Posted on 04/16/2005 3:16:48 PM PDT by familyop
Quiet and thoughtful, tall,Êarticulate and neatly dressed, 31-year-old Natachia Ramsey smiles easily and inspires confidence.
But nearly six years ago, overwhelmed with physical and family problems after the birth of her son, distraught and alone in the midst of undiagnosed postpartum depression, Ramsey smothered her 4-week-old baby in his bassinet before attempting to take her own life.
Now, after years of difficult therapy, most while confined at the Augusta Mental Health Institute, Ramsey has been reunited with her older child who was taken into state custody at age 8 shortly after the infant brother's horrific death.
Rescue crews were able to stop Ramsey from bleeding to death in the bathtub of her Searsport mobile home on April 11, 1999, after she made a confused call to a mental-health crisis line.
But they were unable to revive the infant, Hunter. Her older child had been left with Ramsey's estranged husband earlier in the day.
In 2001, a jury ruled that she was insane at the time of the killing and acquitted her of manslaughter. Ramsey was committed to the Augusta state psychiatric hospital.
But in March 2004, a Superior Court judge gave Ramsey permission to live in her own apartment. And last December, District Court Judge John C. Nivison ruled that her elder child, now 12 years old, can live with her.
A statement from court Guardian ad Litem Maureen E. Dillane, approved by Nivison, indicated that officials of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and Dillane agreed to return the surviving child to Ramsey's home for "trial placement."
"If I had any concerns about what would happen, then my child wouldn't be in my house right now, because I would refuse," Ramsey said in an interview with the Kennebec Journal.
A TROUBLED PAST
In 1999, Ramsey experienced a difficult pregnancy and childbirth. She contracted pneumonia while in the hospital and had to stay longer than expected. She left the hospital sooner than doctors recommended because she felt she was needed at home.
"There's nothing I'm going to be able to tell you about that day that is going to make a lot of sense, because it doesn't make sense to me now," Ramsey said.
On the day Hunter was killed, Ramsey and her husband were living apart. Her husband suspected he was not the boy's father, though paternity tests later proved he was, Ramsey said.
He picked up the couple's older child, then left, leaving her alone with the baby she believed he did not accept.
"When he left, I wanted to die," she said. "Everything was very unclear. I just remember thinking that I couldn't leave Hunter, because I wanted to die and I couldn't leave Hunter because no one was going to care for him. In my mind, that day, there wasn't anyone else that could or would care for him. That he would be alone. And I know that doesn't make sense now. That day it made sense to me. Things made sense that day that do not make sense to me now."
Planning to take her own life, Ramsey said she believed no one would care for her son. And she wanted to be with him.
So, in her confused state, she suffocated the baby while he lay in his bassinet in the bedroom of her Mount Ephraim Road mobile home.
After her son's death, Ramsey was diagnosed with major depression; she takes anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications to prevent flareups.
Given a family history that includes the suicides of both her mother and maternal grandfather, she believes she probably suffered from depression long before she killed her baby.
"My family is very old Maine, so even after the death of my mother and grandfather there was never any counseling or anything," she said.
"It's taken me many years of therapy and, essentially, permission from therapists in order to feel as though it's OK to miss him.
"Your job as a parent is to protect your children and to keep them safe. In my skewed thinking that day I thought that's what I was doing, keeping him with me and protecting him. For me, anyway, it was a disbelief. How could I do that? Just the feelings of guilt around knowing one of your children is dead.
"One of the things that bothers me always the most is anyone thinking that he wasn't wanted, or I thought he was bad, or anything like that. And I wasn't hearing voices and no one was telling me that he was evil. It was about that moment, it was irrational. It was irrational because I was contemplating suicide."
QUESTIONS FOR STATE
A brief statement issued by Nivison's court indicates that Department of Health and Human Services officials approved plans to return her older child to Ramsey's home.
