Posted on 07/28/2006 9:14:42 PM PDT by Niuhuru
"It's a shame that there's no law that can give Russell Yates his due," writes syndicated columnist Debra Saunders. "Russell Yates ought to be locked up instead of his wife," says writer Cindy Hasz. Creators Syndicate's Froma Harrop sneers that he probably "misses the obedient drudge who bore and raised his five children more than the five children." Harsh words for Russell Yates have come from many others, particularly former O. J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark.
What these and others forget is that it's hard to make the right decision when you don't have a lot of options. According to Andrea Yates' brother, Andrew Kennedy, Russell Yates "did his best....He trusted the doctors and he did everything they said to do. He made sure she took her medication."
Psychiatrist Mohammed Saeed took Yates off the drug Haldol on June 4. Russell Yates, worried about his wife, brought her back to Dr. Saeed on June 18. The doctor said he saw no sign of psychosis and sent her home.
Two days later, she killed their five children.
Instead of using 20-20 hindsight, let's look at the situation as it must have appeared to Russell Yates before June 20. Mental illness is difficult for untrained people to cope with and to comprehend. Dr. Saeed had indicated that he believed that Andrea Yates was getting better, and Andrea herself has testified that she told nobody, not even her husband, about the "voices in her head." While Russell surely had doubts about leaving the kids with her, he didn't have a lot of choices. He couldn't quit his job to care for the kids--somebody had to put food on the table. Ending the home-schooling, a violation of both of their beliefs, might have been a severe blow to his fragile wife's self-esteem, perhaps pushing her over the edge.
Instead, Russell made the one move he needed to make--he brought his mother in from Tennessee to watch the kids every day. He generally left for work at 9 am and his mother arrived at 10 am, and he thought he had the situation under control.
He also probably believed that the best thing to do was to try to keep their family life stable, to try to be cheerful and to make the kids happy, and to hope that the medications would work and that his wife would get better. He may have believed that much of what Andrea was going through was simply post-pregnancy mood swings, and that the best thing to do is to be patient and to wait them out. He also attributed much of his wife's distress to the death of her father early last year. And he no doubt was in some denial, as people who are trapped in difficult situations often are. But should he really have expected that his troubled wife would kill their children?
The genuine mistakes Russell Yates made came earlier, when both he and Andrea decided to have a fifth child (perhaps because one or both of them wanted to have a girl), and when they decided upon home-schooling. Yet these decisions, which are now used against Russell, were mutual and were based upon the religious and moral beliefs of both Russell and Andrea. In fact, the testimony of Terry Arnold, a local merchant, indicates that Andrea Yates may have wanted a sixth child. Arnold testified that when he asked Andrea last year if they planned to have another child, a sudden wave of sadness washed over her.
"I felt like I had hit a sore subject," Arnold said. "There was a change in her demeanor...I thought she was going to cry."
Andrea's best friend claims that Russell didn't help out much around the house. It's hard to know how true this is, but we do know that Russell Yates was involved with his kids--he coached their sports teams, played basketball with them in the driveway regularly, selected and purchased some of their school materials, and was often seen around the neighborhood in the evenings as he walked with his family and pushed his youngest daughter in a stroller. He and his kids made lists of things they could do to cheer mommy up. And Russell alone shouldered the burden of supporting a wife and five children--a task certainly equal to the strain of being a housewife if home schooling is not in the equation.
Andrea Yates' defenders claim that she is not guilty of her crimes due to mental illness, and they may be correct. But the husband who has stood by his wife from the day of the tragedy, who has testified in her defense, and who has fought the public perception of her as a monster, deserves better than to be blamed for the murders and to be vilified as a cruel, domineering patriarch. Russell Yates is a flawed yet decent human being who tried to do what he could in a difficult and cloudy situation. Whether sane or insane, it is Andrea Yates, not Russell Yates, who killed their five children.
