But because she pleaded an insanity defense, she’s likely to spend the rest of her life in a mental institution.
Yates, 42, will now be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released. An earlier jury had found her guilty of murder, but the verdict was overturned on appeal.
The defense never disputed that Yates drowned her five children one by one in the bathtub of their Houston-area home. But they said she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and, in a delusional state, believed Satan was inside her and was trying to save them from hell.
Rusty Yates, however, is still free and still able to impregnate women long past the point where they can handle it.
Well, the husband was certainly implicit in continuing pregnancies long past they were healthy, but it sounds like they were both heavily influenced by this guy, who is probably more deserving of our ire.
That seems somewhat harsh.
Confused: did rusty rape his wife?
Can someone tell me what I don’t know about Rusty Yates? It just sounds like man-hating to me.
He knew she had serious mental problems, and was told that she should not have another child, particularly since she was all alone with four young children she was homeschooling, but he wanted another child, so he got her pregnant anyway.
As it stands now, killing children is illegal but having as many as you want (or more) is not. Do you believe that people should be limited in the number of children they have?
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There’s more here, as well.
It’s not as if Rusty Yates is a better candidate for blameworthiness (read: “a sane person”), here. Religious zaniness on parade.
Sailorman + Gabriel:
The Yates were advised by Andreas’s doctor not to have any more children. Rusty, on the other hand, followed the advice of his spiritual advisor and encouraged his wife to bear more children. The same guy who told Rusty he should ignore the doctor and get his wife pregnant anyway had also instructed that women remain submissive and subordinate to the will of their husband.
Rusty was very much in the wrong here, and what he did could be described as coercison. Granted, he didn’t rape his wife or force her to have sex with him, but he did place her in a position where she felt as if she had to obey her husband and become impregnated, despite her doctor’s advice. If you’re not familiar with the story, Zuzu’s remarks seem unusually harsh but they aren’t really out of line.
!?!… Yates and her husband were advised not to have more children because her psychosis would likely return. But in any other context this site would go mental if people advocated jail for ignoring medical advice (and you’ve had plenty of posts about that sort of thing).
I realize that Rusty Yates lost his children and that is a terrible loss. But it seems like he ignored a lot of the red flags leading up to the tragedy. He probably had no concept that something this horrific could be the outcome, but surely he knew things were not right and that the childrens’ quality of care was compromised.
I’m not sure what his duty was to his wife to make sure she was okay, but he certainly had a duty to make sure his children were being appropriately cared for.
I mean, if I took my kids to the daycare and the care providers were all drunk or something and I knew it and I left my kids there anyhow, wouldn’t I be at fault if something happened?
Part of the benefit of a two-parent dynamic is the checks and balances it provides to the family. (I’m a single mom and this is one thing I do wish I had for the sake of the kids.) If one parent is lagging somehow, the other takes the burden. It doesn’t seem like that happened in this family.
If one parent’s ability is compromised, doesn’t the other have a duty to look out for the children??
Where did I advocate jail? Just pointing out a bitter irony.
Everyone who is wondering how such terrible, terrible things can be said about Rusty Yates might actually want to read the above link. These killings were a long time in coming. Two years before the killings Andrea Yates’s psychiatrist recommended against any further pregnancies and predicted postpartum psychotic depression if she had any more babies –but Rusty disregarded her advice since his cult leader demanded that women have as many children as possible. To the dismay of Andrea Yates’s mother Rusty also insisted his wife be left alone with the children so she wouldn’t shirk her maternal responsibilities even after she had begun to deteriorate enough that she had already endangered their lives. During one of those subsequent alone-times Andrea Yates killed her children. I also remember news reports shortly after the killings reporting that he had insisted that his obviously very troubled wife homeschool their children. Finally I hope the rape comment is someone’s idea of a bad joke. Anyone suffering from psychosis can’t really give consent for sex or anything else.
Okay, that makes a lot more sense now. Though, I wonder how much Rusty should be condemned for wanting kids (though he sounds like an all-around contemptable guy in general). As you say, Andrea was not forced to do it. And he wasn’t the one doing the drowning.
Maybe the comment bothered me because it’s not really specific to Rusty. I put it in the category of man-hating in my first comment because it applies to most men: they are “still free and still able to impregnate women long past the point where they can handle it.” How dare they!
RenJender, presumably the psychosis came after the pregnancy.
From context? I didn’t think it was objectionable that insane people get put in mental institutions, while sane people don’t. So I figured the insinuation was that he’d done something deserving of detention. Otherwise I don’t see the irony.
Yes, Gabriel, but he was the one who left her completely alone with them:
He should absolutely be condemned. Wanting children is one thing. Purposefully impregnanting a wife agaisnt medical directive, in the face of her mental illness, is no less than neglect. Rusty willingly endangered his wife and current children because he desired more. Andrea was indeed forced to bear subsequent children for him.
How much more obvious could she have gotten that she was depressed and mentally incapable of meeting his paternal demands on her?
Oh, right. It only became completely obvious when she drowned her own children.
Rusty had his choice to father children off of any woman other than Andrea. He chose to fuck and impregnante a woman not capable of meeting him evenhalfway.
You ask if he raped her? I say Hell Yeah he did.
ahhh, I see. rusty sounds like an asshole. thanks for explaining.
I am still a little confused though about why one would focus blame on rusty and not the lunatic preacher, who apparently had both rusty and andrea under his thumb.
Simple. The lunatic preacher didn’t impregnate her.
You do realize she had multiple pregnancies, right? How many of these did Rusty need before he bought a clue?
Oh, right. That’s what being submissive to your husband means: your body is his. That is, until you murder someone. Then he quickly retracts his tentacles, denies any claim to control your actions, thoughts, or beliefs, and waltzes away to the next submissive woman he can find that will fuck him.
If he were truly the “head” of Andrea, he would have assumed responsibility for the deaths of his children.
It’s not that simple though. You can’t claim to battle institutionalized sexism and then let the preacher get off free. This is a systemic thing and not an isolated incident. This doesn’t clear anyone of any blame, it just adds more folks to the shit list.
You know, if somebody tried to blame a woman’s actions on some preacher guy, the same guys trying to defend Rusty would freak out.
She had attempted suicide twice, she had severe psychosis (for which she was prescribed more than twice the recommended maximum dosage of Effexor, an anti-depressant/anti-psychotic), yet her husband thought it proper to leave her alone with her five children for a few hours each day so that she would not become totally dependent on him and his mother. WTF? Obviously, her mental state required her to be dependent on other people, and those people completely failed her, resulting in the death of five children. It sounds like she should have been committed.
Bryan, the lunatic preacher certainly has a heap of blame coming his way, but the fact is, he didn’t have any sort of obligation toward Andrea, but Rusty did. You know, those rights and responsibilities of marriage? He was legally bound to her in a way the preacher was not.
Moreover, as the “sane” one, he should have recognized what the preacher’s advice was doing to his wife (and to the children she was supposed to pump out for Jesus) and made the choice — get her real help, or continue following the lunatic preacher’s teachings and get her pregnant until either her mind or her body broke. He chose the latter.
