Just In - Yates Guilty - All Counts

Great Debates
61

**Sqweel **

There was a fascinating article in *O, Oprah’s Magazine * about this case in last months issue

which part of it may be viewed here.

That said that with what Andrea Yates and their version of Christianity ( Fundies, IIRC) is that a woman is here to be a helper to man. (I’ve met a few fundies/evangelicals and these women are pretty much " the lights on but nobody’s home.’ It is very scary and very very sad.)

So, you get an idea of the subservient mentally going on over there at Yates Motel. People, she probably knew how very ill she was becoming but feared going back to the doctor’s and taking more pills that put her in a different kind of haze than she was already in and (this is key here) probably feared disappointing her husband by being a failure as a dutiful wife. She was also probably very afraid that she would be told again not to have any more children and her husband would cave in and agree. A woman who is subserviant like this only feels complete spawning and tending to the spawn.
This is a no win situation either way. Guilty and death penalty sets off the feminists/liberals/Democrats/religous right stating that we are setting our courts back 50 years by treating the mentally ill/post partum depression cases so hard. Give her life in a mental ward and the conservatives are pissed off about paying for care via tax dollar for the rest of her life.

There are no easy answers to this case. Rehabbing Andrea Yates to bring her to normalcy so she can truly feel the depths of her insanity that day will push her over the brink.

Frying her will not bring those five babies back to life.
(Oh, and I think Russell “Iceman” Yates is exceptionally creepy.)

62

Mandelstam,

It is far too easy to say in hindsight, that Mr. Yates should have seen this coming. However, Mr. Yates did not have the benefit of our hindsight.

Here are the words of Mrs. Yates’s niece: “[Andrea Yates was] a great mom. She would be more thought of as someone who would give her life for her kids, not take their lives.”

That is the Andrea Yates her husband knew. He himself has described her as a wonderful, caring mother.

Mr. Yates knew that that his wife was having mental problems, but I don’t think he had any idea of the magnitude of those problems, or the danger a psychotic break might present.

You ask what I know that Mr. Yates might not have. Well, I have witnessed someone close to me going through a psychotic break. I have seen that person go from warm and caring to raving and potentially violent. The transformation was astonishing. The psychotic break was not something over which this person had control. It was not something those around her caused or could have reasonably predicted. It was an illness, plain and simple.

I have heard nothing indicating that Mr. Yates had seen his wife go though such a break before his children were killed. Therefore, he had nothing to draw upon which might have caused him to anticipate her killing spree.

So to answer your question, yes, I know something about mental illness which Mr. Yates might not have known.

Andrea Yates is a sick woman. Based on my experience, I have more than a little sympathy for her husband. He has lost his children. He has lost the woman he loved. And now, he is being made a scapegoat for a tragedy which he did not cause, and which (in my view) he could not reasonably have predicted or prevented.

63

spoke-, I think you are overidentifying your own painful experiences with those Yates’s husband. First, what Yates’s niece thought of Yates’s maternal abilities is all but irrelevant since she, and everyone else close to this family, has every reason to magnify the surprise factor here. We are talking about a woman who twice tried to commit suicide. Not once; twice.

Hellooooooo!

I gather from what you’ve divulged of your own experience that you didn’t leave this altered psychotic loved one in a position to care for five defenseless children; that you didn’t impregnate this person and add to responsibilities that were already overwhelming for her. To wit, you are not Russell Yates and your confusing your own actions with his seems to be clouding your ability to reason on the matter.

Finally, at least in this thread, no one (I repeat) is saying that Mr. Yates caused the insanity. And he is hardly being made a scapegoat. As I see it he’s been left off scott-free by the law, and, to a surprising extent, in the court of public opinion.

Do I sympathize with his pain? Absolutely. But not because he was fooled by fate into thinking that his psychotic and suicidal wife was an ideal mother, who simply needed yet another child or two to improve her state of mind. No–I feel sorry for him because I’m sure he knows he’s responsible for leaving his children in the care of someone who was sick and in need of help.

64

Please do not presume to speculate about my experience.

I am not “confusing my actions” with those of Mr. Yates. I am sympathising with his predicament. It is much easier to cast stones when you have not been through this sort of thing yourself.

In my experience (which I gather you lack, and which, for your sake, I hope you never gain), the violent outburst is entirely unpredictable. Apparently in this case it was even unpredictable to the therapist, who (I am given to understand) took Mrs. Yates off her anti-psychotic medication.

