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."
I agree, with the caveat that once the press figured they had a story with a domineering male, a Bible thumper and a multiple murder they just about filled thier shorts in joy at the chance to paint with as borad a brush as possible.
I know, I'm a woman and I can't figure out why some of us act so stupid.
oh now, i know you can't be talking about ME, pal....
Don't buy into the line that these things were enough to cause the problems Andrea Yates had. I have lived like this for 25 years and know lots of other happy, well-adjusted families who do also.
All you "ree-tards" (to use the Texas term) are completely oblivious to the fact that this is an attack on "conservative Christians." Every one of you BACs can be portrayed this way.
This woman was nothing but a cold-hearted murderer. Dressing her up as a victim of the patriarchy is outrageous, but it will likely get her acquitted.
If that happens, she will be yet another example of the success of the "O. J. Defense": Blame everyone and everything, society, racism, male chauvinism, whatever it takes, to get a murderer off.
Women should never be allowed to sit on juries. Justice is too precious.
All you "ree-tards" (to use the Texas term) are completely oblivious to the fact that this is an attack on "conservative Christians." Every one of you BACs can be portrayed this way.
This woman was nothing but a cold-hearted murderer. Dressing her up as a victim of the patriarchy is outrageous, but it will likely get her acquitted.
If that happens, she will be yet another example of the success of the "O. J. Defense": Blame everyone and everything, society, racism, male chauvinism, whatever it takes, to get a murderer off.
Women should never be allowed to sit on juries. Justice is too precious.
From what I have heard so far, Andrea sounds like a typical spousal abuse victim, but instead of physical, it seems psychological... Can we see a parallel to Jim Jones here?
Thomas Szasz has the view that there is a form of "reason" even in the most disturbed schizophrenic's mind, if I understand him correctly.
If I put myself in Andrea's shoes, and were as abused and controlled as she was, I could see a logic to killing her children to protect them from her husband, and his abuse of her. She felt powerless to escape, probably thought she was wicked for wanting to, given his form of controlling her through religious perversion/pornography... (can we say brainwashed here?), and in a bizarre but rational way, she acted to protect her children...
I think Emily Dickinson said it best..."much madness is divinest sense"...
When I compare her behavior to that of Susan Smith, hers seems the less evil, the more acceptable, as her motives as I understand them could be seen as protecting her children, rather than trying to get them out of the way to get a "new guy"
Those of you who want to crucify her are making a categorical mistake. I am not overlooking the fact that 5 babies are dead, but I am saying that she may not be as evil or as guilty as some would make her.
Right now, I do think the husband should be charged with spousal abuse and child endangerment, perhaps with murder...
But, we have to wait for all the testimony to come out...
Amen. I may have to stop reading these threads about the Yates. It is starting to depress me. I knew of two couples like this. In one case, the couple had 10 children and numerous miscarriages. She finally died of breast cancer without any medical treatment because he didn't beleive in doctors.
And I know a number of them.
But are you allowed three hours a week for yourself (no more, no less)? Are you allowed any voice in family decisions? Would you have had more children because "we" wanted to although the last child triggered off post-partum psychosis?
No one is saying that these 3 things are what caused Andrea to go bonkers. I venture to say that you do not live in the same circumstances that were present in the Yates household. my brother and sister in law have this type of arrangement, all except for the homeschooling part, and there is no chance in heck that that situation prevails in their household.
** Christians need to cool their jets on this. YES, the media and Christian-bashers are going to seize on this as an indictment of that lifestyle, and that is lamentable. But to have any credibility at ALL, Christians have to call this for what it was, abuse of wife by an authoritarian and controlling husband, who KNEW dang well she was cracking under the stress of it.
The husband(If she is clinically Ill...)was THE MOST RESPONSIBLE person In the house....
2 Adults, 1 mentally impaired or worse, 5 Kiddies, 1 Sane relatively rational individual....Of all the actors in this tragedy, The State, The Doctors and the Husband all share in the culpability.
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