Yates lived by rigid schedule, according to husband
Posted on 03/01/2002 1:45:51 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Yates lived by rigid schedule, according to husband
Husband also testifies she was allowed 3 hours a week without her kids
03/01/2002
HOUSTON - Russell "Rusty" Yates told jurors Thursday about how his wife, Andrea, lived by a rigid schedule as housekeeper and teacher and was allowed three hours each week to do whatever she wanted, alone, without her children.
"Man's the breadwinner and the woman's the homemaker," Mr. Yates said Thursday during Mrs. Yates' capital murder trial. Mrs. Yates pleaded insanity after admitting that she drowned her five children in June.
While he talked proudly of the couple's decision to toe a higher ethical line based on biblical teachings and lessons gleaned from a conservative newsletter called "Perilous Times," Mr. Yates coincidentally painted a picture for jurors of a bleak life bereft of any outlet for Mrs. Yates besides her children.
AP "A scared animal" is how Debbie Holmes testified that her friend Andrea Yates behaved in the days before she killed her children. |
Mr. Yates, 37, told the jury that he and his wife agreed before their wedding in 1993 to a "traditional" marriage in which he would serve as sole breadwinner and she would be homemaker.
The pact included being a stay-at-home mother, primary caregiver and, eventually, home-school teacher. Mr. Yates said that he controlled the cash and that she stuck carefully to an allowance.
Therapist Earline Wilcott, who met with Mrs. Yates after her suicide attempts, testified that her client felt overwhelmed and trapped.
Ms. Wilcott said Mrs. Yates felt criticized for the way she ran the household. Ms. Wilcott said Mrs. Yates told her that her husband bought her a book on how to get organized.
When pressure from raising their children appeared to be getting to Mrs. Yates, she could always look forward to Thursdays. Mr. Yates testified that for three hours once each week from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mrs. Yates could do whatever she wanted, alone, without the children.
The free time was to provide some relief for his wife, Mr. Yates said. "I guess that's what we decided," he said.
Mrs. Yates is a diagnosed schizophrenic predisposed to pitch-black depressions that followed the births of her last two children. Testimony has shown that the 37-year-old registered nurse with perfectionist tendencies and a solid Christian faith went along with the home management plan she and Mr. Yates hammered out before marriage.
During a second day of testimony, this time during questioning by Harris County prosecutor Joe Owmby, Mr. Yates, a NASA engineer, said he and Mrs. Yates agreed before marrying that she would give up her job at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at Houston.
"We thought it best that Andrea be home," Mr. Yates testified.
Prosecutors say Mrs. Yates was fully aware of what she was doing when she drowned Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and 6-month-old Mary in the family bathtub.
Mrs. Yates' trial, which began Feb. 18, is expected to go through next week. She faces life in prison or lethal injection if convicted.
During questioning, Mr. Yates said his wife was quiet and remarkably modest. After they were married, Mrs. Yates wouldn't undress in front of her husband. "That's a pretty personal question, but generally that's true. She's shy," he testified.
While Mr. Yates found time for interests such as biking to work, joining a gym and working in the garage, Mrs. Yates had the children and home-schooling to keep up with.
Their life also included some unusual experiments and choices.
Almost as soon as their first home was built, they rented it out, trading it for a 38-foot trailer to live a "simpler life."
"I think a lot of it was that Andrea was generally happy in the house, I probably wasn't as happy in the house," he said.
After being married 41/2 years, with three young children and another on the way, they sold the trailer for a $37,000 converted Greyhound bus.
"I didn't view it as a hardship," Mr. Yates said. "We like it better than a house."
After the 1999 birth of their fourth child, Luke, the close quarters appeared to get to her. She summoned her husband home one day. He found her sobbing and shaking in the back of the bus.
The next day, she took an overdose. Less than a month later, she held a knife to her throat.
Mr. Yates told jurors how he faithfully drove his wife to therapy after her two suicide attempts.
He also told jurors that his wife opted for natural childbirth.
Although he conceded that the newsletter he and his wife read advocated natural childbirth for a "humbling experience for a woman," Mr. Yates said it was his wife's idea to go without local anesthetic.
"It was her choice," he said. "Sometimes Andrea liked to take the hard road instead of an easy road."
Despite warnings from at least one psychiatrist who said having more children would bring Mrs. Yates a harsher version of the depression that sent her to try to kill herself, they had a fifth child on Nov. 30, 2000.
They knew that Haldol pulled her out of the depths in 1999, after the birth of Luke. When Mrs. Yates faltered again, particularly after her father died in March 2001, they asked for the drug again.
"I knew she was sick," Mr. Yates said. "She wouldn't have tried to commit suicide if she hadn't been sick."
Four days before she drowned her children, Mrs. Yates awoke screaming that she was trapped. As her husband comforted her, she told him about her nightmare. "Something about in her dream she was trapped in her bed," Mr. Yates said.
