Author Topic: Andrea Yates  (Read 38408 times)

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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #210 on: July 10, 2006, 05:52:00 PM »
There was debate a while back.  Now it's just someone posting the latest articles that have been written.

Carmel, my condolences.  I can't even imagine. :cry:
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Offline Carmel

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #211 on: July 10, 2006, 06:04:00 PM »
Thanks, I appreciate it.

Its just because I got really furious reading the last CNN article about how they are going back and forth over whether or not it was "her fault".  

Makes me sad for humanity, thats all. Really sad.

I just wonder sometimes if these bleeding hearts have ever had children of their own, or lost children of their own.  If they know anything about the maternal bond, and what it truly means to make that kind of departure from it. If she never knew it was wrong, I wonder then why she called the police and asked to be punished?

I know the debate is long over.  But still, to sit there and pretend like its anything short of completely unacceptable and unforgivable, is beyond me. Let her husband forgive her if he likes, he'll die from that burden someday.  But dont make the rest of the world try to see it as anything less than sub-human.  Its cowardice against ones own species in my eyes.









[ This Message was edited by: Carmel on 2006-07-10 15:07 ]
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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #212 on: July 10, 2006, 09:28:00 PM »
Not even the courts are debating her guilt.

What is the case is about?

Whether to give her life in prison, or life in a prison mental hospital. Like where John Hinkley is locked up for life.

What the public seems to be doing is applying logic to the illogical delusions of a psychotic person and comparing it to their notion of right and wrong.

From what I have observed it seems those that have mental illness, or know someone who has a mental illness looks at this case and says why waste the courts money, just put her in the prison hospital.

Those that do not believe in mental illness say send her to prison.

Whatever ... ?
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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #213 on: July 10, 2006, 11:42:00 PM »
Jurors see video of Yates' interview with psychiatrist

HOUSTON A videotaped jail interview shows Andrea Yates crying as she tries to explain to a psychiatrist why she drowned her five children in a bathtub.
Yates, in the video played today for jurors, told Doctor Lucy Puryear, that in their innocence, she thought they would go to heaven.

The defense offered the interview in the Houston capital murder retrial of Yates.

Her 2002 convictions were thrown out. Yates has again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

-- Court ended at midday today because of a scheduling conflict. Testimony resumes tomorrow.

Puryear is an expert on reproductive-related psychiatric disorders.

In the video, Yates often clenched her jaw and paused for up to a minute or more after some questions.

Her attorneys say Yates suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and did not know that killing her children was wrong.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #214 on: July 11, 2006, 11:00:00 AM »
I guess people with a mental disorder who have had these deadly command voices, delusions and hallucinations that are reading people's opinions about their illness are pretty offended also.

Fortunately, the illnesses are real, and there are treatments that help. In some cases full remission!

Command Hallucination:
Psychotic individuals sometime describe hallucinations of voices commanding them to engage in specific activity.

Psychotic:
This term encompasses those serious mental disorders, including schizophrenia, major depression, alcohol withdrawal delirium, and others where the individual "loses touch with reality." Hallucinations and delusions are generally considered psychotic symptoms. The individual experiencing them may be described as psychotic.
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Offline Anonymous

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CNN Paula Zahn segment on Andrea Yates analysis
« Reply #215 on: July 13, 2006, 09:07:00 PM »
There was just segment on that explained this trial pretty clearly.

First, this is being held in Texas. They have the toughest insanity defense law in the nation that in effect there is no insanity defense law in Texas.

To win this or any case, even if justified in all the other states will be miraculous.

In most other states she would have been found insane and sent to a prison psychiatric hospital for life. Simple as that.

The newsfolks have this debate going on, and it shouldn't be ... at all.

Apparently the truth about psychosis is that a person can know an act is wrong but the illogical thought patterns cause by the illness make stopping the act impossible. Unless that persons illness profile is stabilized by psychiatric care, most likely medicine. That is it, that is all there is to it.

