Reading this article about how Andrea Yates is (according to her best friend) doing a little better now reminds me why after all this time I still get irrationally pissed off reading articles like this.
[O]ver time, Yates, who home-schooled her children and once agreed with Rusty to move the family into a converted bus, has expressed doubt about whether her husband always supported her.
Her friends and family have maintained he did not.
In a letter written to Bob Holmes in September 2003, Yates wrote: “Maybe sometimes I do wear rose-colored glasses regarding my husband but I have to ‘wake up and smell the coffee.’
“I’ll ask him what was I like when I was sick? ‘Oh, like you usually are, just quieter,’ ” Yates wrote.
“Little Mary couldn’t bear to look at me — she’d cry,” the note continued. “I’d hold her outward so she didn’t see my face. So heartbreaking and tragic.”
After signing the letter, she asked Bob Holmes in a postscript to show Rusty compassion. “He has lost so much,” she wrote.
“All the ‘factors’ that contributed to the tragedy are complex and it wastes energy to assign ‘blame’ (ultimately I was the one who did it) but Rusty and I have lost our beautiful children,” she wrote.
[…]
[She] is interested in the efforts of the Yates Children Memorial Fund for Women’s Mental Health Education. The fund was established by the Mental Health Association of Greater Houston. In a letter to Debbie Holmes written shortly after their Christmas weekend visit, Yates expressed a hunger for more information about a statewide symposium the association had in November.
Holmes said that over the past three years, she and her husband have tried to convince Yates that she was severely ill in the months leading up to the children’s deaths. She said Yates only vaguely recalls that period and has been wrought with guilt.
“I told her, ‘Your speech, your breathing, your hygiene, your walk, your talk, your approach to your kids, everything wasn’t normal. There was nothing normal about you,’ ” Holmes said.
John would raise his hand over his eyes when he would talk to his mother, and Mary often cried in her arms, Holmes recalled.
Those memories make Yates sad to think what her children’s lives were like during those months, Holmes said.
But they also have empowered Yates to think about ways she can help prevent similar tragedies for other families.
She and Yates have talked about collaborating on articles about her mental illness, and Yates would like to eventually speak out in favor of better treatment for the mentally ill, Holmes said.
Parnham said Yates has expressed the same desire to him.
“She’s beginning to appreciate the fact that her situation could be possibly used as a learning tool for women across the world who suffer from the same kind of mental illnesses,” he said.
“All of this is looking at the lives of those five children and realizing that they will forever be wasted unless something good can come out of what happened at 942 Beachcomber on June 20, 2001.”
In my more charitable moments, I try not to demonize Rusty Yates for his role in this tragedy. It’s not like he hasn’t suffered as well – these were his children, too, after all. But the bottom line is that what happened at 942 Beachcomber did not have to happen. Andrea Yates was suffering from a treatable condition. She needed medication, she needed the full support of family and friends, she needed time to herself, and most of all, for the entire time that she was suffering she needed to never be left alone with her children. It’s Rusty’s fault that she didn’t get these things, as he was her primary (and for many things, only) means of support. It was his decision to stop medicating Andrea so she could get pregnant with Mary. I’d bet it was his decision that Andrea homeschool the kids. Andrea may not have known she was falling apart, but if Debbie Holmes knew it, Rusty must have as well. He failed her, and in doing so he failed his children. However much he may have suffered for the consequences of his actions, and however much I may empathize with his suffering, that fact is inescapable. And I’m angry now just typing those words.
I’m glad that Andrea wants to make something good come out of this horror story. Whatever peace she can find she deserves. May she live to make a difference.
Elsewhere, on the legal status of things, Tom points to this overview by South Texas College of Law (that’s here in Houston, btw) professor Dru Stevenson. One nit I have to pick with Prof. Stevenson is that Andrea Yates did not have postpartum depression, she had the rarer and much more malevolent condition of postpartum psychosis.
Women experiencing a psychosis are at risk of committing suicide and, in very rare cases, of harming their unborn child or infants. These women need to be hospitalized for their safety and to safeguard their infants.
This is a psychiatric emergency and the woman needs to be hospitalized immediately. Because of her confusion the woman may not have the insight to recognize how ill she is, therefore, the decision for hospitalization will be made by her physician.
But only if her husband lets her see a physician.
UPDATE: The DMN’s Steve Blow boils the appeals court’s ruling down to a simple question: “How much false testimony is OK?” Via Alan D. Williams.