Zuzu, I totally agree. I just got the impression you were letting him off the hook altogether. I’m wondering if she had any other family (brothers, sisters, parents) that could have seen what was happening and prevent the situation. Clearly her husband wasn’t doing much of a good job, but I wonder if other people also sat on the sidelines and watched as this happened.
Lovely man. Wonder how long it’ll be before his latest victim breaks and if she’ll only kill herself this time.
He’ll end up on Larry King, whining about how wronged he was.
Damn… that was my birthday.
Oh, no. No, no, no. I am so tired of this. We can’t knock Rusty Yates now? The guy who sired five children and then bragged about changing not one diaper for any of ‘em? Bullshit. We can knock Rusty Yates. I for one detest him. I am not in the habit of wishing people dead, but I probably wouldn’t cry if he kicked it a little early.
For the men who fret that “I hate Rusty Yates” equals “I hate men,” a contrast: Here is how a real man copes with his wife’s postpartum depression–
Okay? See the difference? Rusty Yates was a fucking sperm donor. This guy is a FATHER. An equally involved, equally responsible parent.
For me at least, I was concerned with zuzu’s parting line because I hadn’t followed this story very closely. Without the context of Rusty’s failure to be a good husband, zuzu’s parting line does look like a shot at all men. I didn’t fully follow her until I read though the discussion in the comments.
you’re right, ilyka, Jon Armstrong rocks!
I love how those who hadn’t troubled to inform themselves about this case are so quick to call me a man-hater.
I am seeing distinct parallels to recent ad hominems regarding certain bloggers elsewhere. If you’re not gonna bother to do the homework, why get engaged in the conversation? I’ll admit I didn’t know all the details when reading Zuzu’s original post, but it took me about five minutes on Google to get caught up to speed. There’s no reason why others couldn’t have done the same. This really is inexcusable, especially because I and others have already explained and posted links to further information regarding the case. If you can’t be bothered to follow links that we’ve provided, you’re really not worth the trouble to respond to.
Zuzu: I really wouldn’t worry about it. Anyone who knows your and your writing knows you’re not a man-hater and those who don’t are really the types of people worth having a conversation with anyway.
Something must be done about those clogs, however.
Throw them both in the asylum but do not let off Andrea because her husband is trash. Though she should have drowned her husband, not the innocent children.
In any other context, a person who left his or her children alone with a person demonstrably incapable of caring for them would be accused of neglect – I don’t know enough of the specific laws to say if they’d be criminally charged, but certainly opinion would be heavily against such a parent. Rusty Yates ought to be hissed. He willfully put those children in danger. If he had let an unrelated person care for them, knowing that caretaker had a psychosis, nobody would think twice about blaming him.
May she find peace where she is, and may he never, ever find it, in this life or out of it.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that anyone is “letting off” Andrea. Nobody’s claiming she didn’t do it. But she was clearly mentally disturbed, and belongs in a hospital getting treatment, not in a prison, rotting.
Rusty Yates second wife was previously married and has a 19 or 20 year old son. They met at church.
He has not been present at the trial at all but doesn’t mind popping up on a talk show every now and then.
In my opinion he should be locked up in the cell with Andrea. He didn’t pull the trigger but he certainly provided the gun.
Actually, he was at the trial, according to this report.
It’s unfair that the father walks away without further consequences. I believe that the father had a duty to protect his children–that he had a duty to provide safe care for his own children. Leaving children with a psychotic caregiver hardly qualifies as safe care for his children.
Now, the father is free to start his life again with his new wife. I’m know that the father suffers the loss of his children, but he bears no other reponsibility for his role.
And according to raging red’s link at #41, despite Rusty’s undoubted prior arseholishness, at least he apparently never wanted her jailed:
What a shame he didn’t have that level of empathy for her before she killed their kids.
What authority would you trust to make that deicision?
She won’t spend the rest of her life in a mental institution. Being found NGRI or Not Guilty by REason of Insanity usually results in a few years. I have personally seen as little as one and a half before they began reacclimating the person to society. Just be glad she is not going to be in jail where she could literally face death at the hands of another inmate. From what I read, it appears to be the most just decision. I feel for her though because she does remember and knows what she did and I am sure feels horrible if her mood and affect are any where normal.
Here in Texas we often procecute women whos boyfriends or husbands beat and or kill their kids. The police assume these women knew about it and did nothing to prevent it. This is in the news all the time. So the law is on the books.
Russell Yates had to know what was happening between his wife and his kids. He knew her mental state. Yet he did nothing. Why the hell wasn’t he procecuted? He abandoned his wife and turned a blind eye to what was happening to his children. He should be in Huntsville (state prison). He should have been procecuted.
I would also add, had this been him doing the killing, things would have turned out much much different. First of all he would now be on death row. Insane or not. But she also would have been procecuted and would be in the pen right now, no doubt. Texas holds mothers responsible.
What really pissed me off when all this happened was the way he played up to the media after his wife was arrested. The guy thought he was a celebrity. He was all over the local news giving interviews and hamming it up for the camera.
The justice system failed those children. Miserably.
I remember studying this during a class (Murdering Mothers – Classics, starting with Medea and working our way up through Beloved and some real-life cases) and just finding it so incredibly sad. And I still do. I really pity Andrea, for ending up in such a miserable situation and having her mind and spirit so thoroughly broken. I feel sad for the children who lost their lives.
But Rusty Yates gets no sympathy or pity. Scumsucking lowlife.
I will takle the hit from ZuZu I didn’t explain myself clearly enough. I am afraid of her Not being cured before release. But aside from that I feel most for the children. They were the most helpless and innocent of victims.
I just hated how the media kept harping on about “poor Rusty.” Waaah.
Why no condemnation of the woman who left her grandchildren with an unstable mother who was endangering their lives? It sounds like the husband is one of those religious nuts who refuse to listen to reason. What was the grandmother’s excuse? I think she’s to blame at least as much as the husband.
Any suggestions as to what should have been done (by anyone other than the husband and wife) to avoid this tragedy?
Good gravy. What part of the definition of “parent” is lost on you?
No, but seriously, good point. I’ll bet there’s a third cousin of Andrea’s out there somewhere who didn’t do enough to prevent this, either. Let’s do something about that! From a humanist perspective. Because men suffer too.
In other words, it’s “her body, her choice” but ultimately a man will be blamed if something goes wrong. Yeah, he “got her pregnant anyway.” She had nothing whatsoever to do with said act of impregnation. Uh huh.
This is typical feminist behavior: to treat women as little children who, when all is said and done, are really not capable of acting as responsible adults and managing their own lives. Eekwalitee is fun until someone gets hurt. Then women can play innocent and helpless and demand some man to rescue them, and blame some man if they are not rescued.
If you know a child is being abused, you have a responibility to report that abuse to Child Protective Services. To not do so is already a criminal offence in Texas. You can be procecuted (unless you are a religious fanatic/nasa engineer apparently).
She was mentally ill, dude. She really was “not capable of acting as a responsible adult and managing her own life. Russell knew all of this and just plain put his own wishes ahead of her and the rest of their family’s well being. It’s easy to want lots and lots of children, especially if you’re going to work everyday and leaving your wife at home all day to watch the kids chew up the furniture.
