Mort Furd, I’m sorry to hear about your wife and glad to hear she is getting support and treatment.
But for the love of gawd can we please, please get clear on the difference between post partum DEPRESSION and post part PSYCHOSIS?
Psychosis is where the mother is totally out to lunch barking mad and deluded. Given the amount of meds this woman was on, it is just bizarre she was left alone with 5 young children.
With such a high-profile case, if she were released, I would say the possibility of “vigilante justice” would be extremely high. Even if she is released, they’ll probably have to hire bodyguards and keep her in the house almost constantly.
Also, I just want to add, it sounded as if for the past 2 months (just after her father died), one of their mothers had been coming over to help on a daily basis.
Well, of course.
I can have nothing but sympathy for someone who was once human and is no longer. And I will continue to have sympathy for her all the while I demand her lifetime incarceration. As ruadh says, feeling sad about this woman, or any psychotic, does not mean I want her to reenter society, now or ever.
This is a new one on me…can anyone define this?
tanx
stoid
Well, now that we’re getting down to our personal reactions… were I given the ability to judge this woman, given the facts as I now understand them, I would find her guilty of manslaughter in the lowest possible degree, and in the interests of sanity I would find a way to impose a sentence of sterilization on her. I would also have her locked up in a good mental hospital getting treatment.
Whatever happens, I think this woman is definitely a prime candidate for suicide down the road. Once she re-enters the real world, she’s going to be irretrievably destroyed by what she has done.
At least 7 lives destroyed with this one. And it didn’t have to happen.
stoid
IANAL=I Am Not A Lawyer
This Newsweek column by Anna Quindlen, called “Playing God on No Sleep,” about a mother being able to understand this unspeakable act at some recessed, forbidden level, certainly gave me pause. You should read it.
The Newsweek cover story on the killings is also well-done. The father is looking worse and worse to me.
His response to, “If your wife was having problems, why did you have another child?” was (paraphrasing), “Well, we talked about when we got married that we would just have as many children as naturally came.”
???
He also talks about how his wife was “at about 65 percent” psychologically. Yet he’s leaving her to care for five children under the age of 7 every day?
In his defense, though, it appears his wife was knowingly taking advantage of a 1-hour window of opportunity to kill her five kids, from the time the husband left for work until the time her mother-in-law came to help with them.
That Newsweek article is great–probably the best report on this tragedy that I’ve seen yet.
I honestly think she just snapped and no wonder: she was expected to be a mother/teacher for five kids with a limited amount of support and help from anyone except the guy’s mother-in-law. I sure as hell couldn’t do it and, quite frankly, I’m surprised she didn’t snap earlier.
And I’m still wondering why two kids weren’t enough but thats probably for some bizarro religious reasons…
Count me in with the “father and/or doctors are partly responsible” crowd. Certainly they couldn’t have seen anything as severe as THIS coming, but you’ve gotta wonder what the father was thinking when:
A).They went ahead and made Baby #5 after Baby #4 threw her into a major funk [both parents should be slapped and slapped hard for that one - what was wrong with the first four children that they felt it neccessary to make a fifth despite previous problems?],
B). When, as the only adult in that household with all of their marbels, he apparently didn’t see how putting the two or three oldest kids in school would’ve taken some serious pressure off of an already unstable woman.
C). He didn’t get another doctor’s opinion about treatment for his wife. Again, as the ONLY adult in that house playing with a full deck and, I would presume, a decent health insurence plan (he works for NASA, for Chrissake!), he should’ve taken her to at least one other doctor to see if they could do better than “65%” sanity. Some folks have posted some SCARY stories about dismissive doctors on this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=75537
Having said all of that, I’m sure no one would have the heart to bring him up on charges, thinking he’d suffered enough.
Patty
Just an side question; can anyone confirm what I heard on a talk show today?
The subject of the OP is preganant with #6.
WDFO?
according to this she might be pregnant.
Again, a pregnancy test is done routinely, as the article you cited states. It’s not hard to imagine someone jumping to the conclusion that she is pregnant. She may be. We don’t know.
If she is, well, that could be discussed if it becomes a fact.
I live a few miles from Clear Lake, where this happened. I was rather appalled that on the local news tonight the location and time of the childrens’ funeral service was advertised, even though it is private. What was the purpose of announcing this, not just verbally but along with the information printed on the screen? How stupid.
That’s kinda how I feel about her.
stoid
The Houston Chronicle said this morning that they learned she is NOT pregnant.
Will someone…please…before I move to a different country and denounce all that is America…tell me that this isn’t true?