Until I read this article, I didn't know that people were blaming the husband at all. It seems from the article that the hardened feminist types that believe that any time a woman shoots a man, the man had it coming, unsurprisingly are blaming Andrea's husband.
What I'm really surprised about is that the people on this forum are saying he should be locked up. Having 5 kids used to be common, and by itself does not drive someone to multiple acts of homicide. From what I remember in the news early on was that postpartum depression had to do with this. Isn't this a temporary condition? Wouldn't a clean bill of health from a psychiatrist be convincing enough proof that it was over?
I think the comments that he should have stopped having kids sometime before 5 (2 or 3?) are ignorant in the extreme. The rest of the world has more than 2 or 3 kids. Attitudes like this are why western countries are dying out.
I am the mother of a daughter, who had the same diagnois as Andrea Yates, and this happened 25 years ago.
My daughters husband decided to divorce her "for she would never be well", the doctors said. The husband got control of the two children and I never saw them again as children. The older son was forced to leave his home at 19 and overdosed on drugs, and he is dead. The daughter is now 27 and was given up for adoption as a smaill child by her father, who did not want to pay child support.
So to me, Rusty Yates just does not look too bad. Maybe he was too optimistic, and maybe he had too much faith in doctors. Maybe Rusty was short on imagination. I am willing to let God judge Rusty Yates, and I am just not so sure that I could have done better.
When she called him and told him "she did it"....he asked "which one"? She said "all of them".
Doesn't this make one wonder if he did NOT know what she was thinking? (about killing a child/children?)
I've got to side with you and probably most other sane individuals would side with us on this, but the real question that needs to be address is:"Why did she do it?", my answer to that is one of two things, One she didn't want the kids to grow up and be like she was or is and that is a nut case.
The other thing that I've thought about is a little more complex to understand. Considering they were not dealing with run of the mill Churches their is no telling what kind of teaching they got from there so call spirtually leaders, but even if they were the discussion of the so call "age of accountability" in relationship to salvation probably came up. I don't hold to this view but to sum it up, if one was to die before reaching a certain age of accountability they would go to heaven, straight to heaven, do not pass go, just go straight to heaven,
---but after you've get beyound that age of accountability you could end up going to hell if you do not believe in Jesus. I highly suspect that her reasoning for drowning the kids was because she probably thought that if she killed the kids before they reached that age of accountability they would all go to heaven. So in her mind set, if this is the case, she was doing the best thing she could for the kids and that is giving them a straight path to heaven. If this is the case, this is something you just don't talk about to the majority of the masses. She and he is just one set of nut cases out there, there are a lot more of them out there then most would want to admit, to bring up the discussion that she drowned them because she didn't want them going to hell, just gives the same idea to many other nut cases that would do the same thing to there kids if you let them think about it long enough.
Just brought home 2 CD's after watching Nevada Slim and Cimmeron Sue at the local County Fair.
Fun music.
While that may well be the case with some people, I don't blame Rusty because he's a man. It's not a male/female issue to me. It's a crazy/sane issue. This woman had to be hospitalized for acute psychosis after her 4th child was born and Rusty was warned by the doctors that having more children would be an extremely bad idea and in no way in her best interests. They both chose to ignore that, but I find him more at fault because he was the sane one. He ignored the grave danger to her and to his children because he wanted more children. He put his own desires before his wife's health and I find that to be profoundly selfish. And I'd feel the same way about the situation if he was the psycho and she was the sane one.
In my eyes, Russell Yates is guilty of child endangerment and manslaughter. Andrea was a ticking time bomb who needed to be in a mental institution instead of taking care of young children. Furthermore, his insistence that they have more kids and that Andrea homeschool the kids likely put more stress on her and worsened her condition.
Based on this guy's statements after the crime, Russell Yates seems to be a real catch... sarcasam off: I hope that God makes sure that he's haunted every night by what happened to those children..
Is it a fact that HE made this decision, that it was not a mutual desire?