"A scared animal" is how Debbie Holmes later testified that Mrs. Yates behaved in the days before she killed her children. The women met about 16 years ago at M.D. Anderson.
Mrs. Holmes said Mrs. Yates spoke only three complete sentences to her in the four months before the children died. Her hair greasy and matted, her body reeking, Mrs. Yates was a walking zombie then, Mrs. Holmes said.
"I was appalled," said Mrs. Holmes. "She looked like a cancer patient." When she heard that the children were drowned, a teary Mrs. Holmes said she collapsed.
"I fell on the floor, and I just cried," Mrs. Holmes said. "I was screaming. It can't be my Andrea."
When someone dies of lung cancer do you think
"He should have died because he smoked (I don't smoke)"
when someone loses a kid to drugs do you think
They were bad parents(I am a good parent)
When someone looks the other way and their kid drowns at a pool do you think
What morons (I never do that).
I lost my wife to suicide and am curently raising three kids all by myself. (I just threw threw a birthday party for the youngest today). It has been the hardest thing for me to ever endure. I would wish this on nobody, however, I used to think a lot more like what I wrote above. I feel so liberated now that I no longer have to validate myself. I simply try to do my best each day and no longer worry about whether any one else thinks I am a scum bag for "not doing enough".
Believe me, it is not easy to know what to do when you are living with a suicidal person. Living in denial is almost neccessary. Your life becomes one of contradictions.
Is he a creep? I don't know. But he behaves the way he does, in large part, because he has been living with an insane person for many many years. It is very doubtful that her living in a bus or his going to a gym or his "contolling" personality caused this. He could have had her institutionalized, but do you know how difficult a decision like that is to make? Every one has advice, but guess how many people take ownership of the problem ? The mentally ill person takes no responsibility, and the "controlling" person tries to. I guess he could have been a nice uncontrolling person and run out on her.
The mentally ill person is not evil, they just have a plethora of problems that all come together when great stresses are placed on them. It is very stressful to raise a family. But , she chose to do so, and with that has a responsibility . It turns out that she could not cope. Is that really his fault?
I have noticed a theme here where people criticize Rusty for being too controlling, but then in the very next sentence blame him for not controlling her and the situation even more ( For instance why didn't he institutionalize her, or take the kids, or get more care for her).
I really feel sorry for him. If she had killed herself he could have felt some ability to "redeem" himself by being a good father. He can't even do that.
If your spouse killed themselves and then you were placed on a witness stand where all the bad things you did over the last few years were laid out, how would you like that? I certainly cringe at the thought.
I could write a book on all of this.
Are you defective? I sure know that I am. It has been the blessing of my life to know that in spite of all my defects being public for all to see, I am still accepted by my family and friends. I no longer try to be perfect in order to be accepted. That is the on invaluable lesson I have learned through all of this.
And as hard as it is for you to read, I will continue to point out the horrible living conditions this mentally women lived under whenever someone says she should "fry". No woman with her clinical history should be getting pregnant on purpose. I'm sorry. I feel very strongly about that. I'm pro-life. I believe in large families. I believe that kids are a gift from God. I also believe that God gave us common sense. An "accident" could be understandable. Planning to have more kids is unfathonable, imo.
Here is apparently the "outrageous" statement Yates made from which YOU infer that he's "ready to get on with a new life and a new honey":
Whether his wife was sane or insane, guilty or innocent, life sentences of a kind have already been dispensed for many people, including Rusty Yates. ''If Andrea gets well and works through her guilt and can go on, we've got a chance,'' he said hopefully as the evening drew to a close. ''But I know I can't hold her hand for 50 years while she cries. I just don't have the strength to do it.''Oh, what an INHUMAN BEAST.
You people are simply, utterly miserable.
Actually, the only thing that's clear from any of this is that you and the many like you commenting here in such utter, profound ignorance no absolutely NOTHING about dealing with a family member--not to mention a spouse--who is mentally ill.
And I think Andrea Yates will probably be found "not guilty by reason of insanity," and put away forever. And that's probably justice.
No, the only INJUSTICE I can see are noodniks like you who have all the reasoning capacity of a lynch-mob.
Again, you display profound ignorance of the reality of how people cope when they are living with someone who is mentally ill.
For them, it's a daily, relentless high-wire act, trying desperately to balance what the see as right, with the irrational demands of the illness, trying to keep the beast at bay, trying to placate it and keep it soothed.
Unless you have seen this, and really sought to understand, you have no right to make any such statement (excepting of course the right that all of us have to express stupidity).
I will guarantee you that every single individual in the extended family along with their neighbors and others in the neighborhood, church members, etc., feel guilt about this. It is very human for the rational being, when confronted with the devastation of irrational behavior, to dwell on "what I could have done differently."