I heard on the news yesterday (and could not find anything about it online) that this woman’s lawyers were 'positioning themselves to not only plead not guilty by reason of insanity, but to sue the doctor that allowed her to go off her medication
I see. So really, it’s the doctor’s fault this happened. :rolleyes:
It just strikes me as odd that were working so hard to find SOME reason to make this woman not guilty of murder. If a stranger burst into their home and drowned their children would you want them imprisoned or closely studied for any sign of depression?
jarbaby
I haven’t heard that. And a gag order was imposed, so I’d guess we wouldn’t be hearing anything about it until trial.
IF her doctor knew she was not getting better but took her off her medication anyway, then I’d say he could be sued for malpractice. But if Yates stopped taking it on her own accord, they wouldn’t have a case, as far as I can see.
What do mean “were [sic] working so hard”? Her lawyers are working hard to defend her. That’s their job.
On the other hand, many people are indeed trying to see her as not guilty because it’s so disturbing to accept that a mother, one of us, could kill as she did.
Yes, it may well be partially the doctor’s fault that this happened. The woman was being treated for severe depression and was on anti-psychotic medication. For reasons that are not yet clear, the doctor decided to take her off this medication, with the result that her psychotic episodes quickly returned, even before drowning her children. If this decision was below the standard of care expected of a doctor when faced with a patient in these circumstances, then he has committed an act of malpractice that led to the deaths of five children. If that’s the case, I’m more than happy to let a jury decide how much (civil) responsibility the doctor bears for the deaths of these kids.
That is not to say that anybody’s actually suing the doctor. Her attorney right now seems to be a criminal defense guy, not a personal injury attorney. The first legal priority has to be the murder charges, so I rather doubt anybody’s starting up a malpractice suit quite yet.
Gee, isn’t that kind of the point, that this woman was not a stranger who drowned five random kids? I’m sure you’re a good mother and all, jarbaby, but if you were to methodically drown your own children in a bathtub, I would think there was a pretty good chance your were so insane you didn’t know the difference between right and wrong.
Or maybe you just don’t care what her mental state was, and you want to punish people for the results of their actions?
First of all, I’m not a mother at all, not yet anyway. And believe me this story has put me off it for a long time, like I said on page one.
Secondly, I DO care what mental state she was in. I’m sorry that she’s got PPD. It sounds horrible. I just can NOT bring myself to dismiss five little lives as (buzzword ahead) ‘collateral damage’ on the road to making her feel better about herself, getting through the dark times of depression.
And I can’t see it being both ways. One one hand, Stoid says she shouldn’t be charged with anything because she’s suffered enough…on the other hand we’re saying she’s so crazy that she doesn’t know what she’s done, which, to me, would imply that she feels no pain or remorse or sadness because of it. If she’s really suffering and really knows the depths of what she’s done to these children, how ‘out of this world’ can she be?
And let’s say we DO put her in an institution for a while, give her back her meds, get her out of the woods regarding “insanity”. Let’s say it takes weeks, a couple of months. Then what? She goes home? Thanks for stopping by, ma’am, hope you have a great weekend!
I can’t argue on the level of law and lawyers. And I already said I wouldn’t be able to serve on the jury, because i’m too emotional on the issue. I AM emotional for the mother as well as the deaths of the children. The mother makes me fear for my future, if she truly had no indication that something was wrong, and of course, the deaths make me sadder than anything.
jarbaby
When did he take her off the drugs? Before this last child was born? I wonder (purely speculation, of course) if she went to him and said, “I want lots of children and am not using birth control so I can’t take these drugs.”
She was depressed enough after kid #4 to attempt suicide, so was that when she was on the anti-psychotic? Or maybe she was taking them and got pregnant with kid #5 and had to go off them?
I think there is a lot of blame to spread around (doctors, husband, family members), but most of it belongs to her.
According to the Newsweek article Milo posted above, it seems she was taken off the Hadol sometime after the birth of #5. Again, it’s not at all clear why this decision was made, and there’s an implication there that it was part of a medication switch. Honestly, I don’t think speculation on this part is going to get anyone very far.
Incidentally, Newsweek also suggests that there were some mental health issues even before the PPD/PPP hit after the birth of #4.
Neither can I. The question, though, is what to do now that it’s happened. The only options, really, are state prison or the state hospital. Either way, she’s not going to be walking the streets for a long, long time.
It’s not quite that easy. Yes, the state would have to release her when she is recovered or no longer meets the standards for involuntary commitment, but that determination typically takes many years, and even then it is supervised by the court.
If anyone is interested in how Texas handles the insanity defense and anyone acquitted because of it, check out art. 46.03 of the Texas Code of Criminal procedure. That is, if your eyes don’t glaze easily. 