I agree Rusty Yates should be doing life while his poor wife should have all of our sympathies. It is really his fault that his children are dead not hers. I mean even though she is the one who chased them through the house and held them under water until they stopped breathing. She only did it because of him. Clearly feminism has a long way to go because even though women are equal, no wait, better than those barbaric men, nothing is really their fault as they are so easily opressed by the brutes. Maybe Rusty threatened to abuse her, or at least call her a bad name, if she didn’t murder her children. Yeah that’s it she was an abused woman who had no choice.
She was psychotic. People whose relationship to reality is that badly altered can’t give consent to sex. So this was basically a case of rape, even if she agreed to the sex. I’m not sure if the phrase “statutory rape” is the right one legally, but it does seem to apply. I’d feel the same way if it were a case of the psychotic Andrew Yates and his wife Rose who left her children with him, despite knowing that he was unable to take care of them and kept insisting that he perform to give her more, even though she knew that more children would only stress him further.
Wait, now she was also psychotic when she had sex. This just keeps getting better. Her killed her children because of her husband and she is a rape victim.
That should be she killed her children
/unlurk
Throw religion into the mix, and ya, it IS possible to ‘get pregnant anyway’. My uncle is a Baptist and lives in Alabama…his first wife contracted breast cancer, he WOULD NOT LET HER have a masectomy, HE handled all her medical care, speaking to the doctors etc…she was NOT ALLOWED to make decisions for herself, her doctor was not allowed to speak to her without her husband present…and in the bible belt this IS ACCEPTED! My family DID get involved, social services was contacted…BUT when you are already smack dab in the middle of the bible belt, the people who show up to invesigate are usually sympathetic to ‘religious motives’…THEN horrors of all horrors…during a losing battle with this breast cancer that had mestastisized (because the tumors were never removed), my aunt got pregnant…and again MY UNCLE made the decision to continue the pregnancy, my aunt at the time was on a constant morphine drip, and thought it was a tumor, not a pregnancy…against the advice of the doctors, against the advice of pretty much EVERYONE…the baby was taken by C-section at 28 weeks, my aunt died a week later…my uncle was married again within a year…he NEEDS six kids to be ‘right with god’…his first wife only gave him 3 (and died giving him the 3rd), but his new wife so far has given him 2…and doesn’t seem to be so ‘flawed’. He is heavy handed with his kids, has himself been held for psychosis at the hospital, he and his new wife are indifferent to his first 3 kids, and his 80 yr old mother (my grandmother) is rasing them all…again SOCICAL SERVICES HAS BEEN ALERTED and STILL nothing is being done, and that’s mostly cause the people from his church step in an say ‘oh we’ll make sure he’s ok’ and then as soon as SS is gone, the church people dissapear as well. This is a horrible sitation waiting to happen…and even with a whole family outside trying to get something changed, we cannot.
/relurk
The ADA who handfled the case (at least the first time) was on one of those primetime CourtTV shows saying “well, Andrea Yates had a choice” and I yelled at the television while my girlfriend comiserated with me. She really didn’t have a choice, as most of us understand it.
So if the roles were reversed you all would be sticking up for ole’ Rusty correct?
Sure, if Andrea had gotten Rusty pregnant for a fifth time despite his shrink’s warnings that he couldn’t handle it, then left him alone with the kids so he wouldn’t be so dependent on her and her mother, and then he had a psychotic break and drowned the kids.
Rick, you for surley don’t get it…Andrea Yates did a horrible thing…no one is ‘sticking up for her’…but she was not an island, and she was INCAPABLE of making decisions, based on a diagonses from her doctor…she was not PPD or PTSD, she was a diagnosed psycotic. This was not a ‘and out of the blue she drowned her kids’ situation…her husband had been WARNED and went against those warning and ‘participated in the act of getting her pregnant’, when he had been told by a doctor, and could see that his wife was in no condition to raise the kids she had, or have another.
Yes, it takes 2 to tango, but when half the party is mentally unstable is a ‘yes’ really a ‘yes’?…the courts will tell you its not.
I didn’t know it was possible for men to get postpartum psychosis, but ok.
Andrea Yates is a rocket scientist for NASA, who spends every day at the office designing rockets when she’s not birthing children. She leaves these children in the care of Rusty Yates, who she married pretty much out of high school. They married in a highly conservative church, where the pastor mandated that the men must stay home and care for the children, and that the wife must have as many children as possible; and that these children must be home-schooled because public schools are evil and teach contraception and the existence of monkeys.
At first, Rusty signs onto this, because it is part of God’s plan and he wants to be on board. Babies 1 and 2 are a rude awakening: Rusty realizes that managing babies doesn’t afford one any breaks, and is much more stressful than he anticipated. Nonetheless, Andrea wants to have more babies. She won’t allow Rusty to wear condoms when they have sex (we’ll suspend disbelief that Rusty is able to get it up even though he’s really tired and stressed out, for the sake of truly “reversing the roles”). Baby 3 comes along, and Rusty begins to feel depressed and starts to show signs of being unfit to care for the children. Still, Andrea insists that he continue to care for the children and home-school them. Rusty would like to get out–but how can he? He’s been out of the workforce for so long that he’s not sure he could get a job at all, much less a job to support himself and even one of the kids. Not to mention, he doesn’t have any support from his community because everyone he knows believes that he’s right where he should be: taking care of Andrea’s babies. Baby four causes Rusty to have a breakdown — he can’t get out, and so he attempts suicide. Doctors advise Andrea that her husband is suffering from a severe hormonal reaction related to all of her baby-making; and that they should concentrate on the four babies they have now rather than trying to add any more to the mix. Andrea nods up and down so that she can get Rusty home, and then proceeds to hand him Baby #5 to care for. Rusty freaks out and drowns the kids in the tub. He calls Andrea up to tell her what he’s done, and Andrea’s first question is: “Which one?”
So, now that the scenario has been framed properly for you, so that the man is the victim, the question is, how is it allowable for anyone to suffer in that manner?
I surely do get it. What i get is that when a women murders her children, society instinctivly looks for a reason other than that she is a monster. Had Rusty been the one to carry out the deed no one would look beyond the act and if his lawyer’s raised the insanity defense it would be seen as a ploy. Have you all forgotten that she was convicted once. She wasn’t retried on the issue of her sanity but simply because some idiot expert referenced a nonexistant episode of CSI or some other show in the original trial. I have seen the damage that one person can do to another. I have seen child rape, I have seen incest and I can think of not one person who cries out for the women who fails to protect her children from these atrocities to be held responsible. What I see is screams for equality when it benefits and screams of let’s shift responsibility to a man when we are evil. Even Susan Smith, who drowned her children, advanced that somehow it was her bosses fault because she was having an affair with him and he didn’t want children. Must be the Svengali effect we all have over you helpless women. Tell me why we don’t have a “battered teenage boy” defense for those male children who kill their abusive fathers.
To be honest, had Russell Yates left me at home with five young children, by myself, with no help, he would have been the one I would have been drowning in the bathtub..
Mightyponygirl you’ve convinced me. No one has free will. No one can say enough of this, despite the fact that people do it everyday. Andrea had no choice but to stay in that situation just as she has no choice but to get into that situation. She had to have another baby because the patriachry was telling her to and she had no free will because she is a woman.
