I have always felt sympathetic toward Andrea Yates and now, as a mother of several small children, I have an overwhelming amount of compassion for her. I can't imagine a worse scenario than the one where you come out of a postpartum-induced haze to learn you have murdered all of your children. I stand by my opinion that the kindest thing that could have done for her was to leave her to her delusions. Let her believe she "saved" her children.
Over the summer, I experienced a time where I felt my body and mind were betraying me. I was violently angry, deeply depressed, and extremely volatile. I was behaving in ways that way back, in my rational mind, I knew weren't "right". Something was very, very wrong. There were some days where I wondered what I might do if I made it to the edge. But I didn't know where the edge was and where I was in relation to it.
Brian didn't know what was wrong with me and didn't want to make the situation worse and upset me further by suggesting I see a doctor. I finally came to that conclusion myself after I had a massive, sobbing meltdown at a Bible study surrounded by women I hardly knew. I don't know if there could have been a more out-of-character sign than that.
But Rusty Yates knew. He knew there was something wrong with that poor woman. She'd been treated by doctors and been hospitalized for psychotic episodes relating to postpartum depression. He knew. And because he knew, he is more culpable than she will ever be in the deaths of those children. His job as her husband was to protect her. Instead, he left a psychotic woman alone with his children and she drowned them all. Then, he divorces her.
Now, here we are, all these years later and he's "celebrating" his new baby on Good Morning America. The proud father has also emailed pictures of the new baby to his former wife in the mental institution. "[We talk about] kind of how things are going and we talk about the kids. I mean we talk. It's like she and I knew our children better than anyone, so we'll reminisce a lot about our children," Rusty said.
Is he freakin' kidding me? This takes cruel to a whole new level.
It makes me sick to my stomach that GMA thinks this is newsworthy. He magnaminously "doesn't blame his wife for what happened" adding "she feels a lot of guilt over what happened." Too bad he doesn't feel any guilt over what happened.
I could go on, but I am literally sick to my stomach. Here is the link to the article. The comments are pretty interesting, too.
Rusty Yates is back to business as usual with only a slight delay as his former wife now finally has all the help she needs.