[robjna]

the guy's a fruit loop, but he didn't murder anyone. andrea yates filled atub and systematically drowned her 5 kids. he may be a lousy father and have screwed up beliefs, but he is not a murderer. andrea yates and the sympathy from feminists is warped.

[Slyfox]

I'm just curious about something. We have in this country, doctors, whose job it is to make sure babies are not born alive. They are legally santioned to kill. Some doctors have been known to stick freshly born infants in a bucket of water to drown them. And then we have this crazy mother who drowns her five children and somehow what she did is more grievous than a doctor who drowns a baby who had the utter audacity to not die during the abortion? I guess I can understand now why the NOW gang is rooting for Andrea. The only difference is that the doctors who perform abortions are not insane.

[skeeter]

One doesn't have to go to DU to see the spin... some of what this author predicts can be found right here on FR.

[wwcc]

From the beginning, Mr. Yates has seemed to me to be very calm and passive, even after his wife murdered his five children.

Either he has the forgiveness of saint or he is totally out of touch with reality.

Seeing how he reacted to the murders, calmly and passively, I have to wonder how serious and with how much effort he sought to help his wife or take her seriously.

I know he said he sought help and it seems he did but how serious did he consider he problem?

Speaking psychologically, Andre Yates seems to me to have killed the children because it was the only way she could get through to her husband. Even then, he didn't react. He was just as passive.

I'm not Mr.Yates so I don't know his life experience, but he seems to me to be incredibly passive, even to horrific events. I'm not sure he was capable of taking his wifes illness seriously.

[MotherSpector]

Only Russell and Andrea Yates know if he was responsible, but I must say, he is pretty obnoxious. I saw him on the Larry King show for a brief moment last night and he must have said "you know" and "I mean" 50 times each within 5 seconds.

[alisasny]

I must admit that I am shocked by the blame from all over thrust upon Rusty. He is not a killer. He is a clod, so that must be his crime, being the stereotypical male.

I have tried to defend Rusty to no avail. People want him castrated and forbidden from having more children. The way he describes his children shows the love he had for them and his comment that he didn't know he had to protect his children from within his home speaks volumns. No one could have predicted what Ms. Yates did and alot of Monday morning quarterbacking is going on in this case.

Since Rusty was under a gag order since a few days after the children's deaths up until last week I can't blame him one bit for speaking out after all the speculation made about him and against him.

In addition I would have found the Death Penalty very humane in this case. I have no idea why everyone wants her to live and suffer over a quick death on the gurney yet wants Rusty put out and hung to dry.

[alisasny]

And one more thing:

When I mentioned to someone that Rusty works for NASA the reply was, " No wonder Nasa keeps messing up things."

In addition it has been reported that his NASA healthcare plan was maxed on Andrea's coverage of her mental condition. If that is true then I have no problem with the responsible HMO's being sued. This means this can happen again to someone else who has no more coverage left to deal with pychosis.

By making everything coverable including viagra, sex changes ect...no wonder there was no money left to treat her properly.

[Texas Mom]

"Soon after that, it will be accepted conventional wisdom that Russell Yates is ultimately to blame for the choice his wife made. By extension, this will apply to all husbands.

It already does. It is straight from the pages of NOW and people are buying right into it. Especially if the man is white.

[austingirl]

I'm not shifting blame; there are two kinds of blame here. Andrea murdered those children and was found guilty as she should have been. But Russell Yates has a large burden of blame to shoulder also.

Russell ignored medical advice about having more children. Russell knew that Andrea couldn't be left alone with the children and that was why his mother was always at the house. He lived in squalid conditions with a filthy, withdrawn wife who had attempted suicide. He cut her off from her family. He didn't help with the children. He overburdened this woman and knew what had happened when she called him with the news that day of the murders. No, he isn't guilty of murder, but he is guilty of child endangerment.

He is also monumentally selfish and grasping as his many television appearances reveal. He intends to sue and he blames everyone but himself, the person closest to the situation, for the deaths of the five innocent children.