And to be clear, I am not saying the situation was a good one. I am saying that it doesn’t excuse her killing her kids. If it was so intolerable she could have removed herself. Instead, she simply killed her kids and then turned herself in. It was severe enough to justify killing five children, but not severe enough for her to kill herself. Makes sense to me.
This story always makes me so angry.
BTW, I wouldn’t be surprised if some fanatic religious types do believe that postpartum depression is a woman’s fault, as in, “If you weren’t so anti-life and considered your children a blessing, you wouldn’t have this problem.”
There is a poster on FreeRepublic and also one who comments to Dawn Eden’s site, who believes that a) it’s every Catholic family’s responsibility to have at least 4 children to be right with God, b) his wife doesn’t get any pain meds in labor or during her period because “Pain is part of being a woman; beginning with Eve,” and c) we shouldn’t get any maternity leave or even insurance coverage of prenatal care because “pregnancy is a blessing from God not a medical condition” and other things.
Wouldn’t be surprised if they believe Rusty is in the right and Andrea was just influenced by feminists or contraception or something like that.
Rick, we typically like interesting trolls in these parts.
Nobody’s claiming that she didn’t kill her kids, or that her mental illness excuses what she did. So stop claiming we did. Continuing that line of argument when you know it’s bullshit is just trolling, and trolling will get you modified.
We’ve got a woman with a personal and family history of depression and postpartum psychosis who descends rapidly and transparently into instability. She was diagnosed and put on medication, remember? Her doctors told her husband that having more children would be really bad for her, and everyone but Rusty admitted that she was not capable. All of that is documented, and it predates the murders by a few years. She didn’t pull this out of her ass, and the people looking for a reason didn’t have to look very hard. Had Rusty been similarly ill, he would have been given the same defense for the same reason. In fact, given the tendency on the part of society to vilify incompetent mothers, a male primary caretaker might have had a much easier time establishing breaking strain.
Actually, yes, she was retried on the issue of her sanity. The “idiot expert” testified to the effect that she was faking insanity in order to escape a murder conviction: the Law & Order episode was offered as proof that television inspired her to kill her kids and then fake mental illness. Without that evidence, the pattern of unstable, depressive behavior became indisputable.
Without going into details, you all may want to take a much closer look at the Yates’ church when looking for the root of this tragedy. Her symptoms are consistent with symptoms I experienced while under the influence of a similar organization, I’ve observed them in ohters, and if you trawl the net a bit you’ll find heaps of testimonials describing identical symptoms (most disturbing are from those who don’t realize they’re describing a psychosis, they think their hallucinations are real demons). Without reservation I can say that no member of such an organization has free will, a psychological fact you can research yourself. Neither do they have an identity of their own and I’m certain if you scratch the surface Andrea Yates had no ties left to anyone outside the organization. I know for a fact that, had I been “asked” by my “spiritual authority,” I could have readily killed any number of people, it’s simply a matter of definition. Actually, had I even gotten the impression that’s what was wanted I could have done it. Or if I had thought God was telling me to, I would have. It’s a miracle I never thought God was telling me to do such things, though I “heard” him say some odd things every day. Don’t believe me? A branch of the cult I was in burned down a number of discos in Bogota, Columbia. Or, excuse me, they “prayed” for them to close down and then they conveniently caught fire. Tell me I’m responsible for my actions or not, I’m unconcerned and simply grateful I escaped (a fortunate collusion of my mental breaks conflicting with theirs), it took me years to realize I wasn’t interacting with reality at the time. What matters is that this is being painted as a complication of PPD when psychosis as a result of PPD is very rare while apparent psychosis as a result of, say, cult level pressure is a bit more common.
Their church website is fairly standard, but it’s here for your perusal: http://www.clearlakechurch.com/Default.aspx?sm=a_a. Although they do not come out and say it, there’s a clearly defined hierarchical and authoritarian structure (worship “assignments,” small groups, highly organized structure, system of elders a bit more involved than your local deacons…). Strong emphasis on “works” such as fasting which is a fashionable way of destroying an individual’s resistance to any other sort of indoctrination, not to mention opening the door for all sorts of identity restructuring and obedience training. Fasting was the tool of choice used with me, when I mentioned I’m certain I would have killed for them, I nearly killed myself through incredibly long water fasts (talking months) and I’m hypoglycemic. Looking under the sermong library there’s a heavy emphasis on family structures conforming to their hierarchical pattern… Oh, and there’s an interesting wikipedia entry on the man that led the Yates in their spiritual journey that ought to raise eyebrows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Peter_Woroniecki.
By the way, men are as susceptible to this sort of indoctrination as anyone else, don’t make this a male vs. female thing.
I think Rick sees the words “Andrea Yates” and thinks of his own mother or sister or wife or daughter, who doesn’t have any form of depression, far from it.
Actually, she does, but spends a great deal of energy hiding it from him, because with the probable exception of his mother he’d only beat her unil she shut up with that nonsense.
Andrea had no choice but to stay in that situation just as she has no choice but to get into that situation.
I think, like many abused women, her choices were very narrow. She had FIVE young children. No real job history. Where was she going to go? She married this guy when she was very young, she didn’t know anything else.
I left an abusive relationship. I had a lot more going for me than Andrea (more income, more education, less kids) and I still found it difficult to leave. Emotional abuse takes its toll on your self-reliance. The logistics are overwhelming. If your support system isn’t seeing anything wrong with the abuse you are enduring, you can’t turn to them for support and they may even be reassuring you that everying is just fine. So then you blame yourself. You think you have failed your husband, your kids, your family, your community… “I feel overwhelmed and unhappy but everyone says I shouldn’t so it must just be me. I need to perservere” . . .
And while you are trying to work all this out… you are changing 15 diapers a day and doing 5 loads of laundry and cooking and cleaning and homeschooling and on and on and on.
With that many kids in the house that young, your day isn’t about future plans, its about the here and now. You spend your day putting out fires. Some women in that situation forget to eat, don’t get to shower, etc. Its a hard, time-consuming, energy-sucking job, even for someone in good mental health.
Yeah, Andrea had lots and lots and lots of choices.
Ah here we go my first insult, I have a penis therefor I beat women. How long before I am a rapist and a child molester too. And I can’t wait until I hear the “if you were a real man” comments pouring out. And of course there will be the inevitable “you just hate women cause you can’t get any” ace in the hole. Everyone has depression, everyone has stress, not everyone kills their kids.
Did she have mental problems, maybe. Would we be as understanding of a man who had schizophrenia or dysthimia or low self esteem, probably not.
Um, Rick, men with schizophrenia are found innocent by reason of insanity. Meanwhile your simply declaring that we wouldn’t be “as understanding” of such a circumstance no more makes it true than my declaring you’re really a super intelligent walrus. Sure, maybe we really wouldn’t be understanding if a man did this, but there’s no way of knowing. Just as it’s highly unlikely you’re a walrus protegy, but I’ve no way of knowing for certain on that one either. You make the error of assuming bad faith.
Last but not least, I certainly wouldn’t be understanding of anyone who killed someone else because they suffered with “low self esteem.” Low self esteem does not exactly interfere with your ability to reason even if it is unpleasant.
