As a mom, I had four children under the age of 6. Millions of women give birth, endure exhaustion and physical pain, juggle the demands of raising multiple kids and don’t kill our children.
Key moments from week three of the Lindsay Clancy trial
Key testimony, courtroom clashes and emotional moments mark week three of the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial in Massachusetts.
Lindsay Clancy’s trial has gripped women and mothers across the country, but not for the reasons I expected, especially as a mother myself.
For true-crime aficionados, the morbid interest is obvious: Clancy is on trial for strangling her three children – 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan – with exercise bands at their home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in 2023.
For armchair legal experts, there’s the criminal question: The 36-year-old mother admitted to killing her kids, so the trial isn’t about whether she did it but about her level of legal responsibility. Her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington, has argued that she’s not guilty by reason of insanity.
For fans of medical dramas, it’s stranger than fiction: Defense experts have testified that before the killings, Clancy suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder and a psychotic break brought on by postpartum psychosis. For two consecutive days, Aug. 19 and 20, the trial ended early – abruptly. The defense rested on Friday, Aug. 21.
You’d expect audiences to be fascinated but furious with Clancy, given the ghoulish details and the setting. The televised trial frequently shows her wheelchair-bound (she tried to kill herself after killing the kids by leaping from a second-story window, and is partially paralyzed) and crying hysterically.
There’s outrage at the courthouse and online, but not all of it is aimed at Clancy for killing her kids. Some women around the country seem outraged on her behalf, empathizing with her postpartum struggles, angry at her former husband, disappointed a trial is happening at all.
As a mother who once had four children under the age of 6, I’m perplexed.
Why is there an outpouring of support for a child killer?
Outside the courthouse Aug. 20, hundreds of Lindsay Clancy supporters, mostly women, rallied for her. Some wore pink emblazoned with slogans like “Believe,” “She Needed Help” and “Peace For Lindsay.” Attendees told reporters that Clancy’s story resonated with them and exposes the need for mental health help.
Online, Clancy support seems ubiquitous. One woman wrote a Substack that simply claims, “I could have been Lindsay Clancy.” A GoFundMe for Clancy’s parents, to help cover trial costs, features a drawing on its front page: a wheelchair-bound Clancy, head in her hands, surrounded by rings of women holding hands in solidarity. It’s reached more than half its $2 million goal.
Professionals are weighing in, too. An Aug. 17 Psychology Today piece attempts to explain, “Why the Lindsay Clancy Trial Is Triggering for Many Women.” NPR offered a similar take: “Lindsay Clancy’s trial highlights gaps in understanding, treating postpartum psychosis.”
Granted, observers are also excoriating Clancy, but that’s to be expected.
Postpartum depression affects up to 1 in 7 women, though postpartum psychosis is far rarer.
Defense testimony paints Clancy as overmedicated, hallucinating, hearing voices urging her to kill her kids, and still, persistently, seeking help.
The psychologist treating Clancy said she still talked about how much she loved and missed them. It’s heartbreaking.
Clancy’s supporters seem to believe she’s a symbol of what they also have endured, or could have been moved to do – or, at least, that they’ve felt so isolated and overwhelmed that Clancy’s trial should motivate society to help new mothers more, through medical care, mental health support and more of a “village.”
That’s true. New moms need all the help they can get.
But it does look like Clancy had considerable help, even if her husband (who has already remarried) seemed like a jerk, and her doctors overprescribed medication while underdiagnosing her actual issues.
Women can be upset about Clancy’s unsupportive husband, or frustrated that doctors pumped her full of a drug cocktail that scrambled her body and mind, without resorting to a toxic empathy that comes dangerously close to justifying the killing of her three children. An outpouring of support, an attempt to hold her up as a poster child for postpartum moms and their struggles, is a bridge too far.
Lindsay Clancy needed help, but her children deserve justice
Millions of women give birth each year, endure exhaustion and physical pain, juggle the demands of raising multiple kids and don’t kill their children.
Some of Clancy’s support is rooted in sexism, and in the sense that women suffer a struggle unique to them. If a man did this, and it does happen, he’d meet unrelenting criticism with no empathy for any purported mental health diagnosis that caused it.
But there’s something more problematic, even sinister, at work: We’ve become a society that cherry-picks its response to horrifying events, viewing them through the lens of our own experiences. That’s understandable, but it’s no way to run a civilized country, especially when it comes to crime and the law.
Context should only go so far. As a conservative, I’ve heard this argument more times than I can count on issues like abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty.
We as a society should be outraged at the killing of any innocent human being, young or old, child or grandparent. This is true for the unborn, the aged and the ill, whether at an abortion clinic, at the hands of a shooter or by their own family. It is right to exude righteous indignation at the killing of another innocent life. It’s disheartening I haven’t seen more of that here.
It’s possible to have compassion for the way new moms struggle, but it should not overshadow the demand for justice for the children who suffered and died. They are the true victims in Lindsay Clancy’s trial.
Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.