So all this talk about how people are interpreting her actions, without taking psychosis into account are just not educated in this field.
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Offline Anonymous

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Mental illness: Not everyone recovers from it
« Reply #216 on: July 17, 2006, 01:31:11 AM »
Mary Zdanowicz

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

"Recovery from mental illness is possible," wrote the director of one Maine psychiatric hospital, painting a rosy picture of life with schizophrenia. A week after his piece was published, one of his recently released patients stood accused of bludgeoning his mother to death.

William Bruce wasn't afforded that chance at recovery. After Bruce was accused of killing his mother, the hospital director explained why. "In Maine, a client can choose not to be engaged in treatment ... [t]he major issue is when someone does not appear eminently [sic] dangerous and cannot be committed."

This attitude is emblematic of a bizarre tendency by some in the mental health community to bank on an illusion of recovery for everyone, ignoring issues like awareness of illness and violence in the hope that disregarding them will eliminate stigmata.

The problem with that strategy is that it isn't true. And anyone who reads a newspaper knows it.

The mantra is that schizophrenia is not disabling and people who have it are no more violent than the general public. That simple message is more damaging than the one it tries to correct -- that schizophrenia means a life of disability and violence.

A small group of people with mental illnesses are more violent than the general public; those are the ones not taking medication. Failing to acknowledge this -- because of a misguided sense of political correctness or fear of stigmatizing everyone with a mental illness -- keeps everyone from acting to help that small group.

A recent national study clarifies who is at the greatest risk of being dangerous. Schizophrenia patients with "positive symptoms" (paranoid delusions, hearing voices, having imagined superhuman powers) were at least three times more likely to be violent than other schizophrenia patients.

Scientific data like this helps clarify who most needs treatment interventions, reducing stigma for others with mental illnesses -- and saving lives.

The establishment also tends to ignore the science on insight into illness. They talk about "choice," disregarding studies showing some people are unable to choose. The most common cause of nonadherence to treatment is actually not side effects, stigma, or medication cost, but a lack of insight into illness. That can seriously interfere with a patient's ability to weigh meaningfully the consequences of various treatment options.

How does that affect choice? We understand that William Bruce thought the CIA had implanted a device under his skin. How will seeing a psychiatrist help you if the CIA is after you? Building a trusting therapeutic relationship is impossible if a patient imagines his doctor is part of a CIA plot. Medication is needed to combat the delusions.

Maine, like every other state, has a law allowing civil commitment for people who meet strict standards. Sadly, the law is misunderstood even by mental health professionals.

In one news story, William Bruce's father, Robert Bruce, recounted what he said to his wife the night before she was killed: "I can't believe they allow these people out on the streets. ... What do we have to wait for? Do we have to wait for him to hurt somebody or kill somebody before they do something?'"

Too late for the Bruce family, the correct answer is "no." Maine's law does allow intervention before someone is deemed "imminently dangerous," and it is within the scope of the law for the hospital director to make discharge from a psychiatric facility conditional on someone taking medication.

But some mental health professionals assume it is harmful to mandate someone to accept treatment. This is a myth. In one study, individuals in court-mandated community treatment had low levels of perceived coercion, similar to individuals who had never experienced any form of leverage -- they didn't feel "forced," in other words. But those same people reported significantly higher treatment satisfaction than those whose treatment had been voluntary, probably because they didn't get to choose whether to take medication or not.

Maine's laws are weak in that they only allow civil commitment on an inpatient basis -- and there are too few beds to go around. A small pilot program is bringing an outpatient version of civil commitment to Maine -- states with similar programs have seen phenomenal results, reducing arrests, homelessness, and violence for participants. Hopefully that program will soon be available statewide.

Until then, the mental health community must retool its message based on science. Yes, most people with mental illnesses can and do live independent and violence-free lives. But denying the truth about those who remain strips them, and sometimes their caregivers, of the chance to live any kind of life at all.