The fact that Mrs. Yates had attempted suicide surely would have indicated to her husband that she was depressed. Depressed, not psychotic.

I don’t think it’s fair to require her husband (who was no psychiatrist) to deduce from those suicide attempts that Ms. Yates was apt to hear “satanic voices” telling her to harm her children. The man was not clairvoyant.

From all outward appearances, she seems to have been (until the time of the psychotic break) a doting mother. There was no reason to suspect she might harm those kids.

65

Life without Parole.

I can accept that.

66

spooje - to me, it isn’t necessary to believe that Russel ‘could have forseen/predicted’ that his wife would have a psychotic break and would kill the kids.

The facts that he absolutely knew at the time to be true.

  1. the ages of his children meant that they were not safe alone.
  2. His wife had previously attempted suicide twice.
  3. She’d just recently (1 week/2 weeks?) been released from an inpatient psychiatric setting (not her first time), where she had been under suicide watch.

I cannot conceive of a situation where you’d allow a person who’d that recently gotten out of the hospital to attempt to take care of small children.

It was entirely possible and fairly predictable that something bad at the very least could definately happen.

Watching 5 small kids is a very taxing business, there’s so many dangerous things they can get into, they can get hurt easily etc .

If she’d succeeded in committing suicide herself, the kids would have been left on their own, and probably found her.

I’d say he had been very lucky that nothing bad had happened yet. I expect a child to think in terms of “well, the last 17 times I ran across the street w/o looking nothing bad happened, therefore nothing bad will ever happen while running across the street w/o looking” . I fail to see how an adult, who had ample knowledge of the condition his wife was in could allow themselves to think “well, so far she hasn’t killed herself in front of the kids, it’ll probably never happen”.

67

**spoke- **, “Please do not presume to speculate about my experience.”

Actually, I wasn’t speculating about your experience. I was characterizing the quality of your reasoning–inexplicably poor, IMO–and speculating that it might be a case of overidentification.

“It is much easier to cast stones when you have not been through this sort of thing yourself.”

Well actually now you’re speculating about my experience if you assume that I’ve never had any dealings with a loved one suffering from mental illness. That aside, I maintain that neither of us has been through “this sort of thing” because (so far as I know) neither of us has left five defenseless children in the care of a suicidal and psychotic woman. If you can’t see the legitimacy of that–and I think that wring has put it very clearly–then I think you must know very little about what it’s like to take care of children.

“The fact that Mrs. Yates had attempted suicide surely would have indicated to her husband that she was depressed. Depressed, not psychotic.”

Perhaps, but Yates had a history of being depressed and pscyhotic. In any case, what you overlook is that a depressed person shouldn’t be left to care for five children; this is doubly so for a depressed person who has experienced psychotic episodes; this is triply so for a depressed person who has experienced psychotic episodes and has attempted suicide; this is quadrupedly so… I think you get my point.

Responsibility for the care of five children, from a tiny infant, to toddlers, to older children (demanding homeschooling no less) would require a woman in the peak of mental and physical health.

“The man was not clairvoyant.”

By all accounts she had mentioned the voices at various points–it was not something new. As to “clairvoyance,” anyone could have predicted that this was not a safe situation for the children or the mother.

“There was no reason to suspect she might harm those kids.”

Yet there was every reason to expect–perhaps even to predict–that she might try to kill herself again at any moment. And for anyone who contemplates the enormity of that–how very ill a person must be to want to do that–the idea of leaving them alone all day–much less to care for five children!!!–beggars belief.

68

Mandelstam and wring-

You both seem to be operating under the mistaken impression that Andrea Yates was being left “alone all day” with her kids. In fact, there was only a narrow window during which she was alone. Her mother-in-law was scheduled to come to the house a little more than an hour after Mr. Yates left for work.

If you are going to publicly crucify Mr. Yates, please get the facts straight first.

And Mandelstam, it is abundantly clear from your posts that you have never seen a loved one go through a psychotic break. (Please feel free to correct me if I am mistaken in this.) I have seen it up close, so yes, I do have some background which you lack.

What you call “over-identification” I call “speaking from experience.” You should try it sometime.

I’ve seen nothing to indicate that Andrea Yates had mentioned to her husband that she was hearing voices (though she may have revealed this to her therapist). Do you have a cite?

While we’re at it, do you have a cite for your earlier proposition that someone can be “driven” to psychosis?

