Must be Ragnarok . . . I’m agreeing with Stoid. (;))
Psychoses are scary things, and not easily understood. At its worst, a psychotic break removes formt he sufferer almost all elements of emotion, socialization, and reason that we would ordinarily associate with being human. I find it completely understandable that she would have had no sense of what we think of as “malice” or “evil intent.”
I feel terribly, terribly sorry for her.
Sorry for Yates, of course, not Stoid.
All I have to say is that if she were Black, she would already be dead.
Premeditation has nothing to do with the insanity defense. The only question on that issue (in Texas) is whether she knew what she was doing was wrong.
If a father kills his child, he’s a monster child abuser.
If a mother kills her child, well, she must have had her reasons, right?
After all, no mother would kill her child unless she was out of her mind, and therefore we should forgive her. But a father? No, men are killers by nature.
And capacitor? What are you talking about? Do you see many examples of whites lynching blacks because they killed their own children? If you think we are all so racist that we’d lynch her because she was black, then don’t you think we would be racist enough to be happy that her black children were gone?
I suggest you keep quiet for the rest of this discussion.
when i first read this in the newspaper, i thought forget post partum depression; this woman is VERY deeply into post partum psychosis.
i remember seeing (i believe on 60 minutes) an interview of 5 women who had ppp. they had no idea of what they were doing at the time. they heard voices, and saw visions, they believed they were doing the will of god. i remember one woman who’s child did die at her hand, say that she believed, TRULY believed that god spoke to her and told her to sacrifice her child. only after drug therapy did they come back to themselves and realize what they had done.
yes, there were warning signs. doctors told them it was just depression, they would get over it. post partum psychosis is a physical manifestation. when tests are run chemical imbalances will be found. the problem is getting someone to take her seriously and run the tests.
marie noh had 10 children, she was found guilty of killing all of them. part of her sentence was to be studied by doctors to find out why. it is a bit too late. she is in her 70’s now at not likely to suffer from ppp. if she was studied during the years that her children lived and died it would be different. i hope that a full physical is done on mrs. yates while she is in custody. then perhaps ppd and ppp would be taken seriously and hopefully save children and mothers.
Ummm…Lemur? Buddy? Pal? Sounds to me like you have an issue or two…issues that have pretty much nothing to do with this situation. Perhaps you should absent yourself from this discussion along with Capacitor.
stoid
I’m incognizant of the ages of the now deceased children…but what justification does a mother have murdering 5 children? Being cognizant that one is 7, just bordering into a real life…is revolting to know someone has committed such a horrifying act.
She should have comprised other HEALTHY alternatives as to what to do with the children…like, ASK SOMEONE FOR ADVICE OR HELP! Without a doubt this woman is insane or a really sadistic, twisted person.
I can’t belive that nobody has mentioned this, but 25 years ago this woman would have been in a hospital - she was suffering severe depression (and in the past has attempted suicide), she was on FOUR psychiatric medications - at least one of which was an ANTIPSYCHOTIC…and what happens? She’s not only not admitted to a hospital, she’s left at home to care for FIVE children seven and under, including an infant. Yeah, maybe it’s not foreseeable that she would murder all five, but it’s definitely foreseeable that those kids were at HUGE risk for some harm or neglect. Let alone the woman herself.
I’m not a big fan of abdicating personal responsibility - but there are limits to how far you can stretch the concept. At a certain point people are unfit to care for themselves and certainly for others - whether it’s from mental illness, dementia, delirium, whatever. And - you know - you need to take away the sharp objects and get someone to make sure they’re not slicing their wrists up, or slicing someone else up.
The average psychiatric hospital stay these days is now only for people who are at extreme imminent risk of self harm or violence. And even then it only averages two weeks - bear in mind two weeks is about HALF the MINIMUM time needed for an antidepressant to start to take effect.
So people are generally booted out still pretty sick. The number of psychotic people I see on the streets talking to their voices is pretty good evidence.
What’s really pathetic is that this woman has a treatable disease. In fact in her case, one that is usually self-limiting even without treatment. She’ll get better. Or she would have. If she had been taken care of instead of left to take care of children, this episode would have ended in eventually, and I bet she would even have been a wonderful mother. Everyone that knew her said she was.
As for all you people that say that she had to be evil to do this - you have to just plain deny the existence of delusions to believe that. Sure, she COULD have done it out of evil, but Occham’s razor tells me she was probably just psychotic and delusional - there is a history infanticides of this type that are associated with delusional post-partum depression, where the mother thinks she is “saving her children.” So much so, that in England, post-partum depression is a defense for infanticide for up two years after birth. She fits the profile in every conceivable way.
Sometimes vengeance is appropriate, and sometimes vengeance is a way of ignoring reality. We can give her the needle, and we can give the next one the needle, and the next one…or we can maybe look at our psychiatric system and say maybe we can stop this kind of thing.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Stoid *
Which indicates what, exactly?
