Law to the side, I’m an American mother of three, and a reasonably educated non-mental health professional, and I look at this case and I see a tragic outcome of severe postpartum depression into psychosis. And I see a family that had means and access to care, and was getting care, and it wasn’t enough in retrospect, but no one had a crystal ball.
Lindsay Clancy and her husband and family strike me very much as people I would’ve met in my normal course of professional business, and would have respected and felt commonality with as a similarly-aged family with similar lives - and would’ve liked.
I feel no impetus to thrash her or spend the money of the taxpayers of Massachusetts prosecuting her or even convicting her, honestly. When and if she is conscious and effectively treated, she will be her own punisher, far more than any sentence society could render. I believe MOO that she will have permanent physical disabilities, but that isn’t even close to what I’m fundamentally saying, which is: once the meds and counseling work - she will convict herself 100x over. Whatever life she has left will metaphorically be spent in Dante’s Purgatorio, and her husband will convict himself too, forever, in a different way.
Genuinely believe, as an amateur student of this story - and not a professional or an actively involved person - MOO - that this is a woman who loved her kids and her family for a long time and went into mental health crisis.
The circumstances are not similar, but as I think about Patrick Clancy and what’s ahead for him, my mind went to William Petit less than a hundred miles south in Connecticut. And I hope what happens for PC is what WP was able to get to, in finding a new way to be and survive, respecting that nothing will ever be normal for either again.
William Petit - Wikipedia