Serial Killers: A Case Study Of Ivan Millat's Backpack Killer

By the time Ivan Milat was finally accused and convicted for murder, at least seven known people had their lives taken by him in the Belanglo State Forest. Ivan Milat quickly became one of Australia’s most notorious serial killers, earning the title of the Backpack killer. This case study will take Ivan Millat’s crimes from a young age and his eventual escalation into murder and linking it to Bandura social learning theory.

Bandura’s social learning theory states that people’s behaviour is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning. It is believed children observe the people around them behaving in various ways and process that behaviour as the acceptable way of behaving even though it may be classified as socially

Growing up, Ivan was exposed to violence by his father and guns on a regular basis. It was said that common sense was often absent during dangerous situations in the family including when Alex Millat was shooting live rounds at his brother’s forehead, shooting a hole through the house with a shotgun. Ivan’s dad could’ve taught him that violence is okay to be violent towards women as Stephen was never punished for hitting his mother Margaret. Social Learning Theory shows that if children witness their models doing something wrong with no consequences will raise the chances of the child repeating that behaviour later on in life. Ivan’s mother was also reportedly strict on the boys when able, but with fourteen children to look after and raise, the boys were often able to get away with performing dangerous and often criminal activities while she was busy. Ivan lacked empathy from a young age as his family were never known to be loving are ever really cohesive and this was evident later when Ivan slept with his brother’s girlfriend and got her pregnant without any sign of remorse about