69

spoke-, I will reply in full at some point, but can’t now. For the moment…

“While we’re at it, do you have a cite for your earlier proposition that someone can be “driven” to psychosis?”

I never said that. I don’t recall that anyone else did either. Would you refer to the precise words to which to you refer.

I don’t actually like to talk about my family much online, but since you ask. I have a close relative, now passed away, diagnosed through his entire life with “manic depression,” “bipolar disorder”–at various points he was clinically depressed, institutionalized, given shock treatment, lithium, etc.

However, he never tried to take his own life. Had he done so I feel certain that he would not have been left to care for any children on his own. As it was, he hardly ever did care for children, especially not during his worst episodes, though he did take long leaves from professional work during this period. In other words, no one in my family would have done anything to overtax him, especially when he was at his most sick. And he wasn’t even suicidal or psychotic (though very miserable and dysfunctional in other ways). I think if Yates’s family had recognized her as being too sick to be able to take on the huge burden of caring for five children of different ages, this never would have happened.

Please don’t take the use of the term “overidentification” personally–spoke-. That is, no insult to you is/was intended by it. I simply don’t see any connection between you and Yates’s husband because (so far as I know) you’ve never left your children in the care of a suicidal and psychotic loved one. Your likening of his experience and yours is, therefore, to my mind, not explicable in other terms. But that’s not to criticize anything about you except, perhaps, your reasoning in this instance. I’d be the last personal to condemn anyone for sympathizing without another human being: in this case Yates’s husband. To be honest, I feel uncomfortable commenting on your own experience, which sounds painful–I’d rather drop the debate entirely than say anything that causes you pain.

Also, I’m not “publicly crucifying” anyone. Please go over my posts and find anything I said about Yates that corresponds to that description.

70

speaking only for myself - “and you get this impression, how?” I’ve said (roughly) “she wasn’t safe to be in charge of herself, let alone small children” and things like 'bad stuff can happen so quickly w/kids", so frankly I don’t give a good doodly darn that she was ‘only’ left in charge for an hour. As a matter of fact, that actually supports the contention that Russel knew there was a problem in leaving her in charge of the kids. “Oh, it’s only for an hour, what can possibly go wrong in that amount of time” ?

A suicidal person should not be left in charge of children. I’m astonished that needs to be spelled out. OThers who shouldn’t be in charge of children (a partial list) include convicted child molesters, coma patients, other small children, psychotics, people with delusions, etc.

71

A “suicidal” person should never be left with kids? Ever? Is that right?

So once someone attempts suicide, they should never again be trusted with children? Is that the position you’re taking? Because there are a lot of people out there who have attempted suicide, but then recovered from their depression and raised families. But you don’t think they should be allowed to do that?

From all reports, Andrea Yates was a loving, even doting, mother. There was no indication that she would do anything to harm the children, or allow them to come to harm.

Even if Rusty had reason to think that his wife was still suicidal (and I would like a cite to some evidence that he had reason to believe this), he might reasonably have assumed that she would be be concerned enough for the safety of her children that she would not attempt suicide while they were under her immediate care.

Finally, I again point out that Rusty Yates was not aware that his wife was psychotic or delusional. He has been very specific on this point. He knew only that she was depressed. And he assumed (wrongly as it turned out) that she was receiving psychiatric care and treatment appropriate to her condition.

So can we stop with the frankly libelous statements that he knowingly left his children in the care of a psychotic woman? (I am not directing that at any specific poster. It is a general comment.)

I still do not understand the venom directed at this man.

72

Reactions from Russell Yates here and here.

73

second time you’ve done that to me, thank you.

Suicidal person does not equal ‘person who has ever attempted suicide no matter how long ago’

According to news reports, Mrs. Yates had been released from an in patient psychiatric program while still under a suicide watch a brief time (less than a couple of weeks) prior to the deaths of the children.

That qualifies in my book as ‘still on shaky ground to be left in charge of the kids’ (a judgement which by your own admission that apparently Russel shared to a degree).

in addition, Russel complained that the doctor who’d last seen her at this in patient program had refused to put her back on Haldol, a drug, which he identified as being very helpful to her when she was ill in the past.

Now, why, pray tell, would the man be looking for his wife to be put on this serious psychotropic med again if he had no friggin idea she was in serious trouble mentally??? Hmmmm?

AND given that knowledge, he still left her in charge of the kids.

