Sam Amico
The ex-husband of a Texas woman who drowned her five kids as a result of postpartum depression said another woman shouldn’t go to jail for doing something similar.
Videos by Rare
Rusty Yates, the husband of Andre Yates, said that Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy should not serve jail time after being accused of strangling her three children to death. Andre Yates was convicted of murdering her kids in 2001 as a postpartum psychosis.
“But for her sickness, she would never, ever, ever would have harmed our children,” Rusty Yates told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo of his former wife, Andrea.
Rusty Yates divorced Andrea several years after the tragedy, but he said he believes women who suffer from postpartum psychosis should not face criminal charges. Andrea Yates was at first sentenced to life in prison, but the verdict was overturned in 2006 when it was determined she had been suffering from severe postpartum depression and schizophrenia at the time of the murders.
Lindsay Clancy Paralyzed in Hospital After Allegedly Strangling 3 Kids
“It’s much like having a dream or nightmare overlaid on reality so that a person sees things that aren’t real, hears voices that aren’t real, believes things to be true that aren’t true and they act on that,” Rusty Yates told Cuomo of his experience with the condition.
“It’s every bit a part of their reality as everything else — they can’t distinguish between those thoughts and images and voices and anything else.”
As for Clancy, 32 prosecutors said she has never been diagnosed with any postpartum condition. But Rusty Yates said that, obviously, something troubling is going on.
“It’s much like having a dream or nightmare overlaid on reality so that a person sees things that aren’t real, hears voices that aren’t real, believes things to be true that aren’t true and they act on that,” he said of his experience with the condition.
“It’s every bit a part of their reality as everything else — they can’t distinguish between those thoughts and images and voices and anything else,” he said.