Mary Zdanowicz is the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center (www.psychlaws.org), a national nonprofit dedicated to removing barriers to treatment of severe mental illnesses.
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Offline Antigen

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #217 on: July 17, 2006, 04:54:19 AM »
The interesting discussion is not really about Andrea Yates' guilt or innocence. It's all about the drugs.

If you get tanked on alcohol or meth and do something fucked up, it's all on you. Everybody knows or should know how those drugs effect us because we have lots and lots of experience with them to draw from. If you decide to get tanked and neglected to get a reliable friend to babysit you, well that's your fault and you're responsible for whatever you do.

But if you take a drug because a professional assures you that it's safe and effective and then you wind up doing crazy shit under the influence, is it really your fault? To my mind, fuck yeah, it is! I'm sorry that this always offends people but I think somebody's got to be the asshole and state it outright as many times as it takes till it takes. And, well, I'm just that kind of asshole. Find something you're good at you stick with it, right?

You have to be dumber than paint to take rx drugs without checking for yourself to see what we know about them. What, have you slept through the last 3 decades of recalls and tragic headlines behind the latest, greatest wonder drugs that turned out to be bad friends? Come on people!

I think the object lesson behind the Yates story is don't take candy from strangers, even strangers w/ white lab coats, clean fingernails and impressive looking documents hanging on their well appointed office walls. We all come into this world naked and screaming and we all check out the same way. Think for yourself!
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Offline Anonymous

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Defense rests in Andrea Yates' retrial
« Reply #218 on: July 17, 2006, 09:43:47 AM »
Defense rests in Andrea Yates' retrial

HOUSTON (AP) ? The defense in Andrea Yates' murder trial rested Tuesday after her best friend tearfully told jurors that the woman who drowned her five children in the bathtub "misses them terribly."

Debbie A. Holmes, who met Yates about 20 years ago when both were nurses at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said she still visits Yates and writes her letters.

Yates, 42, is being retried in her children's 2001 bathtub drowning deaths because her capital murder conviction was overturned by an appeals court that ruled erroneous testimony might have influenced the jury. She has again pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Her attorneys say she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and did not know it was wrong to kill 7-year-old Noah, 5-year-old John, 3-year-old Paul, 2-year-old Luke and 6-month-old Mary.

Prosecutors began their rebuttal case Tuesday. They have said they plan to call Dr. Park Dietz, the psychiatrist whose testimony led to Yates' conviction being overturned.
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Dietz, also a "Law & Order" television series consultant, told the first jury that in one episode of the crime drama a woman was acquitted by reason of insanity after drowning her children in a tub. He said the show aired before the Yates children died. But after her 2002 conviction, it was discovered no such episode existed.

Holmes testified that Yates was a sweet friend, dedicated nurse and loving mother, but that after the birth of her fourth son she turned into a "total zombie" who stared into space and couldn't finish sentences.

Holmes said she helped care for her friend's children in 1999 after Yates returned from a psychiatric hospital following two suicide attempts. Holmes said that a few months later she asked Yates why she had been so depressed.

"She asked me if I thought Satan could read her mind and if I believed in demon possession," Holmes said.

Earlier Tuesday, prosecutors cross-examined a neuropsychologist who evaluated Yates about six months after the drownings.

Dr. George Ringholz said Yates recounted a hallucination she had after the birth of her first child.

"What she described was feeling a presence ... Satan ... telling her to take a knife and stab her son Noah," Ringholz said.

Ringholz acknowledged that he did not perform certain tests to see if Yates was trying to make her mental illness appear worse, but he said other tests and safeguards as part of the extensive two-day evaluation indicated she was not faking. Ringholz diagnosed schizophrenia.

Ringholz said Yates was delusional the day of the drownings and did not know her actions were wrong, even though she called 911 and knew she would be arrested. Her delusion was that Satan had entered her and that she had to be executed in order to kill Satan, he said.