Let’s count’ em up.

  1. In patient psychiatric treatment in the near past.
  2. released while still under ‘suicide watch’, had serious attempts in the past.
  3. Was not on medication that her own husband had said was helpful for her in the past.
  4. Seemed that he was concerned enough to not leave her home alone w/the kids for ‘extended’ lengths of time.

Let me ask you:

Would you be so supportive of him had he left those kids ** alone** for that hour?? Probably not (I know that I would be arguing neglect at the least). Given all that he documentedly knew about her condition at that time, even tho’ “she’d not hurt the kids before”, again, why in the world would you risk leaving them with some one so obviously unstable? LEave aside the idea that he could have known she’d hurt the kids. It’s absolutely astonishing that one would risk leaving the kids in charge of some one so obviously unable to care for herself, let alone the kids.
this is not libel, it’s demonstrateably true. and he knew it.

74

Well, for one thing, no one said she shouldn’t be around children. She shouldn’t be left in charge of them alone.

No one said that she couldn’t see her children, or visit with them while in the hospital, if it made her feel better. No, they’re saying she shouldn’t have been in charge.

75

Okay, spoke-, I confess, I did indeed pick up the impression from my sporadic reading on the subject (generally in The Times plus a few radio accounts) that Yates had been left alone with her kids for hours at a time. So if that’s incorrect, then I stand corrected. And if it is the case that this represented a rare occasion during which Yates was left alone with the children, then I do feel Mr. Yates’s irresponsibility is less glaring. However, I have my doubts about that being factually the case. It also contradicts with your assertion that family members are falling over themselves to establish how ideal a mother she was. Perhaps you could provide a citation?

As to the rest–I still don’t see where you’re coming from spoke-; it’s almost as though you’re a Yates family member yourself.

The self-serving accounts of Yates family members are predictable: who would say otherwise?

In fact they are contradicted by Yates’s brother, Mr. Kennedy, who says (in today’s Times)

“I think that any man and woman whose spouse was that severely down, confused, that sick, that I would do whatever it would take to make sure my other half would get help that was necessary.”

Interestingly, here’s Mr. Yates himself:

"“People who are psychotic can be functional,” Mr. Yates said. "It’s just their whole perception of reality is distorted."

Precisely! One can only wonder how he can have justified leaving his children in the care of one who, in additional to being suicidal, had her “whole perception of reality…distorted.”

76

pulling info from your site here

And, let’s remember, that in June of 2001, the doctor refused to put her on the medication that Russell here says they had counted on.

He claims still that he didn’t know ‘how sick’ she was. However, he certainly knew she was sick, had been hospitalized four times, attempted suicide twice and wasn’t on medication.

If she’d been a diabetic, had epilepsy or any of a host of other medical conditions, and had that sort of medical history, and wasn’t on medication, I’d still have been saying ‘criminally neglegent to leave her in charge of small children’.

(nice catch by the way Guin on the ‘left with’ vs. ‘in charge of’ difference).

77

Where to begin?

First, Andrea Yates’s suicide attempts occurred in 1999. They were not recent. So from Russell Yates’s perspective, his wife was a formerly suicidal person.

(By the way, I’m still unclear. Can a formerly suicidal person never be left “in charge of” children? And if not, why not, exactly? How does a past suicide attempt indicate a present risk to the children?)

As for her being placed on “suicide watch” at the hospital during her last stay, two points: 1. It might be viewed as a strictly precautionary measure designed to limit the hospital’s liability; and 2. I have seen no indication that Mr. Yates was made aware of this supposed “suicide watch” or of any current suicidal ideation on his wife’s part. Does anyone have a cite to establish this? Or are we speculating again? You think a spouse gets told everything that a hospital does?

As for the fifth child, Russell Yates says it was a joint wish to have a fifth child. It was not something he pressed on his wife. They both thought the medication could control her post-partum symptoms, since it had worked in the past.

Russell Yates knew his wife was depressed. He made an effort to get her treatment. He made an effort to get her the medication he thought she needed. When he couldn’t get that to happen, he made an effort to get her some help and lighten her load. Thus, on the day the kids were killed, his mother was supposed to come over.

(By the way, the short “window of opportunity” to drown the kids was discussed in some detail in the Jane Pauley interview with the jurors last night. The fact that Andrea Yates made prior plans to kill her kids during this short window was cited by the jury - illogically, IMHO - as evidence that Mrs. Yates was sane.)

