Posted on 06/28/2006 12:38:46 PM PDT by presidio9
She had come to hate these kids.
There is no earthly justice for Andrea Yates. Sure, having her torn apart by wild dogs will make some folks happy, but won't bring back the kids. Rusty has already moved on. I sure don't know if I could, if it were me.
Know what could be good for society in the long run? Keep her institutionalized, and use her for study purposes. Get to the bottom of her delusions/organic brain dysfunction/whatever may have been discovered in the interim, and use that knowlege to treat others, so it doesn't happen again.
Ooops, got lost on this thread. Replied to your previous reply.
You know, one of those shrinks recommended Electroshock Therapy. That is the treatment of last resort, and Rusty vetoed it. I did a term paper on the subject several years ago, and kept wondering if she had gone through the treatment(nasty business-trust me), if the children would be alive today. Andrea Yates could no longer speak for herself. Imo, there are people who are just as culpable as she is for the deaths of those kids. Like I said, where is their spiritual advisor? He took off pretty quick after the murders.
I'd like to see some changes in the system. She should have been admitted to a psychiatric inpatient facility over Rusty's objections, for one. This is currently illegal in most states, if I am not mistaken. For a doctor to even suggest ECT means that her condition was pretty bad.
Also, there was "talk" that her father was schizophrenic. She apparently was an overachiever in HS and college, but some say that she sometimes showed signs of not being stable. Oh and there is such a thing as postpartum psychosis...ask Brooke Shields. With Andrea Yates, there is the distinct possibility that this could have triggered latent schizophrenia. Who knows? Wouldn't it be beneficial to find out?
Ask for my opinion about Susan Smith.
And how many people do this on an annual basis? I would guess less than one in a country of 300,000,000 so Id say that your brain chemistry line of defense is a load of crap.
I wouldn't dream of jumping on you. Look at Susuan Smith, who calmly figured a way to dump her former husband and move on to the next beau. Too bad he didn't want children.
It seems to me that in both these women's minds it was the man in their lives who was responsible, to their way of thinking. It's almost impossible for me to understand. In Yates position, I'd have dumped him pronto, sued him for all the child support good lawyers can buy!
I hear what you both are saying. That she is not the sole culpable person. Of course, if he was THAT much of a pig, she could have - and should have, IMHO - just taken him out. Death by trial (attorneys in divorce court!)
And didn't it begin because someone said it was barbaric tying loonies to trees and leaving 'em there?
All I can say is, thank goodness there are men AND women who are very different from the Yates man and woman! If that isn't enough to renew faith, then I don't know what is!
"Some days this world just overwhelms me. This is one of those days."
Well said and echos my feelings exactly. Seems like I am having more and more of these days myself.
using = usual
I don't recall that phrase in Daniel McNaughten's defense, offhand. Something tells me you're not familiar with the case..... ;)
Any mother who kills their own child in cold blood is capable of killing again. In Andrea's case, it was FIVE of her own children.
I don't care what her state of mind was. She is either insane or evil...Andrea deserves no mercy here on earth. In the after life, God will judge her for all eternity.
sw
Because the husband said that they wanted all the children good would give them.
Read up on Yates pre-murder. She was cutting herself, not eating food or feeding the children at times. She held a knife to her throat and begged to die (around the time she had child 3).....She was hospitalized in a catatonic state at one time. Her husband actually had her go off her psychotropic meds to get pregnant with child 4 and 5!
The Drs. told the husband that his wife was severely unstable and that pregnancy and childrearing were beyond her. He ignored them, putting it all in 'gods hands'. There were times when he reported that Andrea was doing 'Great' at home when all she had managed to do that day was pick up a comb and aim it at her head.
They also were attending this very negative church where everyone was evil....lots of fire, brimstone and damnation...you're all going to hell etc. Put someone mentally ill in that setting and you're just putting match to gasoline.
When Andrea called her husband and said "I did it!" He asked "Which one?" He later admitted he thought she'd probably kill herself (in front of the kids).
He's married again so he can father another clan, which was his intent with Andrea. Yes, I think the man is a creep.
I'm not saying that Andrea is innocent, I'm not saying she doesn't need to be punished (or at least locked away). I just see that there is way more to this story than reads on surface. The deaths of these children could have be prevented and the husband bears a burden of guilt for not listening to the warnings.
No,
it's not all the husband's fault,
but he was warned that his wife was a hazzard to herself and the children.
See my previous post. This isn't like the other case in Texas where the husband woke up from a nap and found his wife had killed or tried to kill all there kids. Poor man, that came out of the blue.
In the Yates case, years of events happened, she was on major psyche meds etc..... The husband knew that there was a crazy woman caring for his children. So yes, he bears some responsibility.
The same way a woman bears responsibility for bringing an abuse boyfriend into her house to be around her children.
The question becomes: "How unstable is the person who refuses to see another's instability?" The new wife has a lot of courage, IMHO! I wouldn't have Yates if he were the last man on the planet!
Yes, your information certainly sheds new light on the subject.
From the point of view of a family member, I would just add that people who are quite distubed can often be very canny about disguising the extent of their illness in front of loved ones. Maybe they're motivated by shame, a desire to retain the loved one's support, or just to stay out of the hospital. We want to believe our loved ones are getting better, so we are easy marks.
Rusy Yates doesn't strike me as domineering. If anything, I'd guess that he was too passive to take control of the situation.
I do know that if you live around madness long enough, you stop seeing certain things. That isn't making excuses.
I also work around the mentally ill, including those who are criminally insane (and yes, we have one woman who has killed). It's not as cut and dried as you think. Nor is it as easy to hate them as you think. You can see that their mind is damaged, and.....
I don't know how to put it.
That our minds are layered, like onions? That we each have our fragilities and may have glimpses of what it takes to incur 'an event' but can never really be sure? That it's impossible to say, "I could never kill anyone," especially for one who knows love and would protect a loved one?
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