'Drop charges': Russell Yates whose ex-wife Andrea Yates drowned their 5 children speaks out in Lindsay Clancy's support
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live child services. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
HOUSTON, TEXAS: Russell 'Rusty' Yates has a reason to speak after 22 years, this time, not in favor of her ex-wife Andrea Yates, but for Massachusetts midwife Lindsay Clancy. In 2001, Rusty's then-wife Andrea drowned her five children in a bathtub in Houston. Like Patrick Clancy forgave Lindsay, Rusty too had forgiven Andrea, however, they separated in 2015.
Battling postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia, Yates was convicted of five counts of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 2006, however, the verdict was overturned when she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. For the last 16 years, Andrea is receiving care in Kerrville State mental hospital and is refusing release despite being eligible.
READ MORE
'Killer moms' like Lindsay Clancy are ‘unlike other murderers’ says lawyer who defended Andrea Yates
Drop charges against Lindsay
Lindsay Clancy appeared in court for arraignment on Tuesday, February 7 from her hospital bed, paralyzed. Although the prosecution claimed that she 'premeditated' murders by sending her husband out, her attorney pleaded that Lindsay was "not Ok at all."
Clancy is charged with strangling her three children Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan. She as per the prosecution then cut her own wrists and jumped from a window on the top floor of the house. The attorney while arguing that murders were deliberate claimed that the overprescription of psychotic medication turned her into a shell and robbed her of emotions, personality, and feelings.
"If I were driving our Suburban down the street and had a heart attack and swerved into oncoming traffic and everyone in the car died but me, would they prosecute me for capital murder and rub my face in crime scene photos? Of my children? I don't think so. But to me, it's 100% exactly the same," Rusty Yates said on News Nation. Advocating her cause, Rusty is requesting prosecution to drop charges against Lindsay.
'Hears voices that aren't real'
Andrea, now 57, drowned her children Paul, three, John, five, Noah, seven, Luke, two, and six-month-old, Mary one after another. He continued by explaining the situation, "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 also added, "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."
At one point, he further says, "As far as forgiveness goes, it's kind of the start. If something is completely out of character, this can't be right. At the time, I did not know that she’d been psychotic, I did not know what psychosis even was or what the symptoms were."
Rusty stressed on forgiveness and people to understand this as sickness, "The next step of forgiveness (for other people), I’d say, is understanding it’s a sickness, that but for her sickness, she would never, ever, ever have harmed our children."