What is this “we” bullshit, dude? You’re here arguing that depression and post-partum psychosis are a sorry excuse for an insanity defense. That’s the viewpoint that would negatively affect a schizophrenic man who had a break and injured someone, not ours.
Sorry to post so frequently, but there’s evidence that men get postpartum depression as well though even less is known about the mechanism than in vanilla postpartum depression: http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/107/108672.htm. In that light, I can honestly say that I’d feel the same way about a man exhibiting the symptoms Andrea Yates demonstrated and committing the same crime. They’re both equally irrational and in need of treatment.
Interesting! It makes sense, given the amount of stress both parents are under.
And same here. With the amount of documentation available, her mental state shouldn’t even have been a question.
Rick, are you really Tom Cruise?
This is not true in any jurisdiction I’m aware of, and I am entirely opposed — from a disability rights perspective — to any sort of argument that people with mental illnesses should not be able to give consent to sex, or should be barred from having children if that’s what they want to do. This kind of paternalistic attitude toward mental illness is exactly what mental-health-rights advocates are working against. Just because it dovetails with a feminist critique of someone who is apparently a pretty vile human being does not make it acceptable to throw the mentally ill under the bus in order to make a point that is utterly unnecessary in proving that Rusty is an asshole.
– ACS
You obviously haven’t read any reports of the psychiatrists’ testimony (or you have read them and prefer to create your own version of reality). She didn’t have run-of-the-mill depression (not downplaying that, by the way) – it was far worse than that. She thought she had the numbers “666″ burned into her scalp and doctors found scabs on her head where she had tried to scratch the numbers off. “Did she have mental problems, maybe?” Uh, yeah. I’d say hell fucking yes she had mental problems. This wasn’t just your average stressed out mom who decided to drown her kids because she couldn’t handle it anymore.
Don’t put words in my mouth, Rick, I never said you had a penis.
Ahem. I don’t think you beat women because you’re male. I wouldn’t put it past you because you’re a jerk.
1. Show me one example of a male mass murderer whose insanity defense worked. In fact men’s insanity defense’s are routinely not believed, i.e. Jeffrey Dhamer.
2. Show me one example of a man who has committed a heinous crime and an outcry regarding the responsiblity his female partner/mother/aunt/sister has resulted.
3. Yes medical issue can result in diminished capacity. However, tell me how schizophrenia is some how less compelling than post-partum depression.
4. Society has a whole has not and does not hold women to the same standard as men when it comes to responsibility.
5. And again, why is a battered male child not afforded the same understanding as a grown woman who commits violence in response to abuse?
I work in law, I understand mental illness, and no I am not Tom Cruise.
I am not saying that there is no such thing as diminished capacity. What I am saying is that Rusty Yates did not get Andrea Yates pregnant against her will, and if we are going to go on about his complicity in the murders or failure to protect, we should apply that same standard when men commit crimes.
Great retort Hershele. When you’ve got nothing else to say resort to name calling.
NO, not EVERYONE has DEPRESSION… if so we’d all be on Prozac. People get DEPRESSED, but do not suffer from DEPRESSION all the time.
Rick, seriously take a beginner’s course on psychology… or hell read about mental disorders. Research Schizophrenia, that’s a real interesting mental disorder that can affect men, women and even CHILDREN…. but don’t act like you have any idea how something as complex as the human psyche works when you quite obviously DON’T.
Heck, you probably think Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder are the same mental illness…
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, stamps foot because someone has a contrary opinion. I am not attempting to diagnose. I am simply saying that we do not allow the same luxury to men that we do women. Jeffrey Dahmer ate people for heaven’s sake, but he wasn’t insane?
Rick: When Marc Lepine gunned down 6 women (because they were feminists), the media immediately leapt to the “oh, he’s just crazy” defense. When it was learned that he didn’t have a history of mental illness, the media immediately leapt to the “his mother must have been horrible” defense.
You’re right, Rick. Society doesn’t hold women and men to the same standard when it comes to responsibility.
Legal responsibility, responsibility with money, responibility to wield authority … responsbilty for basically anything but kids, cooking, and cocks.
That’s the point you were trying to make, right?
If you work in law, as you say, you will realize that the reason there is an outcry regarding Rusty Yates’ behavior is that he knew that his wife was unstable, he knew that she had talked about killing their children, and he left her alone with them anyway.
It’s not just the mother of the children who has a duty to protect them. If the father knows that the mother is a danger to his children, he has a duty to protect them from her.
Moreover, in Texas, women are often jailed when their boyfriends or husbands kill their children, for child endangerment. Rusty Yates, by that measure, got off easier than a lot of Texas women do.
You also seem to have a real misunderstanding of the insanity defense. Here, let a forensic psychiatrist explain it to you:
And here’s a bit on Dahmer, and why he didn’t meet the test for the insanity defense:
Wouldn’t this all mean that perhaps Rusty is as blameless as Andrea, since he was brainwashed by his church? He seems to have been blinded to the reality of the situation as well.
As I said earlier, I’d place more of the blame on those around them who knew what was happening, but did nothing to stop it.
Of course he was insane! Just cause the courts didn’t agree because of the definition of “not guilty by reason of insanity”, doesn’t mean the general population thinks he WASN’T insane.
You’re confusing the courts, with the people.
I can’t comment on the other 5 ‘prove its’ you ask for…but my girlfriend was married to a child abuser, she had twin sons in that marriage. While she was at work, her husband shook one of the twins nearly to death, even tho she left him that night, states the abuse never happened in her presence, never went back to him and divorced him as soon as posible, her children were taken away from HER because the state did not feel she did enough to protect her children from her ex. YES IT DOES HAPPEN. Its just that not every case makes the MSM to nauseum.
Ok i’ll go here too…she was not diagnosed with post partum depression…it was post partum PSYCOSIS…which is more of a cousin to schizophrenina than PPD. Infact, I think they consider post-partum psycosis a form of schizophrenia.
Depression: psychiatric disorder characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, loss of appetite, anhedonia, feelings of extreme sadness, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness, and thoughts of death.
Psycosis: A severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning.
Maybe… however I suppose it’s really quite difficult to feel sympathy for him when their “church” doctrine was purely beneficial to him and his desires… I would have to think about it. If their “church” could be investigated and proved to be a cult then I would be happy if law enforcement would enact whatever laws they have regarding cults to their “church”.
Well Rick, I live in Wisconsin and I believe that Jeffrey Dahmer SHOULD have been put into a mental institution rather than prison. I also believe that Andrea Yates SHOULD have been in a hospital on June 20, 2001. She should not have been left completely alone with five small children when it was perfectly clear that she was a psychotic with violent tendencies that had already attempted to commit suicide on two prior occasions. Rusty Yates claims that he informed the psychiatrist who took her off her anti-psychotics that he thought she was deteriorating rapidly. If he knew she was in a very bad way, why did he leave her alone with the children?