"Delusions cannot be willed away," Ringholz said.
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Offline Anonymous

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Doctor says Yates justified killings
« Reply #219 on: July 17, 2006, 09:49:02 AM »
July 15, 2006, 2:09AM

Doctor says Yates justified killings

Psychiatrist says mother thought deaths were better than lives of sin
By DALE LEZON

Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Andrea Yates believed killing her children was sinful, but considered it the best thing she could do for them, a psychiatrist testified Friday.

Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, said Yates quoted Scripture to him when she talked about the killings.

"My children weren't righteous," she said. "They were going to stumble. Better for them to tie a millstone around their necks and they should perish than they should stumble."

Dietz, whose erroneous testimony four years ago resulted in Yates' new trial, said the former Clear Lake-area housewife's religious beliefs indicate she knew the killings were wrong. She considered killing them a sin and believed her homicidal thoughts came from Satan, Dietz said.

"Mrs. Yates, in assessing her obsession to harm the children, regarded that idea of harming the children was a sin," Dietz said. "That killing the children would be sinful is an indication that it would be wrong from her point of view."

Yates, 42, is accused in the deaths of her five children, ages 7, 5, 3, 2 and 6 months, on June 20, 2001, at the family home near Clear Lake.

Defense attorneys are trying to convince a jury that Yates was insane when she killed the children.

Prosecutors say Yates, although mentally ill, knew right from wrong.

If convicted, she automatically will be sentenced to life in prison. She would be placed in a mental hospital and remain under the court's jurisdiction if she is found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Yates was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison, but an appeals court threw out the conviction based on Dietz's testimony about an episode of the television drama Law & Order in which a mother is found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing her children.

No such episode existed.

Attorneys have said state District Judge Belinda Hill prohibited them from mentioning the phantom program, but they could refer to the previous trial as a "preceding" and question Dietz about his testimony to determine if he was testifying the same way in the new trial.

Friday, when defense attorney George Parnham asked him about Yates' statements to him concerning the film Seven, Dietz said he remembered Yates had told him she had seen it, but he couldn't recall the plot specifically.

Parnham said there are similarities between Yates' delusions and the actions of one of the film's characters. The character killed and then hoped to be executed.

Mental health witnesses have testified that Yates believed she would be punished for killing her children and said Satan would be killed when the state executed her.

Parnham also asked Dietz about his testimony in the 2004 capital murder trial of Deanna Laney, who was acquitted by reason of insanity.

In Laney's trial, Dietz said that psychotic delusions made Laney unable to determine right from wrong during the killings ? the legal standard in Texas' legal standard for insanity.

Laney, who believed God chose her and Yates as witnesses after the end of the world, said she believed God had told her to kill her three children.

Dietz testified that Laney believed she was right to kill her children because God would never order her to do wrong.

Friday in Yates' trial, Hill told attorneys with the jury on break from the courtroom that she would not retry the Laney case, but allowed Parnham to ask Dietz questions about delusions based on religious faith.

Parnham asked Dietz if people commanded by God to kill are insane.

"Only if a person is of a faith that believes God is good and infallible."

He said Yates told him in a interview in November 2001 that Satan was the origin of thoughts about harming her children.

"Because Mrs. Yates said that the thoughts were bad, she knew it was wrong, and because of her faith she concluded they were from Satan," Dietz said.

Dietz said Yates suffered from mental illness as far back as 1994 but had not been "floridly psychotic" ? grossly psychotic ? until she was at the Harris County Jail the day after the drownings and after her arrest.

He said her symptoms most likely were signs of schizophrenia, he said.

dale.lezon@chron.com
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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates
« Reply #220 on: July 17, 2006, 01:20:17 PM »
Quote from: Eudora
The interesting discussion is not really about Andrea Yates' guilt or innocence. It's all about the drugs.

But if you take a drug because a professional assures you that it's safe and effective and then you wind up doing crazy shit under the influence, is it really your fault?

You have to be dumber than paint to take rx drugs without checking for yourself to see what we know about them.