I daresay there are few of us here who would have done much differently. The Yates' tragedy was on the extreme envelope, but there are people who deal with this every single day.
Having the fifth child looks to have been a mistake, but thinking that this family suffered because of the fifth child is incorrect. The family was on the path to suffer no matter what choice Rusty made. They just kind of stumbled into the most damaging, humiliating and public way to do so. But, that family was destined to suffer to one degree or another because the lady was insane and incapable of properly interacting with the people she loved.
I know ---you can even sense the torment in his statement. A man with convictions, trying to hold a marriage and family together by himself. Trying to remain faithful to his vows to a woman who turned out the way she did. He obviously knew there was something wrong but he made a commitment to stay with this woman no matter what and his faith was strong and he believed there was hope. I think he's beginning to realize the truth and realize there isn't hope for her.
Of course he had to be in control ---she obviously wasn't even bathing or doing housework. They were beautiful little kids and I can see where he thought they were gifts from God, not causes for her insanity.
Russell Yates said his mother, Dora Yates, usually came to their Clear Lake home about 10 a.m. each day and left about 5 p.m. -- leaving the children alone with their mother for about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.
"Part of it was that Mom wanted to give Andrea some time to herself," Yates said. "Neither of us saw Andrea as dangerous. We didn't know what she was thinking. Neither of us thought it would be a problem leaving her by herself an hour here and there."
I hope that you never are brought to circumstances where you feel totaly defective. But I can assure you, every one is defective, and there are circumstances that can lay it all out in the open for you and all your loved ones to see. And if it ever happens to you and your loved ones still accept you (and they will) , you will then know what true love is.
You are right. But what too many fail to understand is that the mental illness was NOT CAUSED by this woman's daily life and routine. The illness was there already.
She walked around stinking with her hair matted. Yeah, no clue there she was sick.
Years ago I was married to a woman who was divorced with FOUR boys when I married her. The marriage was a mistake; I was foolish and "on the rebound," and she was looking for security.
Over time, I began to be alarmed at her irrational behavior with regard to the bizarre things that her boys would do (theft, breaking into people's houses to commit petty burglary, vandalism, torturing small animals, etc.)
This became my life, living not only with these budding criminals, but with my wife's seeming oblivion regarding what was happening. When I would put my foot down, she would take the kids and leave so I could have "cooling off time" in order to "regain my senses". She accused me of abuse. "You're just like the rest of my family. You don't understand my kids so you hate them!"
Over time, though I had always been a pretty steady fellow, I began to doubt MY OWN sanity. "Maybe she's right; maybe I'm just losing it," I began to think.
We went to several family therapists but they seemed to do no good. Finally, one of them, a clinical psychologist, asked to see me alone. I told him of my concerns and fears about how it seemed to me the boys were spiralling out of control, but how I just felt so inadequate, and was trying hard to understand them more and be more patient.
He listened for awhile as I went along, and then shook his head and interrupted.
"My friend," he said, "you've been dealing with this for so long you've lost perspective. You actually begun to see their MOTHER'S relentless attacks against you as justified, when the fact is that she is completely incompetent, and a total failure as a parent." (This was after we had been seeing him together for ten weeks). "You need to reassure yourself that all the problems you're seeing are real, and that SHE is the one who's out of touch with reality. But you are so sincere in wanting to work things out, that you are acceding to her irrational demand that you pretend 'up' is 'down' and 'down' is 'up'! Stop driving yourself crazy!"
It was like the scales fell from my eyes. It was as if someone had come in and shown me the reality of The Matrix.
I asked him "but how is it that SHE can't see what everyone else sees?" "Well, have you ever taken a shower with your wife?" he replied.
"Sure".
"Well, do you both like the water at same temperature?"
"Well, no, I like it pretty hot, that's comfortable to me. But to her, it's scalding. On the other hand, 'nice and warm' to her is CHILLY to me."
"Well, it's often the case that two people, experiencing or seeing the same situation, will react in very different ways to it. What is acceptable to one is completely unacceptable to the other.
"So it is with you and your wife. To her, total chaos and kids who are out of control is 'normal,' it's an acceptable part of everyday life.
"But to you, it is UNACCEPTABLE, and something has to be done. I suspect that unless she can begin to see things more your way, your marriage is doomed to failure, because you're going to reach a point where you just can't play 'pretend' any more."
He was right. We were divorced within two years, and armed with that knowledge I was able to wage an unrelenting campaign that culminated in my gaining custody of our daughter, who had been born about the time I was speaking to this shrink.
I think I was fortunate that I received good counsel, and that I was able eventually to act on it.
Russell Yates doubtless also received counsel, but I don't think anyone ever really got through to him just how badly off his wife really was.
Well, "no one," that is, except Andrea.
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