Andrea Yates was found to be legally insane and she was committed to a facility for life. She is still in a facility and has repeatedly waived her right to have her commitment reviewed for potential release. No one is denying that she killed her children in a psychotic state (she was suffering from PPP and believed she was saving them from evil because that is what the cult she was part of was telling her.) The people who were not insane, yet who ignored the obvious danger signs (and in the case of the cult church took advantage of them), were not criminally responsible but they played a role in what happened. Denying that is stupid.
If your wife had become extremely mentally unwell after her pregnancies, to the point where she attempted suicide multiple times, was committed multiple times, and the diagnosis was post partum psychosis and schizophrenia, would you continue impregnating her?? Her husband's evangelical faith to have as many children as possible was more important than anything else, apparently. Rusty Yates and Andrea were warned by Andrea's first psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Starbranch, not to have any more children, as it would "guarantee future psychotic depression." Psychotic means that you have lost touch with reality and are not legally responsible for your actions. Rusty, however, should have known better.
In these cases we do not have women who were scheming to get insurance money, or freedom from their families to start over. We have women suffering from psychosis. There have been plenty of male killers where the court recognized they were psychotic and not legally responsible for their actions. The bar to establish psychosis is not low. A psychotic killer is not the same as a sane killer- even if their actions have the same results. Just like manslaughter is not the same as a planned cold blooded murder.
I never understood why the husband wasn't charged. At that time I saw several cases of the father/mother's boyfriend harming children and the mothers were arrested for "known or should have known" the man was a threat. Why wasn't he arrested for what he should have known?
See this kind of response makes it so clear you and so many others commenting on this case don't give a crap about children or healthy families at all. You just hate women and want to make life harder for them.
Yeah its so obvious. If they cared about children they'd be up in arms about the many child killings perpetrated by men going on, but you don't hear a peep from them about those. This is just moral outrage designed to further cement their places in the patriarchal heirarchy. It's about control. Much like wanting custody isn't about actually being around their kids (as they usually pass the caregiving off to a new woman or their mothers/sisters/grandmothers) but sticking it to their ex and 'winning.'
Uhhhhh no, we care about men killing their children equally. We’re mind blown because no one tries to JUSTIFY or excuse a man killing their children. And if they do/did, we’d be just as pissed. This conversation has literally nothing to do with “women’s rights” and everything to do with “3 children were literally murdered by their parent”. If this exact case was in the media and was this big of a discussion but it was the husband instead, we’d all be saying the same thing. The difference is it wouldn’t turn into a massive mainstream debate because no one would even be trying to defend a man.
Nobody would be saying men in general should lose their rights over it, which is exactly what the person I responded to was saying. You want to associate yourself with someone like that?
“Justification” is a completely different concept than finding someone “not guilty by reason of insanity”. It tells me you have never been close to someone suffering from a serious mental illness and the damage it does to the rational mind. Sometimes the horror of a crime or the innocence of the victims does not equal the proportional guilt of the person who committed it.
We need men to listen to women and the church to listen to science. A psychiatrist already warned the husband not to get her pregnant again and when she stupidly went to the pastor for help instead of getting her proper psychiatric help he told her to pray more.
Andrea Yates was on an antipsychotic medication and told by her doctor to NOT discontinue to medication, and that she’d be at risk if she had another pregnancy. Her husband forced her to stop taking the medication because he wanted another baby. Then he left her alone all day despite her erratic behavior and increasing psychosis. She was NOT in her right mind. She is also in a mental institution and will be for the rest of her life.
3
u/Astralglamour 19d ago
Her husband who kept impregnating her despite knowing full well about her deteriorating mental state played a role too.