To me, the reason that insanity defenses are so rarely successful is because we do not deal with mental illness in a responsible manner in this society. The support or assistance we give to families who have mentally ill loved ones is negligable. People with mental illnesses are largely treated like bogeymen and shunned. They are left to twist in the wind until they spiral out of control and hurt themselves or someone else. It’s only then that they are given any sort of attention whatsoever. And at that point it’s easier to simply throw them in prison rather than admit to the fact that if we had systems in place that actually helped those with mental illnesses, maybe that horrible crime never would have happened in the first place.
And then we bring post partum depression into the mix. This is one of the least understood mental illnesses of all, because of course no woman could possibly have any problems with Motherhood, and any mother who has a single negative thought about her child is clearly evil. The Cult of Motherhood does not allow for the existence of post partum depression. Again, it’s simply easier to assume that Andrea Yates is an evil woman with full control of her mental capacity. Because if her problems were out of her control, that would mean that we might have to admit that this is a part of the human condition. If she’s just a demonic force, then she’s just “Other” enough so that we can pretend that we are nothing like her.
For some reason the movie Stepford Wives comes to mind when I think about what you suggest, Twoluvcats.
This is called “moving the goalposts.” Pol Pot was a mass murderer; Andrea Yates was a multiple murderer. If you want the name of a murderer whose insanity defense worked, that’s easy: Daniel McNaughton, who tried to assassinate the Prime Minister in 1843. The McNaughton Rules, aka the M’Naghten Rules, the standard that allows an insanity defense when someone is not sane enough to know right from wrong, are named for him.
Then there’s James Hadfield, also an attempted assassin, who was acquitted some years before McNaughton. Then there’s Daniel Sickles, whose acquittal might be the first recorded use of the temporary insanity defense. Then there’s John Hinckley, Jr., who was acquitted of trying to kill Ronald Reagan. Then there’s Terry Foucha, of Foucha v. Louisiana (1992), in which the Supreme Court ruled that Foucha, an insanity acquittee, could not be held indefinitely.
This abstract describes a study that found that men–white men, actually–make up the majority of insanity acquitees.
Rick, a pretty simple 10-minute Google search came up with all these cases:
I’m too lazy to link properly, but you get the drift, I’m sure.
Well, “brainwashed” plus “post-partum psychosis” is different from “brainwashed” all by itself. Plus, he wasn’t the one locked up and isolated after five stressful pregnancies.
which situation, my uncle or my girlfriend?
I was trying to toss blame on “preacher AND Rusty.” Not “preacher INSTEAD OF Rusty.” Just to avoid folks suggesting I’m somehow defending the idiot.
Hmm? Neither, it was the suggestion that Rusty should recieve as much sympathy? as Andrea because they were involved in a cult….
Hmm? Oh… I see what I did… I meant to say that to Raging Moderate… Sorry, I wasn’t paying close enough attention (though the situation with your Uncle and his wives, kinda reminds me of it too)
Anyway, it seems like there are two distinct statements being debated here:
1) Andrea was not responsible for killing the kids, and
2) Rusty was responsible for not preventing their deaths.
There’s really no need to conflate the two; they’re entirely separate.
Rick, I can’t really tell which one you really are arguing against. Both? I think you’re mixing them up. Even if Andrea WAS complicit in her children’s death, that says nothing about whether rusty failed in his duty to his own children: To see the obvious warning signs of trouble, and remove the kids from danger. And if rusty was NOT responsible for the kids’ death, that doesn’t mean Andrea WAS responsible–sometimes there’s no pretty legal solution for something.
ok, phew…i was wondering what i’d said hehe
Chill out, guys! It’s story-time from Ukraine!
My father’s former co-worker, a wealthy man, had a young son who was mentally unstable and addicted to pills. He married a twenty-five year old woman at nineteen, and they had a child. They moved to a new apartment across town, financed by the parents who just wanted their son to have “a normal life.”
The woman worked, and the man stayed at home with the kid. The parents pumped a lot of money into medical treatment for their son. They later found out that all of those funds were going in their daughter-in-law’s pocket. They were in the middle of a divorce and didn’t notice what was happening. Their son never received the treatment he needed, and his wife didn’t want him to clean up and go to therapy. Why would she? Mommy and daddy might stop doting on their little one and she wouldn’t have the extra cash-flow. His drug addiction and psychosis didn’t cost her nearly as much treatment would (psychiatric medicine in Ukraine is woefully behind the times, but quite expensive). She was completely in charge of him and his life, and he didn’t buckle, seeing as he was used to having his decisions made for him.
End result? He began having psychotic episodes, grew
progressively worse, and finally broke their toddler’s arm while suffering from a hallucination.
Nobody blamed him for what happened.
Now, the kid is alive and well today, and living with his grandparents, who share custody after having learned some hard lessons, and nobody is dead. Naturally, this situation is not nearly as heinous and disturbing as the Yates case. I’m sure that if the child had died, people’s feelings on the issue would be a whole lot more complicated.
But it’s an interesting parallel, no? Somehow, something tells me that if it had been the wife who had broken their son’s arm, patriarchal Ukrainian society would have been a whole lot less forgiving.
Natalia rules, as usual.
As for Rick, he’s the one who barged in here to claim that the “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdict in the Yates case proves women have it so unfairly marvelous in the U.S. justice system, at the expense, naturally, of men. Let me see him back THAT assertion up, and then, maybe, he’ll have some justification for demanding that everyone else do his research for him. He’s a big boy; I’m sure he can find Google.
Ooh…another Internet tough guy. Let’s all be scared, OK?
Hell, even if Ukranian guy wasn’t on pill, the patriarchy would give him a pass for having been left home alone by his awful working wife. I mean, she deserted him with a BABY!
zuzu, you claim to work in law, but you’re making a rather silly comparison here (not to mention that you’ve failed to provide any authoritative citation for your compound, dubious claim). To make a reasonable comparison and prevent your comment from being solely a knee-jerk, “women are victims” feminist claim, please answer the following questions.
A. How many women in Texas are “often” jailed for child endangerment when their boyfriends kill those women’s children?
(1) Of the women numbered in “A,” how many had their children killed by boyfriends who were the children’s fathers?
(2) Of the women numbered in “A,” how many had their children killed by boyfriends who were not the children’s fathers?
B. How many women in Texas are “often” jailed for child endangerment when their husbands kill those women’s children?
(1) Of the women numbered in “B,” how many had their children killed by husbands who were the children’s fathers?
(2) Of the women numbered in “B,” how many had their children killed by husbands who were not the children’s fathers?
(3) Of the women numbered in “B(1),” how many had their children killed by husband-fathers who were suffering from a severe mental illness?
You see, zuzu, the only meaningful number you can use here is the one that accurately answers “B(3).”
I know analytical reasoning is hard, but this is a fairly straightforward issue, so with some practice, I’m confident you can do it. After you answer these questions (and please provide verifiable citations for your statistics), then we can talk about whether “Rusty Yates … got off easier than a lot of Texas women do.” Thanks!
1. Show me one example of a male mass murderer whose insanity defense worked. In fact men’s insanity defense’s are routinely not believed, i.e. Jeffrey Dhamer.
