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“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that
you protect them from the evil one.” –
John 17:15
On June 19, 2001, Andrea Yates made a decision. After years of
struggling to cope with a brood of five, the Houston mother would kill her
children.
At her competency hearing, Yates testified she waited until her husband left
for work the next morning then began drowning the children one at a time,
scheduling the deaths before the arrival of her mother-in-law. Last to die was
Noah, 7, whom Yates ran down and dragged to the bathtub.
Until September 11 redefined horror it was the most appalling
scene most of us could imagine. With Yates now on trial and the war on terror
seemingly at a lull, the Houston drama is back in the headlines. Her attorneys
are making an insanity defense, citing postpartum depression and other mental
problems.
I for one choke on that, but if you’re gagging along with me
let’s also share a moment of candor. What was your first reaction to the
story? Something along the line of “She must be nuts,” perhaps?
And maybe she is. As in most states, the test in Texas is
whether the defendant knew the difference between right and wrong. Since
reading minds is almost as tricky as convincing juries you can, both sides have
stacked up experts like cordwood, ready to light competing fires of contempt and
sympathy. In the end, juries often zone out on convoluted and conflicting
psychological hoohaw and simply go with their guts. Attorneys know this, so
expect plenty of tear jerking.
Yates’ apologists started early. Two days after the murders,
Susan Kushner Resnick, author of a book on her own experience with postpartum
depression,
declared on Salon.com “She is a sick woman, not an evil monster. She could
have been me. Or you. Or your wife. She didn’t want to kill her children. No
sane person would.”
Resnick’s was hardly the only long-distance amateur diagnosis.
The
“Andrea Pia Yates Support Coalition” sprung up in a matter of weeks,
painting Yates as a loving mother stricken with an uncontrollable condition,
like a bad tic. Houston area chapters of the National Organization for Women
quickly took a lead role in directing donors to the fund.
After an unaccustomed public relations beating in the media, the
NOW national office backpedaled like crazy. The
only remaining comment on their website at my deadline expresses compassion
but denies any involvement in the defense. If the Andrea Pia Yates Support
Coalition is still active I couldn’t prove it with a web search.
If I were them I’d give up too; this would make for a tough
telethon. Yet while organized support may have muted, Yates still draws
sympathy. I personally believe in the havoc caused by postpartum depression and
mental illness, having witnessed both, but Yates’ attorneys will have a hard
time explaining away her advance planning. Still, it’s at least possible.
It is also possible she is just evil, or gave in to the evil that
presses in on all of us. Yates has claimed to be demon possessed, that
killing her children was “an act of mercy.” I have never known anyone who
was possessed (though I am suspicious of my computer from time to time), but
doesn’t evil tug at us all in one way or another, with thoughts or impulses that
make us cringe? That’s not mental illness or demon possession; that’s the human
condition.
It is also part of our nature to seek excuses, to squirm at even
the suggestion of wickedness. A jury will decide the case in Houston, but each
of us must face the fact that evil exists. To deny that reality is to give it
victory.
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
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