"Trial placement with the mother was recommended to the court based on the unanimous agreement of all the parties," wrote Maureen E. Dillane, who represented the child in the child-protective proceedings.
Jim LaBrecque -- an advocate for families that have had children removed by state officials and a longtime critic of Maine's child-protective system -- said Nivison's decision raises troubling questions about the equity of treatment of all parents in similar court actions.
LaBrecque said he knows of other cases in which children have been removed permanently from their families for far less serious abuses than the death of a child.
"Just about every case is less heinous than (Ramsey's)," LaBrecque said. "There are many cases where parents' rights are terminated from ever seeing their children again for the simplest things, like one slap across the face. This all boils down to the department's position and whether or not they like the parent."
Department spokesman Michael Norton declined to explain the agency's position in Ramsey's case, citing confidentiality laws.
Since Hunter's death, Ramsey has received intensive psychological treatment. She still takes medication for recurrent major depression. Ramsey also decided to avoid a recurrence of postpartum depression by voluntarily undergoing sterilization.
"Not knowing before about postpartum depression or that I could get sick, I had no way of really knowing what could happen," she said.
"But then you become aware and you become educated and you have choices to make, and my choice was to have a tubal ligation to prevent the possibility of ever becoming severely postpartum. Weighing all the options and knowing how important my child is to me, I made the choice of being the best parent I could be, and that was to not allow the possibility of having more kids."
RAMSEY'S LEGAL PROCESS
Ramsey was indicted on a charge of murder, but a plea bargain reduced the charge to manslaughter while allowing her to use an insanity defense before a jury that subsequently acquitted her because of her mental condition.
Between 2001 -- when a jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity -- and early 2004, courts granted Ramsey incremental increases in her freedom. Although acknowledging her progress, judges have yet to fully release Ramsey from state custody.
In December, Superior Court Justice S. Kirk Studstrup further reduced her restrictions, giving her virtually unlimited use of her car and unsupervised time in the community. But he also continued to ban nonprescribed drugs or alcohol and required Ramsey to return to Riverview Psychiatric Center at least once every 14 days.
Assistant Attorney General Fernand R. LaRochelle, who prosecuted Ramsey and followed her case through the courts, said prosecutors have watched her progress closely.
LaRochelle said Ramsey has responded well to treatment.
"I'm not aware of any situation in which she has caused (her treatment team) any reason for serous concern," LaRochelle said. "Some people progress at a much faster rate than others."
POSTPARTUM DISCORD
While Ramsey's use of the insanity defense in the death of her baby, and the return of her elder child, may raise questions in Maine, the laws in a number of other countries regularly treat women with postpartum depression who kill infant children more leniently than women in similar circumstances in the United States.
Increasingly, women who kill their children in severe bouts of postpartum depression or psychosis are being given treatment rather than jail time. But, in some states, women are still serving long prison sentences or may even face the death penalty for killing their young children.
Michelle Oberman, a Santa Clara University School of Law professor and author with Cheryl L. Meyer of "Mothers Who Kill Their Children: Understanding the Acts of Moms from Susan Smith to the 'Prom Mom,' " said many countries put postpartum killings in a special category of crime, requiring a guilty plea but then mandating treatment, probation or short prison sentences.
"About 17 or 18 countries around the world follow the British common law, which began in 1922, in cases where a mother kills a child under the age of 1," Oberman said.
The greatest threat posed by these women comes if they become pregnant or once again give birth, Oberman said.
"Assuming (Ramsey) has an appropriately set-up team monitoring her, it's hard to believe she would be at risk and certainly not to her 12-year-old. The only exception would be if she got pregnant again," Oberman said.
Psychiatrist Deborah Sichel, a former Harvard Medical School instructor and author of "Women's Moods: What Every Woman Must Know About Hormones, the Brain and Emotional Health," said Ramsey's apparent history of depression is typical of women who suffer the most severe cases of postpartum depression or psychosis.
Research on the small minority of women who behave violently toward their children after pregnancy often reveals past problems, she said.
