Andrea Yates' Murder Trial Asks the Question, "What is Right or Wrong"?
- © Michele Toomey, PhD • March 1, 2002

Is it right for a husband to ignore his wife's suffering from post partum depression and continue to have four more children that he expects her to care for, teach and raise?

Is it right for a wife to submit herself to the dominance of a husband and let go of her own desires and needs?

Is it right for a suicidal woman to have charge of five children and home school them as well?

Is it right for friends and relatives to witness a mother's psychotic depressed behavior and do nothing other than speak out about it?

Is it right that medical professionals take no intervention in the face of a patient's suicidal and psychotic behavior other than prescribing medication and hoping she takes it?

Is it right for a jury to reach a verdict of guilty of first degree murder because this suicidal, depressed woman drowned her five children?

Is it right to define insanity as knowing right and wrong but pretending you don't? If so, is it right to define insanity as a mental state, or are we saying insanity is really sanity with a shrewd twist?

Andrea Yates exhibited behavior that was obviously indicative of a mentally ill woman. She physically showed her mental illness in innumerable ways, and yet, she was expected to functon as a mentally healthy person. It was not called to our attention until this behavior spilled over on the children to the point of her drowning them. Then, we take notice. Now we care. Not about her suffering or her insanity, but about the children's deaths. We didn't care how they were faring with her every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until she killed them. Now we care. Is that right?

What is our relationship to insanity and the mental anguish of a woman suffering from clinical depression? It would seem it is to disregard her and her suffering, and when it leads to tragedy we punish her. I feel it is wrong to devalue the suffering of insanity and I also feel it is wrong to think that the insane know right from wrong. By very definition, insanity disorts reality. What seems wrong to the sane is not necessarily what seems wrong to the insane. In addition, Andrea Yates had long ago let go of her ability to judge right and wrong. She gave it up to obey her husband.

It was wrong for her to continue to have children, but she had no concept of what was wrong. She just went along with the teachings of the church and the decisions of her husband. Do you think for one minute she asked herself if it was wrong to go through labor and child birth without any medication because according to her church she was to learn humility? Andrea Yates hasn't known right from wrong for years. If there is any question of that, we are not looking at her life experiences since she married. Her sanity is an issue on many levels and her drowning her children is a natural outgrowth of her twisted reality that only got more twisted as she got more entrenched in her painful desperation of depression and despair.

Is it wrong to condemn her to death because she lost her way and in the process lost herself and lost her mind? I think it is. There is no way to salvage this tragedy except if we learn from it and vow not to repeat it. We can no longer ignore a woman's cries for help or even just acknowledge them. We must intervene. Take an action that stops the flow of destructive behavior that we are aware of, and don't pretend it is not our business. We make it our business when it ends in murder.

What about the killing of the spirit that we witnessed before the murders? Is it wrong to allow it to go unaddressed? Yes. We as a society failed to address the tragedy that was unfolding and now we act outraged at the outcome of five dead children. We all have to look at what we would have done if we were one of those who knew Andrea Yates during these past seven years. Would we, like those involved, have stood by and watched until disaster struck? In my opinion, that is what is wrong. There is no doubt in my mind, it is wrong to do nothing in the face of tragic suffering, hoping it will go away or get better. What a risk. What a gamble. What a mistake. What a crime.