[QUOTE]
I don’t have any kids, but I’ve been a teacher’s aid at a special ed school, a nanny and a babysitter and I know that it’s hard enough to get a three year old what you want them to do, much less hold a seven year old underneath the water while they thrashed and gasped for survival. I just find this interesting in light of the husband’s description of her as “gentle, quiet and loving”
Stoid, she called the police and confessed to methodically killing all five children, oldest last. There were four dead bodies in the house when she chased Noah down the hall. Do you really think her intention was to take him for ice cream?
And so she shouldn’t go to jail? I think my husband is possessed by the devil because he won’t pick up his underpants. Thank god I’m allowed to kill him now! I’ve decided I’m insane, depressed, psychotic! Carte Blanche!
I guess I can’t argue with your steely, emotionless logic, Stoid, so if I can, I’ll step down and leave this case to you. I think she’s guilty of murdering five children. Frankly, I don’t think I could stomach sitting through the evidence for months.
I don’t think she should walk out of that jail a free woman. Whether she’s sick or not, she committed murder and something needs to be done. We put animals to sleep for attacking other animals…but because she was depressed she gets a ride.
You quickly dismissed Lemur, but I think I see his point. What excuse can a man use to kill his entire family? He can’t have PPD (as far as I know), so there’s nothing to get him off the hook when he can’t handle fatherhood anymore.
jarbaby
jbj: I think she’s guilty of murdering five children.
Nobody’s arguing with that. The question—and it is still an unresolved question—is whether she was sane enough at the time to be responsible for her actions.
*Frankly, I don’t think I could stomach sitting through the evidence for months. *
So we should just jail or execute her out of hand and spare ourselves the discomfort? :rolleyes: I hope the people who actually end up on the jury will be a little less squeamish.
I don’t think she should walk out of that jail a free woman. Whether she’s sick or not, she committed murder and something needs to be done.
Absolutely. Whether that “something” should be incarceration, (possibly) execution, hospitalization, treatment and counseling, or some combination of the above is what is yet to be decided.
We put animals to sleep for attacking other animals…but because she was depressed she gets a ride.
If she gets what you call a “ride”, meaning that she stays out of jail (I personally would not consider living with the discovery that I’d murdered my beloved children in a fit of insanity to be much of a “ride”), it will not be because she was “depressed”, but because she was suffering from a severe form of psychosis. On the other hand, if she turns out not to have been so afflicted but to have deliberately murdered her kids out of spite, I’m sure she will be punished as harshly as even you could wish.
You seem to be dismissing the either the idea that there are mental illnesses that cause people to not have the necessary mental state to be held responsible or that post-partum psychosis (not depression) is one of them. How does a father “get off the hook”? Well if he meets the criteria for not being responsible ( in my state basically either he doesn’t know what it is he is doing or doesn’t know it’s wrong) due to some other psychotic condition that defense is as available to him as it is to a mother who meets the criteria due to post-partum psychosis ( or any other mental illness).
He didn’t say weak.
You and I have been discussing malicious intent. I never denied she intended to kill him, that’s quite evident. That doesn’t mean she was malicious. Go back and read my post again.
Jarbabyj, with all due respect, I think you are being deliberately obtuse. If this all plays out as it appears to be now, what possible good is there to be had in putting this woman in jail? I guess you are of the opinion that under no circumstances whatsoever is any type of insanity ever a defense for any action? In which case, we live in different worlds, and yours bothers me a great deal. While you accuse me of being steely and emotionless, I have to say I think you show an exceptional lack of compassion. As far as you’re concerned, she killed, she’s evil, and that is simply not true.
And the part that gets me is this: you talk about this as though the woman is using PPD as an excuse. This implies that she had some other motive. Are you saying that for the past 7 years, she has secretly despised her children, and so she just killed 'em out of spite and is pretending to be nuts? What planet are you visiting us from?
** Uglybtch ** Welcome to the SDMB, and bravo on your insightful post!
stoid
I was wondering the same thing you are - WHY did she and her husband have a fifth kid when #4 threw her into a funk? FWIW, I’ve read she’d gotten over the childbirth-induced funk but went into another recently when her father died, so this leathal bout of depression has nothing to do with her kids, other than they suffered the most for it.
Still, I would’ve gotten my tubes tied…
Patty
I’ve been following the story, not the thread, coming back, want to respond to this comment.
jarbabyj please understand that PPD while it is real, is also very rare to get to the level that this woman had, **and ** there are other signs (which she displayed). Hopefully, if nothing else, this will in the future cause people to take it seriously when a mom expresses a need for help.
And while we’re there, maybe there will come a day when we realize that psychotic != evil.
