"It's a shame that there's no law that can give Russell Yates
his due," writes syndicated columnist Debra Saunders. "Russell
Yates ought to be locked up instead of his wife," says writer
Cindy Hasz. Creators Syndicate's Froma Harrop sneers that he
probably "misses the obedient drudge who bore and raised his
five children more than the five children." Harsh words for
Russell Yates have come from many others, particularly former O.
J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark.
What these and others forget is that it's hard to make the
right decision when you don't have a lot of options. According
to Andrea Yates' brother, Andrew Kennedy, Russell Yates "did his
best....He trusted the doctors and he did everything they said
to do. He made sure she took her medication."
Psychiatrist Mohammed Saeed took Yates off the drug Haldol on
June 4. Russell Yates, worried about his wife, brought her back
to Dr. Saeed on June 18. The doctor said he saw no sign of
psychosis and sent her home.
Two days later, she killed their five children.
Instead of using 20-20 hindsight, let's look at the situation
as it must have appeared to Russell Yates before June 20. Mental
illness is difficult for untrained people to cope with and to
comprehend. Dr. Saeed had indicated that he believed that Andrea
Yates was getting better, and Andrea herself has testified that
she told nobody, not even her husband, about the "voices in her
head." While Russell surely had doubts about leaving the kids
with her, he didn't have a lot of choices. He couldn't quit his
job to care for the kids--somebody had to put food on the table.
Ending the home-schooling, a violation of both of their beliefs,
might have been a severe blow to his fragile wife's self-esteem,
perhaps pushing her over the edge.
Instead, Russell made the one move he needed to make--he
brought his mother in from Tennessee to watch the kids every
day. He generally left for work at 9 am and his mother arrived
at 10 am, and he thought he had the situation under control.
He also probably believed that the best thing to do was to
try to keep their family life stable, to try to be cheerful and
to make the kids happy, and to hope that the medications would
work and that his wife would get better. He may have believed
that much of what Andrea was going through was simply
post-pregnancy mood swings, and that the best thing to do is to
be patient and to wait them out. He also attributed much of his
wife's distress to the death of her father early last year. And
he no doubt was in some denial, as people who are trapped in
difficult situations often are. But should he really have
expected that his troubled wife would kill their children?
The genuine mistakes Russell Yates made came earlier, when
both he and Andrea decided to have a fifth child (perhaps
because one or both of them wanted to have a girl), and when
they decided upon home-schooling. Yet these decisions, which are
now used against Russell, were mutual and were based upon the
religious and moral beliefs of both Russell and Andrea. In fact,
the testimony of Terry Arnold, a local merchant, indicates that
Andrea Yates may have wanted a sixth child. Arnold testified
that when he asked Andrea last year if they planned to have
another child, a sudden wave of sadness washed over her.
"I felt like I had hit a sore subject," Arnold said. "There
was a change in her demeanor...I thought she was going to cry."
Andrea's best friend claims that Russell didn't help out much
around the house. It's hard to know how true this is, but we do
know that Russell Yates was involved with his kids--he coached
their sports teams, played basketball with them in the driveway
regularly, selected and purchased some of their school
materials, and was often seen around the neighborhood in the
evenings as he walked with his family and pushed his youngest
daughter in a stroller. He and his kids made lists of things
they could do to cheer mommy up. And Russell alone shouldered
the burden of supporting a wife and five children--a task
certainly equal to the strain of being a housewife if home
schooling is not in the equation.
Andrea Yates' defenders claim that she is not guilty of her
crimes due to mental illness, and they may be correct. But the
husband who has stood by his wife from the day of the tragedy,
who has testified in her defense, and who has fought the public
perception of her as a monster, deserves better than to be
blamed for the murders and to be vilified as a cruel,
domineering patriarch. Russell Yates is a flawed yet decent
human being who tried to do what he could in a difficult and
cloudy situation. Whether sane or insane, it is Andrea Yates,
not Russell Yates, who killed their five children.
Glenn Sacks' columns have appeared in
the Los Angeles Times,
the Houston Chronicle,
the San Francisco Chronicle,
the Philadelphia Inquirer,
the San Diego Union-Tribune,
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
the Los Angeles Daily News,
the Salt Lake City Tribune,
the Memphis Commercial-Appeal,
and the Washington Times.
He invites readers to visit his
website at www.GlennJSacks.com.
