragedy occurred, making headlines and occupying the front pages of all the local newspapers. It was a crime of passion committed by a father of about fifty (50) years old who, without being embarrassed, decided to set himself on fire with his two children in one of the rooms of the house. The latter, a 13-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy, perished in this evil enterprise following significant burns all over their bodies.

This torturer of a father, deeply affected and emotionally overwhelmed by a divorce request made by his better half, and unfortunately certainly not having benefited from appropriate psychosocial support, committed a "crime of lèse-majesté" by taking his two children with him. Indeed, this indelicate father could well have finalized a suicide, with a wooden bell, by ending his life while sparing the life of his offspring. In this scenario, his act would have been interpreted basically as a suicide in the first sense of the term and his small family (his wife and two children) would be more or less affected. On the contrary, he preferred to commit filicide by immolating himself with his two children. This second element (burns and death of the children) remains constitutive of the framework of the psychosis caused by this tragedy. The acute problem then is to elucidate the motives that led him to choose his children (infanticide) rather than his wife (uxoricide or conjugalicide). Mystery and bubble gum!

Upon analysis, it appears that an answer to this enigma would corroborate the thesis that this executioner perpetrated this odious act to atrociously hurt his wife while escaping popular vindictiveness and justice. This modus faciendi is neither new nor ex nihilo, it is as old as the world, because it is likened to the prodrome of the "Medea syndrome"!

This syndrome comes from a brutal marital breakup, unnegotiated or poorly prepared. It can manifest itself in several ways because the spouse's objective is characterized by a desire to hurt the other (their ex) through the children used as instruments of revenge: making the children inaccessible, mistreating them or eliminating them physically, using verbal violence to distance the spouse... In polygamous families for example, a woman can turn into an executioner (stepmother) by using violence against her co-wife's children with a vindictive perspective... Often, women distinguish themselves in very beautiful ways by stealing the spotlight from men in the use of this modus operandi. They like to gorge themselves and remain inclined to use this vengeful method (the myth of Medea).

But good heavens! Who was Medea?

A foray into psychopathology reveals that her portrait or psychosocial profile is described by Greek mythology. Indeed, out of love for Jason, Medea decided to betray her father (Aeetes, king of Colchis and son of the Sun god, Helios), to kill her brother (Apsyrtos) before fleeing with her upline (Jason) to Corinth. A massive blow! Jason decided to marry a daughter (Glauce) of King Creon (king of Corinth). Considered if not a braggart then at least as affiliated with a plague-stricken race, Medea was exiled and confined to the outskirts of the kingdom where she lived alone with her two sons. King Creon and Jason often visited her, the former for concerns of justice and humanity, the latter because he considered himself the father of her children.

And then, goodbye, calf, cow, pig, brood! Medea managed to eliminate the young fiancée (Glauce) by sending her poisoned gifts (a dress and ornaments that burned her), then she committed regicide by killing King Creon (who had burned himself trying to save his daughter Glauce) before slaughtering her two own children born to Jason, her lover, only to make him suffer and destroy the last link that unites her to her family! By carrying out this execrable trick, she became one of the members of the ecumenical circle of chaos engineers.

Medea syndrome, rightly or wrongly considered an aporia, reminds us of the need to be attentive, far-sighted and proactive whenever there is a desire for separation between spouses. This proactivity in the prevention of violence promotes the application of one of the guiding principles set out by the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC): the obligation to preserve the life, survival and development of the child. Front-line community actors must necessarily take life-saving and restorative measures for the benefit of children in situations of conflictual marital breakdown to deal with the most urgent and face the diagonal of the worst. What is more, conjugopathy seems to be the main cause of most suicides and murders in couples, since in this context the spouses remain conjugicides (L'Encéphale, journal of psychiatry 1971). As for judges, in a symbiotic approach, their collaboration with social workers, true conscientious objectors (playing the role of family mediators) constitutes a necessity that is more than proven. Indeed, social work, an instrument of mastery of sociology and community psychology, offers a panacea against the family evisceration that sends children's rights spiraling out of control. Thus, the emphasis must be placed on a socio-affective approach that confers a presumption of innocence to "Man" in the natural sense of the term - man is naturally good, he is not born wicked, but it is society that has corrupted him (JJ Rousseau) - unlike a penalist approach that is quick to condemn, sanction and put the guilty under the scalpel of the law. Even if it is clear that Errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum (Saint Augustine).

By advocating these proactive and preventative measures, we are far from trying to play Cassandra, but rather to anticipate the abrasive and spleen-like behaviors that characterize failing societies (Anton Chekhov) and give hives to all those involved in protection. Otherwise, we continue to play Russian roulette to the detriment of family cohesion."

Serigne Mapathé Samb, Specialized Educator

Doctor of Project Management

Head of the Bignona Departmental Social Action Service

Tel: 77 508 87 79

Email: samb1976@live.fr