As for the hysterical harping on the fact that Ms. Yates had been hospitalized four times (!!!), well yeah, she had been hospitalized (as far as her husband understood) for depression. Again, not the sort of thing to put him on notice that she might harm the kids. (Wasn’t Tipper Gore treated for depression? [sarcasm] Geez, keep her away from the kids!!! [/sarcasm])

As for the critical comments of Mrs. Yates’s brother, he has suffered a loss, and it is not surprising that he might lash out. However, he is operating (not unlike the posters to this thread) with the benefit of hindsight, an advantage not available to Russell Yates.

Russell Yate’s own comments about psychotics having a distorted preception of reality seem to be based on knowledge he has gained after the fact (since he was unaware of her psychosis prior to the drownings). I still see not one single cite to show that he knew of her psychosis beforehand. Anyone? Anyone?

In fact, he seems to be saying that a person can be psychotic without those around her being aware of it (i.e. a “functioning psychotic.”) And based on my own experience with a loved one, I can back that up. In fact, persons experiencing psychotic hallucinations (such as hearing voices) often conceal the fact from those around them.

As long as y’all are determined to form a lynch mob, why aren’t you mentioning the psychiatrists and the HMO (which apparently wouldn’t underwrite proper treatment) as candidates for the hanging tree?

I sure hope none of y’all ever have to walk a mile in Russell Yates’s shoes.

78

**
Having been institutionalized a few times myself-
1 Yes, a suicide watch is a precautionary measure-for those patients who are likely to commit suicide. It is not a standard procedure for all psychiatric patients. In one facility I was in out of about 200 patients, 3 or 4 might be on suicide watch.
2 If the hospital followed standard procedure, a spouse asking about the patient’s condition would be informed of a suicide watch. If you’re wife is in the psych ward, you just have to ask “How is she?”. If Russel asked about his wife or visited her, he knew that she was on suicide watch.

**

Suicide results from the idea 'I'd be better off dead". It isn't far from there to "we'd be better off dead". Florida leads the country in murder suicides for that reason. Retirees kill the spouse dependant on them for care, and then themselves. Thus, it was conceivable Andrea might kill the children before committing suicide. Should Russel have been worried? Absolutely.

**

In my last post, I did say the doctor was at fault. He screwed up. There were massive errors in her treatment. I’m on 7 pills a day. I’ve got a government HMO. A decent psychiatrist can get an HMO to pay for psychiatric treatment.

     I don't know a great deal about Russel.  He may have been oblivious to his wife's decline. Or, he may have seen it and taken steps he though would be adequate. I think he should be brought up on charges not because  he is guilty, but to determine his guilt or innocence.
79

The statistic on murder-suicides in Florida is, IIRC, from the Sun Sentinel

80

This is the second time that you’ve equated “not left in charge of children” to “can’t be near children”.

Please note, that once you trot out the straw man, and it’s pointed out (in no less than two posts), it becomes a less viable argument even for those just skimming the thread, so if you’re looking to convince folks that you’re correct, you might try at least varying the straw man argument.

The good “Doc” has demonstrated effectively, too that ‘depressed’ does not in any way equal “suicidal” and also given evidence that “suicide watch” is not routine, is something to be greatly concerned about, and that Mr. Yates (who’s admitted to having spoken w/the doctors there, visited her there) absolutely would have known.

(parenthetically, I do also hold the doctor to be responsible for the lack of care given )

and, as for the ‘gee her last suicide attempts were two whole years ago,’ allow me to point out that, well, yes, they were, good of you to notice - of course, they also coincided with the birth of her fourth child - you remember, the one that afterwards the doctors told both Yates that “PPP was likely to happen if she gave birth again”, that same time that Mr. Yates said ‘well, we figured the Haldol brought her out of it before, so if it happened again she could just go on Haldol again’, that same ‘haldol’ that the most recent doctor took her off of and Mr. Yates knew???

So, basically, in 1999 at the birth of her 4th child, she became suicidal and acutely ill, it was linked to the birth of the child, Mr. Yates knew that subsequent births would likely cause a relapse, and she only ‘got better’ through the use of Haldol, which was sadly lacking in June of last year.

You’re assisting me in demonstrating that, under the conditions that existed in June of 2000 (and that he knew about at the time), he was absolutely wrong to have left her **in charge of ** (bolding so you don’t again confuse it with ‘near’) the children