I really wish all situations were a simple right or wrong. I really want to be able to say it’s simple, Andrea Yates got up one morning five years ago, drowned her five children in the family bathtub, so she should go to jail for the rest of her life or even get the death penalty. That would work for me. I’m the kind of person who’s much more comfortable with the notion that everything has a little slot it belongs in: good or bad, right or wrong, you get my drift. The problem is, the older I get, the more I realize that the majority of things in life are more complex then that. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that THERE IS indeed right and wrong, it’s just that I’ve learned it’s rarely that simple. Which brings me back to Andrea Yates.
I live in the Houston area, so I’ve been following this story since literally, Day One. I am the mother of three kids, but even on their very worst day, I can not even come close to wrapping my mind around what she did that morning in June, 2001. Most every mother has a day where she says to herself or her best friend rhetorically, “When he gets home, I’m gonna kill that kid". What she really means is, “When he gets here, he’s gonna get the lecture of a lifetime & then I’m gonna ground him for a MONTH!!". Andrea Yates did what no SANE mother would ever do.
Andrea Yates had no history of illegal, immoral, or even abusive behavior. By all accounts she was a wonderful mom, she loved her children and strove to be the best mother she could be. The only abnormality in her life was the mental illness that got progressively worse as she got older. Her downward spiral was triggered by the births of her children – Postpartum Depression with Psychosis. She began to imagine that her children were doomed and as a good mother, she had to save them from hell. Yes, she knew that the laws of the United States of America said that she was committing a crime, but she did not believe it to be WRONG. In fact, she believed it was the only way to insure that her children would go to heaven. That’s insane. That’s insanity. A complete break with reality.
Something else you need to know. Andrea Yates’ attorneys and family members do not want her to ever walk free on the streets again. They want her to be supervised by mental healthcare professionals for the rest of her life. They want her to be in a treatment facility rather than in jail. That is what will happen now. She is under the supervision of the judge who presided over her second trial and will have to be reviewed on an annual basis.
The facts are indisputable – Andrea Yates committed an horrific crime – unthinkable and unimaginable. Her children are gone. Consider this the longer she is in treatment, the closer she comes to being in her right mind, the more she is aware of what she actually did. As medication and treatment bring her to more sanity, so it brings her to remorse, guilt, and reality. Is Justice simply about punishment for an act or is it something more? I believe justice has been and will continue to be served for Andrea Yates.