But I ain’t gonna hold my breath.
Huh? When did I ever stated *that?{/i}
To repeat myself in simpler terms, I am looking beyond the asic events themselves (the mother killed her five children) and examining the context of those events (the mother was in a mentally unstable condition due to postpartum depression, which caused her to kill her five children). I’m not happy about any of this, but I don’t see why we need to damn the mother because she slipped into psychosis – from what I’ve read, she’s not thrilled about any of this either.
Now, if the mother had said, “Yes, I killed the kids because they were making too much noise and I couldn’t watch Oprah,” then I’d agree that she should be prosecuted. But that’s not what we’re talking about, and I for one don’t believe that “one law fits all situations”.
Me too Kimstu. What I was saying with that post was that I couldn’t take it. I was admitting to my own shortcomings. Thanks for the rolleyes.
Stoid, I don’t know what else to say because IANAL and I don’t have that sort of education, and I’ve read your debates in the past, so I know I can’t win.
I am also not a psychiatrist or a psychologist so I don’t understand PPD (note that PPD, not PP Psychosis). I have talked to a lot of mothers since this happened though, and every one of them said “I don’t understand how your child yelling Mommy mommy don’t, or you’re hurting me wouldn’t snap you out of whatever “trance” you were in as a result of PPD”.
I’m saying that her lawyers are going to use PPD as a way of keeping her free and out of jail. That is their job. Unless she pleads guilty.
I don’t know. I don’t know what good it is to let her go stay at hospital. What good is it to let her wander the streets? Or have another kid? Honestly, I don’t know WHAT to do, except don’t you think perhaps a)if she’s not aware that she took five young lives she should be aware of it, and b)she should somehow take some responsibility for it?
As for the father, I’ve decided to believe that he must be in some sort of shock. I can’t believe how smiley and calm and “tell my wife I love her” he is in the wake of all of his children being dead.
I don’t know. I guess I should have compassion and offer forgiveness to everyone for whatever they do. I can’t. It hurts my heart to think of a little six month old baby drowning, and I can’t imagine what must be wrong with someone’s head to make them do it. I hardly believe some counseling and prozac is enough.
jarbaby
Maybe we should realize that psychotic=too dangerous to run around loose.
On another tack:
Maybe the woman was insane at the time she killed her children, but she was criminally reckless in not getting effective treatment for her depression. She and her husband had enough awareness of her problem to seek treatment for her. Apparently, however, they weren’t concerned enough to try to relieve the pressure on her. Home schooling her children with a new born in the house? No help for her around the house (cleaning, watching the children, etc?) Is anyone going call her husband to rights for leaving her at home with five children in her condition? Is anyone going to call her doctor to order for the ineffective treatment? Her husband failed her, her doctor (or doctors) failed her, and her family failed her.
My wife is currently going through PPD. She reached the point this last Friday that she was incapable of taking care of our two children. She is now in the hospital being treated for depression, our older daughter (three years old) is at home with me and her parents are taking care of our seven week old son. I have supported her to the extent possible for a working father - I have taken days off, stayed late in the mornings before work to help her get her day started with the children, I run all of the errands that I can, etc. Her parents are there any time she needs them (they are both retired.) They have taken the children overnight to let us rest, and also help with household tasks and grocery shopping. Her gynecologist and her regular doctor have both taken phone calls at god awful times of the night to help us deal with her problems. Her regular doctor was the one who had her brought to the hospital on Friday. He realized that her condition was not going to improve until she could be completely relieved of the demands of child care and she could be treated for her condition without having to consider how the side effects of treatment may interfere with her ability to care for the children (the anti-depressants at the dosages they are using tend to make her very sleepy and woozy, but should help her back to normal much more quickly than other medications or lower dosages.) My wife is supported by her husband, her family, and her doctors. We have not let her fall into the pit this other woman has gotten into.
With all of that said, I have no sympathy for the woman who killed her children. Her husband, her doctors, and her family (if they lived close enough to be aware and able to do anything for her) all share responsibilty for what happened. BUT - the woman who killed her children has the final responsibilty for that act. She must answer for what she has done.
Were my wife to do such a thing, were I to come home to find both of our beloved rugrats dead by her hand, then she would die by mine. And for that act, there would be nothing left for me but suicide. That also sums up my reaction to the “temporary insanity” defense. Were I to do something so terrible when I was “sick” and then were “cured,” then I would have to commit suicide in remorse for the things I did while sick.
Toast this woman, or lock her up for life, but do not let her get into a position to kill again. How can you trust a person who was once insane enough to carry out the act that she did to not have another period of insanity? Bring her husband and her doctors to court for negligence. Put them away for a very long time, and especially the husband.
Unless I’ve missed something, nobody is arguing that she should walk. It seems to me that she needs in-patient treatment. For a long, long time.