I think the object lesson behind the Yates story is don't take candy from strangers

-------------------------------

 I think that this is a great example of an emotionally based uninformed post.

Meds are bad? That means there are 25 million gullable people out there that are not feeling better, even though they do. Consumers of any type of product vote by their purchases. If 25 million people where unhappy with the effectiveness of meds they wouldn't be on them.

History of meds? Without meds there would still be large state run insane asylums. That is the real history.

Choosing to go to a doctor? Is mental illness a choice, I don't think so.

Empiracle evidence is not on your side Eudora.

Finally, although the meds are bad argument sounds wonderful and it is a feel good argument to jump on the bandwagon, especially if one does not have mental illness. The truth is 85% of schizophrenic patients do not take meds. Therefore only 15% do, meaning there is not this big drug everyone issue going on. The 85% voluntarily do not take their meds.

The patients that are a danger to themselves or others may be put on AOT, assertive outpatient treatment. But as the Andrea Yates case and the big mental/murder cases the public gets to read for the most part these patients where no forced to take their meds.

So I guess you got your wish, 85% of schizophrenics don't take their meds!
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Offline Anonymous

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Andrea Yates Shows That Mothers Need Our Help
« Reply #221 on: July 19, 2006, 11:35:08 PM »
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/ ... xt/archive

Andrea Yates Shows That Mothers Need Our Help
Run Date: 07/19/06
By Anne Eggebroten
WeNews commentator

Andrea Yates is on trial again for murdering her five children in 2001. Anne Eggebroten says mother-murder is a common phenomenon with predictable causes. One woman's escape offers guidance on prevention.

Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's eNews.

Anne Eggebroten

(WOMENSENEWS)--Other mothers have killed their children since the Andrea Yates tragedy hit the headlines in June 2001, but they don't always make news beyond a local area.

I've encountered one such emergency scene myself. One day last October, I was visiting friends in San Francisco and happened to be near Pier 7 when screaming sirens stopped traffic. A psychotic young mother had just quietly thrown her three children into the cold water of the bay. The three boys--6 years, 2 years and 1 year--died. Their mother, Lashuan Harris, began her long journey through the legal system; so far she has been arraigned and ordered to stand trial.

These mother-murders abound: a U.S. mother kills her child at the rate of once every three days, according to legal scholar Michelle Oberman at Santa Clara University in California. Nevertheless, the extremes of the Yates case continue to draw attention: five children, two prior suicide attempts and a smiling, well-employed husband who expected the whole family to live in a bus.

"I could pretty much predict that Mrs. Yates would have another episode of psychosis," testified psychiatrist Eileen Starbranch in Houston during Yates' second trial. The first trial ended with a murder conviction that was overturned on appeal because of false testimony by a prosecution witness. Starbranch treated Yates after her overdoses with sleeping pills in June and July, 1999, and warned her and her husband not to have any more children.

How did Andrea Yates move from a seemingly happy bride in published photos to a killer? As her second trial plays out, it's clear that there were three steps in her metamorphosis: an oppressive marriage, repeated childbirths and mismanagement of mental illness.

Andrea and Russell Yates came under the sway of an itinerant evangelist who said that a woman not obedient to her husband was a "contentious witch" like Eve, seen as having argued with Adam and cursed the future of the human race. As the demands on Yates increased, she fell short and judged herself harshly.

Psychologist Harriet Lerner says that when a woman "does more giving in and going along than is her share" and loses control over her choices, she enters a "de-selfed position."

Repeated childbirths further weakened Yates physically and mentally, and her family history suggests a predisposition to certain mental disorders. Abrupt changes in her medications in the weeks and days prior to the killings may have been the final trigger. Yates became convinced that Satan was within her; she deserved execution, but her children could still go to heaven if sent while they were still innocent.

As in the Yates case, most mother-murders are caused by social isolation and despair, sometimes accompanied by mental illness, according to the research of Oberman.