Accurate diagnosis and treatment by specially trained professionals is necessary for successful recovery and to prevent future harm.
But Sichel cautioned that other forms of anxiety or stress can bring on further problems.
"Having a 12-year-old child calls for very close followup," she said. "It doesn't preclude her from having her child back, but it does need careful supervision."
Maine has experienced few cases such as Ramsey's, in which a mother kills her children after giving birth.
Her case recalls that of another Maine mother, Constance M. Fisher, who drowned her three young children in the family's bathtub in Waterville in 1954.
A Kennebec County grand jury refused to indict her. She was treated and bore three more children, drowning them in her Fairfield home in 1966 when they were almost exactly the same ages. She later took her own life while at AMHI.
High-profile cases in other states include that of Andrea Yates, a Texas woman accused of drowning her five children in a bathtub in 2001.
Yates was sentenced to life in prison, although her conviction was overturned in January by a Texas appeals court because a state witness may have presented false testimony.
In 2000, Texas mother Christina Riggs was granted her request to be executed by lethal injection for drugging and smothering her 2-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in 1997 before attempting her own suicide. She was the fifth woman to be executed in the United States since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty.
In Fisher's time, doctors knew less about identifying postpartum depression or its treatment, Ramsey said. Today, professional help and new medications can reduce symptoms earlier if identified.
Ramsey encouraged women who suffer depression after childbirth to reach out for that help.
"This doesn't mean you're an ogre or a monster, which I think regardless is how" women in her position may be perceived by the public, Ramsey said.
LONG ACQUITTAL PROCESS
Judges worried about the safety of the Maine public are slow to relinquish court control over anyone acquitted of a crime because of insanity.
Ramsey hopes that will change.
"There are some people who will never come out from under the commissioner because there's always a sense that they want to continue monitoring. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be living out in the community and having the best life they're able to have, it just means that they want to be able keep an eye on them and bring them back into the hospital if need be," Ramsey said.
"I had a wonderful psychiatrist. But at the same time, I think that there are examples of people who have been within the system for 15 years for stealing a six-pack of beer that really have been institutionalized and should have been out a long time ago."
Although Ramsey has yet to be fully released from state oversight, Ramsey's attorney, John D. Pelletier, said both Studstrup and Nivison were aware of each other's actions and the return of Ramsey's child.
Ramsey is convinced that today she would be able to recognize the onset of psychological problems in time to reach out for help.
"I have a very large support system. Six years ago, when I became very sick, I didn't know I was becoming sick," Ramsey said.
"The person I was a decade ago is not the same person I am today. I wanted to be a better parent. I wanted to be a better person. And I wanted to lead a better life.
"So I've spent six years working really hard in therapy to do all those things.
"The average person reading this article isn't going to know me and isn't going to know this, they're not going to understand and I'm sure there's a majority of people who are going to say I'm a monster," she said.
"There were many parties involved and (the child returned only) after careful consideration. This was not a willy-nilly decision," Ramsey said.
"The only thing I can tell you is that I love my child."
I've never believed in making excuses for murder or anything else. But I do believe there are reasons things happen. Some of which aren't rational or make any amount of sense. I for one do not want to make any Excuses for violence nor do I want to breed hatred and contempt. I just try and comprehend and understand the reasons without excusing the behavior.
So you believe there's no chemical therapy that helps the mentally ill?
So you don't think the woman was mentally ill?
Honestly, I've run across people with post partum depression.
I don't think this was post partum depression.
But you just DID make excuses.
She knew well enough to call the hotline to save her own life.
She knew what she did was wrong.
I am sure that I did not say that there is no chemical therapy that helps the mentally ill. I would, however, say that I know that the public thinks that psychotropics make people well when they do not. Many problems ensue. I knew a man who jumped in front of a train a couple of weeks ago. He had recently been hospitalized, medicated, and released. Happens all of the time.
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