When I used to work in the mental health field, I came across a few male clients who had either comitted or attempted murder while in a psychotic state and who had been shifted into the the mental health system instead of the criminal justice system.The forensic mental health system is no picnic and it’s not uncommon for people to spend at least 20 years in a locked facility before someone deemed them sufficiently “cured” to be allowed to live in the community. I wish people understood that “Not Guily by Reason of Insanity” does not equal “getting off”. And if you have a problem with the number of people with mental illnesses who end up in the criminal justice sytem, blame the excessive stringency of Mc’Naughten Rule as a legal guideline for determining whether or not someone is legally considered insane, not feminism.
2. Show me one example of a man who has committed a heinous crime and an outcry regarding the responsiblity his female partner/mother/aunt/sister has resulted.
Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, to name but a few.
Mark… strawman much?
The point is that women are jailed for their “man’s” actions against their children cause “the system” thinks they could’ve prevented it… posters here argue (quite rightfully) that Rusty should be held equally accountable for not preventing what happened to his children. It’s a double standard, that mother’s get jailed for failing to prevent the men in thier lives from harming their children while no one even considers charging Rusty for not preventing what happened to his children and that’s all that was being pointed out.
No.
How’s that?
Oh, and piss off.
:)
I found a golden quote in a thread whose creator is outraged that Yates was declared “not guilty”:
This insanity business is asinine. Insane or not, they are threats to society. Heck, the insanity may be what’s making them threats to society in the first place. She’d get no quarter from me.
This guy’s outraged that she was found “innocent.” You know what this country needs? More armchair lawyers with a comprehensive understanding of the legal system, just like this guy. Or maybe we could simply clone Instapundit. I’ll bet he’d be down with that.
Sorry to do an off-topic nitpick, but Marc Lépine killed 14 women, not 6, and injured an additional 13 people, some of which were men, if I remember correctly. He killed the victims because they were women, and he blamed feminism for his failure to earn entrance to engineering school.
And because I hate to publish the names of killers without the names of victims, the women murdered were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier , Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.
Mark… strawman much?
Troll much? Go look up “straw man” and come back when you’ve learned something. You just don’t like that I kicked zuzu’s butt. Sorry.
The point is that women are jailed for their “man’s” actions against their children cause “the system” thinks they could’ve prevented it… posters here argue (quite rightfully) that Rusty should be held equally accountable for not preventing what happened to his children. It’s a double standard, that mother’s get jailed for failing to prevent the men in thier lives from harming their children while no one even considers charging Rusty for not preventing what happened to his children and that’s all that was being pointed out.
You and zuzu are making all kinds of wild claims with no evidence and no logic. I ask zuzu to be more precise. She’s not up to the task, so you try to change the subject. So much for feminists being equal to men.
Erm, you didn’t. First you can’t even decide what you’re trying to argue, then you don’t like what people have to say so you ask quite condescendingly zuzu to expound on her post on your terms (which, it is obvious at what you are trying to get with the “how many were her husbands” question) and to do your homework for you. All typical anti-feminist tactics “do it the way I want it done, yet do it for me”.
Sorry, Mark. My butt remains unkicked.
There’s a very good reason why, in a situation where two adults live in a home and one of the adults kills one or more of the children (regardless of the relationship to the children), the other adult is routinely held accountable for the killing: that adult was in the best position to see and understand that the children, to whom that adult owed a duty of care, were in danger.
Which, again, is the reason why it’s so aberrant that Rusty Yates, who had actual knowledge that his wife was psychotic, that she should not have another child, that she had threatened the children’s lives but still left her home anyway, was not arrested as well.
You want the kind of detailed statistics you’re asking for (but nobody has claimed, so: strawman!), Google it your damn self.
Paul Bernardo. In Canada, it seems people are angrier with Karla Homolka than they are with Bernardo himself. Now, she’s no saint, having participated in the rape and murder of her own sister and at least two other women. But he was the instigator, the rapist, and the murderer.
Oh, and Mark? You’re a fine one to call troll on others.
I live in Montreal (where Homolka now lives) and there are two reasons why more anger is directed at Homolka than Bernardo:
1. Bernardo is in prison and will never be released.
2. Videotapes of the rapes that Bernardo kept in his home were found after Homolka agreed to testify against Bernardo in exchange for a reduced sentence (12 years). The videotapes apparently showed that Homolka was a much more active participant in the crimes than she had admitted.
I don’t think the fact that she’s a woman has anything to do with it.
Oh, zuzu, you couldn’t answer the perfectly valid questions I posed in order to get at a valid comparison. It’s a shame that you would rather leap to defend your feminist crony than to support your claims. You say you’re a lawyer, huh? No doubt, one of the shittiest ones there is.
Erm, you didn’t. First you can’t even decide what you’re trying to argue, then you don’t like what people have to say so you ask quite condescendingly zuzu to expound on her post on your terms (which, it is obvious at what you are trying to get with the “how many were her husbands” question) and to do your homework for you. All typical anti-feminist tactics “do it the way I want it done, yet do it for me”.
Sorry, but ‘zu couldn’t support her claim with stats. I asked her to compare reasonable comparable entities. She couldn’t do it. So much for ‘lawyer’ zuzu. She’s just another stupid-ass feminist skank.
As opposed to yourself, a fellow who thinks it’s all kinds of appropriate to wedge himself and his issues, his precious precious issues, into a discussion that’s utterly not about him. No, not even a little bit.
Zuzu does not have to answer your questions, which many commenters have previously pointed out to you were irrelevant, argument-by-distraction, shifting-goalposts, Trolly-Trollerson questions in the first place. But let’s say Zuzu had wanted to answer your questions. Let’s say she’d felt charitable today. I’m betting you blew any chance of that with “stupid-ass feminist skank.”
Are you often in the habit of speaking this way to your hosts? Do you have much success with that? Could you do me a favor and try that line on the girlfriend of the biggest, meanest biker in the bar sometime? Could you bring along a pal with a good video camera and a YouTube account? I really feel like you owe me some entertainment here.
Are you often in the habit of speaking this way to your hosts? Do you have much success with that? Could you do me a favor and try that line on the girlfriend of the biggest, meanest biker in the bar sometime? Could you bring along a pal with a good video camera and a YouTube account? I really feel like you owe me some entertainment here.
Ah, another shit skank who thinks she’s a badcunt behind a computer screen tries to suggest violence against men. I’ve got a better idea, douche-ditz. Take one of those metal coat hangers you femiskanks are always rhapsodizing about, dip it in the sewer, stick it up your smelly snatch, and abort yourself? How’s that, sistah?
No, she may in fact be able to. She doesn’t doesn’t have to do so at your whim like you feel you‘re entitled to. Here you are, predictive as ever, flying off the handle.
*sigh* You’ve been a jack-ass and putting up straw-men through this whole thing and then completely constructed the conditions on your terms which for the most part hand nothing to do with what people were saying, yet you expect women and feminists to treat you with respect and rush to “prove” something to you because you can‘t punch in Google (which, even if she showed you “stats“ you‘d just alter the conditions or call more names) like a whiney, abusive bully with a huge sense of entitlement. Lemme guess, MRA/FRA type?
Ilyka-
Nah, he feels much, much safer doing it behind his little computer to a feminist
[...] 7.28.2006
This Will Get You Banned
Posted by zuzu @ 9:35 am
Quoth Mark, who was stamping his little feetsies because I refu [...]
Jail for ignoring medical advice? No-one proposed that.