An E-Mail About Escape

Last week I received an e-mail from a woman who escaped from a situation that, while crucially different from Yates' in some ways, was also very similar. She allowed me to share the essential facts of her situation while changing her name to protect her privacy.

Sarah contacted me because of an article I wrote four years ago pointing out the role of conservative Christian churches in empowering abusive husbands. She happened to find it while searching the Internet and reached me through the Web site of Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus.

"I was married to a conservative Christian husband and we had five children," Sarah wrote. "I left a social work career to stay at home and home-school my children." Yates also gave up her work as a registered nurse and home-schooled her children, as required by her husband.

"I then spiraled down to a dark and dangerous place emotionally," Sarah continued. "I felt every day that I was not a good mother. I was never good enough. Every pregnancy brought more health problems. By the fourth child, I would pass out from low blood sugar while the babies would be unattended. This makes me shiver now." She now recognizes that she was suffering from untreated clinical depression.

Unlike Andrea Yates, Sarah managed to get out of this predicament. She decided to go to graduate school and earn a master's in social work. (What a choice; grad school with five young children would have been enough to drive me to desperation.)

Sarah had another method of moving out of the "de-selfed position." She had a few affairs. Unable to speak up for herself, she unconsciously started to end her marriage by becoming sexually involved elsewhere. "I wanted to make a statement to my husband," she writes.

Post-Divorce Professional

The result was a divorce in which her ex got custody of her five children. Sarah has regrets, but she and her children are all alive and well today. She has a satisfying job. "Going to graduate school was the best decision that I made. I moved up professionally pretty quickly," she reports.

Sarah misses her children and still struggles with depression, but it is controlled with medication. Though Andrea's diagnosis of post-partum psychosis was much more serious than Sarah's depression, their family profiles were remarkably similar.

Sarah's recovery proves that there are ways of helping troubled mothers who are isolated and under pressure.

First, help women regain their sense of self, their voices and power over their own choices. Family therapy can help accomplish this. Some child-free activity outside the house can also be a life-saver. As in Sarah's case, a job or further education can be key.

Second, prevent further childbirth. Don't add the post-partum element to a depression or other mental illness.

Third, activate community responsibility when the warning light of possible psychosis is present. Doctors must not only warn but follow up. Is medicine taken? Is birth control being used? In addition, the church must be prevented from pressuring fragile women into additional childbirths. Any church that forbids contraception must be told: "This woman may die. Her children's lives are at stake."

Finding Our Roles

All of us can find a place in this important work. Pro-choice organizations need our energy and financial support. Doctors and mental health agencies need to move from a hands-off stance that stresses patient rights to a position of engagement with the community surrounding a patient.

Those of us in faith communities need to take on fundamentalist groups denying choice to women, as well as the oppressive reproductive policies of the Roman Catholic Church.

The San Francisco drownings illustrate an often overlooked aspect of the problem: the fixation on patients' rights that tends to keep children in the home of a troubled parent. In many cases preserving parental custody may be good, but when family members see signs of danger alarm bells should go off. When Lashuan Harris stopped taking her Haldol, a medication for schizophrenia, the children's grandmother attempted to gain partial custody but was refused, according to a family member. "They said she was sane, that they couldn't do anything," Joyce Harris, aunt of the children's mother, told the San Francisco Chronicle last October.

The issues are complex, but there are things that all of us can do for troubled mothers. Churches, clinicians, friends, families and pro-choice activists can defuse the pressures that entrapped Andrea Yates and Lashuan Harris.