Aside from that, I agree with the poster who said that if Russell was the sane one in the marriage, versus his wife who suffered mental problems, he had the responsibility to make sure she did not get pregnant again. Also, I don't understand how he could allow a trouble wife to homeschool their children. It just doesn't add up to me.
Whether or not he carries any guilt for this horrible occurrence, I think he would have to have a mind-block not to be haunted.
How sad. Russell sounds like imagined that it would cheer Andrea up to have more kids in the household. Many normal or near-normal people are simply nonplussed by severe mental illness.
Not EVERYONE should stop having kids...geez...read what people have written!!! SHE should have stopped having kids!!
Multiple suicide attempts, medication, institutionalization....sorry, but you're ignorant on this one!!
I can well understand your position. This could make any normal human being go berserk. Frankly, I didn't know what to think about how Russell Yates dealt with this. I still don't.
Even though these people are total strangers to me, if I had walked in and witnessed what Andrea did, I think my shock and horror would have instinctively caused me to physically attack her.
What the h*ll are you getting at? Or are you just "havin' fun!"?
Picture your mother drowning all your sisters and brothers, but you escaped because you ran out of the house. So you end up in a school promoting the queer lifestyle as normal. You COULD reject it...find adults who don't support it to help you.
Do you wish, instead, that your mother had drowned you, too?
Silly reasoning on your part, sorry to say.
He ignored the grave danger to her and to his children because he wanted more children.
Did it ever dawn on you that it may have been her more than him that wanted another child and worked on him to let her have one? See, you don't know the inner workings of their relationship, so you choose to think the worse about the husband over the wife. You, nor anyone else knows who convinced who to have another baby, probably both. It's a lot harder for a husband to say no to his wife about having another child than it is to say yes. He shouldn't be blamed about that which we don't know happened between them. Their personal dynamics, and how they fed off of each others' needs. Give the guy a break.
...someone who is supposedly (more or less) sane now...
While a medication can do wonders to help those with mental disturbances, how can anyone ever enjoy "sanity" when they have the knowledge and memory of drowning even ONE of their children, let alone all of them? I truly don't believe I could.
/s/
I don't recall anyone insisting the woman was responsible for the murders of those two beautiful little girls.
There is something sick about the transference of blame from Andrea to her husband.
Many of these same people are against birth control, and are constantly ranting against the public school system in America.
Russel Yates could have made two moves that might have prevented this situation. One very, very simple, that almost certainly would have prevented the events of that tragic day: HE COULD HAVE WAITED FOR HIS MOTHER TO ARRIVE! I mean, she comes all the way from Tennessee, to stay and help care for the kids, but she can't truly "Tag team it" with her son? When the idea, presumeably, is not to leave Andrea alone with the kids?
The second is maybe not so simple, and who can ever know what effect it would have had: HE COULD HAVE KEPT HIS PANTS ON!
And he certainly shows his selfishness and his inherent infidelity by divorcing Andrea. I guess the "in sickness" and "for worse" parts didn't mean much to him.
Only the murderer is responsible for his, or her, murders.
"...he coached their sports teams, played basketball with them in the driveway regularly, selected and purchased some of their school materials..."
And I don't get this part either, the oldest child was what? 7? How many "sports teams" were these pre-schoolers on? I have never understood why media reports have discussed these kids as though they were school age, when only the oldest two were old enough to even be in kidergarten or first grade. If you are homeschooled, do you have to start classes, team sports, etc. at age three?
Of course, this bad reporting is the media's fault, due to some indecipherable bias of their own, neither Russel nor even Andrea Yates is to blame for this part of my irritation.
Yep. He kept her impregnated which only aggravated her psychosis. She also homeschooled the kids supposedly because she felt she was already a "bad mother" and needed to prove she wasn't. So where was Russell in THAT decision? He could have been the man of the house and said NO!
There is something wrong with Russell. Never a tear about his kids....it's all about how his ex is REALLY such a wonderful gal. gag
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