But legal responsibility for ignoring medical advice when the result is that a bunch of people other than you die? Yeah. I personally think that’s a good idea.
Wow. You’re not just obnoxious and insulting, you’re (again) trying to sound like an expert on something you clearly know nothing about. Do you even understand a little bit about how psychosis works? It’s not like a cold virus that clears up in a couple of weeks. In cases like PPP, it’s a long term and degenerative condition, that fluctuates wildly in terms of how coherent one’s grip on reality is. Unless it is successfully treated, it does not just go away.
She had five kids. She was diagnosed with a psychotic illness WELL before Rusty insisted they conceive the last one, which he did after making her stop taking her medication. Anyone who can read can tell that that indicates she was psychotic at the time of sex. It’s called a bloody timeline. If diagnosis was A, then psychotic onset was pre-A. Childbirth is B. That means sex occured between A and B, and in that time she was suffering from psychosis.
Psychosis is fucking scary. When I was completely in the grips of it, I had absolutely no way of telling what was real and what wasn’t. My husband at the time managed to succeed in beating me, fucking me and cheating on me, telling me the whole time I was delusional and imagining it. I believed him because, frankly, some of the other shit I was seeing/hearing/knowing was much more bizarre than that. I’ve punched nurses and not remembered it, and been convinced that random strangers were trying to kill me. I heard voices talking to me that I couldn’t distrust, and the authority they spoke to me with makes me extremely glad I’m not religious. Andrea Yates killed her babies because she knew they were going to heaven. Unless you have experienced a psychotic certainty, you have no idea just how huge that word “knew” is.
Close. It’s a non-organic schizoid illness, which means it’s more likely to be a form of schio-affective disorder. Same chemical shit, no brain lesions.
Man, I wanted to address some more of this Mark idiots misconceptions, but he’s (predictably) descended into Random Insult Salad. Not worth any of our time.
He just got himself banned, too.
He’s not usually that bad. Given the lateness of the hour, I expect he had a snootful while posting.
Natalia’s story was a perfect example of how differently society treats male and female parents. You have to wonder if some of the opposition against gay marriage is motivated by fear of men, no matter how much whining FRAs do.
In response to the Raging Moderate, you’re correct, I don’t hold Rusty any more accountable than I hold Andrea under the condition that this group used cult tactics on them. How are we to judge whether the cult’s doctrine benefited him? I have very sweet male relatives struggling to play the role of patriarch in their homes, contrary to their temperament, because of church pressure. Do we say that the boys forced at gunpoint to rape women in the Balkans are somehow accountable for the rape because “it benefitted them?” It’s a warped perspective that thinks domination of another individual is a benefit.
Rusty’s actions were not the rational actions of a man who wanted to maintain control over a woman in the fashion he claims, they’re the actions of a puppet on strings. If his actions were of his own accord, he wouldn’t have needn’t “guidance” from a spiritual authority at the church to tell him to do them. If the man wanted to force additional pregnancies on his wife contrary to the doctor’s orders and he believed she was bound to submit to him, why would he even need a religious authority’s go ahead? What possible reason could he, in the interest of control, have to object to his mother spending time with his wife? Rational people are concerned for their children and rational people who choose to have additional children don’t want them to be killed. In this case we have the church on record directing him in every one of these tragic decisions. That he’d divorce his wife after she killed his children is no surprise, I don’t know anyone who could stay married through that illness or no, but the speed with which he remarried suggests the church had a hand in that too. I doubt the church would object to the divorce since it allowed them to keep him while distancing from her embarrassment. I notice he didn’t leave the church and they’re still on the prayer list. I also notice they’ve started offering mother’s days out, which are likely just about mandatory.
I may not have mentioned that my partner was in the same religious group that I was (we entered and left together), along with a number of male friends. If anything, they were more controlling of them, it was like dealing with an army of perpetually challenged alpha males. Women were expected to be pushovers and so they were more willing to use the “gentle” approach with us. Although the very fact that I expressed an opinion they took to reflect poorly on the men I was friends with, so it’s a nasty little hierarchy.
Anyone notice how this guy ends up smelling like roses at the end of the news story? He almost sounds like a martyr for admitting to the murders.
All I can say is that when Howard Stern thinks Rusty Yates was a jack-off who bears a large responsibility for the deaths of his children, it’s pretty evident we are dealing with a jack-off of epic proportions.
I did say I would have to think upon it… however to answer this question… it seems obvious to me that the answer is “..to convince his wife to be & remain submissive to him”
It sort of sounds to me like saying ” If the man wanted to force additional pregnancies on his wife contrary to the doctor’s orders and he believed she was bound to submit to him, why would he even need to be abusive or alienate her from family & loved ones to go ahead?”
Like I said, the answer to me is: To get her to submit. In fact, I’m not entirely convinced that he he didn’t seek out this kind of “church” for the express purpose of gaining a submissive wife.
Oh, wow. Link?
Its always interesting how the male trolls come in guns a-blazin’ set out to prove feminism all wrong and manage with stunning acuity to prove feminism correct.
And not once, but like good little members of the authority class, constantly, because they are right and we women just need to have it hammered in. And if that doesn’t work, well then there’s always good old violence and intimidation. That’ll get ‘em ever time.
Oh well.
This quote way up in the historic section of this thread got me:
“I’m not sure what his duty was to his wife to make sure she was okay, but he certainly had a duty to make sure his children were being appropriately cared for.”
His duty was to care for her and his children, “in times of sickness and in health….” remember those cherished words? What is the mystery there? Even a flippin’ Baptist preacher wouldn’t be able to deny that.
I am so disappointed that this blog, years after the verdict is only the time place and time that I have ever heard any outrage over Rusty Yates. During the whole fiasco, I couldn’t watch certain news shows that had him on, I just couldn’t even grant his image my gaze or his words my brain space.
I am absolutely appalled that the media and the public just blinked along cluelessly and believed that this man could get up and go to work everyday and interact and function fine and come home to a woman who obviously didn’t know who or where she was half the time, was hearing voices and wanted attempted to kill herself.
I agree that the religious cult probably has a hold on him, but no NO ONE in the media questioned him, he never had to answer to his behavior or his choices to anyone.
That the prosecutor didn’t include him in the indictment for murder astounds and disgusts me. THe whole thing is sick.
I hope he closes his eyes every night and sees his children struggling for their last breath everytime he climbs on top of his new wife.
OK, I haven’t found stern’s comments yet, but I had to come back to place this link from yahoo:
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060726/ap_on_re_us/yates_trial
On a sidebar is an interview with Mr. Yates himself. it is disgusting how cavalier he is. He seems to enjoy the camera quite a bit and it is quite disturbing to see him act so casually, laugh and say ‘I’ve got to get on with my life.”
He also says, “She was obviously sick.” If so obvious, then why the hell didn’t he do anything? Then he says about ten times, “We tried to get her help…”
His behavior seems either like someone who has completely disassociated, which is typical of religious cult followers, or he a fully functioning psychopath.
The link won’t work, but go to yahoo news and do a search, i’m sure you’ll find it if you want to see it.
Post Nr. 116
If you mean yourself with men feminists can be happy for not being insulted by being called equal to you.