Anne Eggebroten is a research scholar with the Center for the Study of Women at University of California, Los Angeles. Her pro-choice book "Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories" (New Paradigm, 1994) is available online or in bookstores.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at http://www.harrietlerner.com

Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
http://www.rcrc.org

Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus http://www.eewc.com

Note: Women's eNews is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites and the contents of site the link points to may change.
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Offline Anonymous

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Psychiatrist says Yates thought drownings were right
« Reply #222 on: July 19, 2006, 11:46:13 PM »
HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Houston & Texas


July 19, 2006, 6:03PM

Psychiatrist says Yates thought drownings were right
The Clear Lake mother believed two of her boys would burn in hell

By DALE LEZON
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

Andrea Yates believed one of her sons would become a serial killer, another would be a mute homosexual prostitute and that both would burn in the fires of hell if she did not kill them, a psychiatrist told jurors today.
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Dr. Phillip Resnick, who interviewed Yates twice after her children's deaths and also reviewed other psychiatrists' interviews with her, said Yates believed she had ruined her children and that they would grow up to sin and then be sent to hell.

She believed she could save their souls if she killed them before they reached age 10, which she considered the age of responsibility, Resnick said.

He said Yates believed that John, 5, would become a serial killer.

"Another son would grow up to be a mute, homosexual prostitute,'' Resnick said.

Yates, 42, is charged with capital murder and will receive an automatic life sentence if convicted.

She would be placed in a mental hospital and remain under the court's jurisdiction if she is found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The former Clear Lake homemaker drowned her five children - ages 7, 5, 3, 2 and 6 months - on June 20, 2001 in the bathtub at their home.

Prosecutors say Yates, although mentally ill, knew right from wrong when she killed her children.

Yates was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison, but an appeals court ordered a new trial because of erroneous testimony from the prosecution's mental health expert.

Resnick, a psychiatry professor at Case Western Reserve University's medical school in Cleveland, Ohio, testified that Yates' mental illness made her delusional, resulting in her belief that she was doing the right thing by killing her children to save them from damnation.

He said she believed she had beaten Satan in the battle for their souls because they would go to heaven.

Yates' religious beliefs, he said, were the ``trellis'' on which her delusions grew. She believed, he said, that she had caused her children to stumble and Satan wanted them in hell.

"Mrs. Yates began to believe that not only was Satan tormenting her, but tormented her children,'' Resnick said. "She believed that Satan would have her children.''

After the deaths, she believed that she would be punished and executed by the state of Texas, the only entity that could destroy Satan, he testified.

dale.lezon@chron.com
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Offline Anonymous

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Testimony ends in Andrea Yates retrial
« Reply #223 on: July 20, 2006, 07:57:25 PM »
Testimony ends in Andrea Yates retrial

20 July, 2006


By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer ago

HOUSTON - Testimony in the Andrea Yates murder case ended Thursday after a nearly monthlong retrial that included some new witnesses but no appearance by Rusty Yates, her ex-husband and father of the children she is accused of drowning.

Yates, 42, was retried in the drowning deaths of her children because an appeals court overturned her 2002 conviction because some erroneous testimony may have influenced jurors. Yates is charged in only three of the five children?s deaths, which is not unusual in multiple slayings.

The state?s key new witness was forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner, who evaluated Yates for two days in May.

The state also brought back its key witness from the first trial, Dr. Park Dietz, whose testimony led to Yates? conviction being overturned.

The judge barred attorneys in this trial from mentioning that issue.

Among the new defense witnesses was a psychiatric nurse in the mental hospital where Yates stayed twice in the two months before the drownings.

Rusty Yates did not testify, as he did in the first trial. He was sworn in as a witness the first day, and defense attorneys said during the trial that they might ask him to testify.

Rusty Yates, who remarried in March, did not immediately return calls seeking comment Thursday.

If convicted, Andrea Yates will be sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors could not seek the death penalty this time because the first trial?s jury rejected execution, and authorities found no new evidence.

If found not guilty by reason of insanity, Yates will be committed to a state mental hospital.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Offline Anonymous

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2,000 pages of psychiatric records
« Reply #224 on: July 24, 2006, 09:49:31 PM »
Listening to the closing arguments today I heard the defense attorney make this statement. No one her doubts that Andrea Yates had mental illness before, or after the day of the murders.

The State of Texas is claiming she did not have mental illness that day only.

Hmmm, well said!
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