Mommies who kill

There is often no explanation given when mothers kill their children, and sometimes post-partum depression is blamed. In the latest known case, American Andrea Yates was recently found not guilty of drowning her five young children, an episode she blamed on severe post-partum psychosis.

In Jamaica, a mother who kills her baby who is less than a year old can claim, in her defense, that she was suffering from post-partum depression and had not fully recovered from giving birth. She can be convicted of infanticide rather than murder and will face charges similar to that of manslaughter, with a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Infanticide – the killing of an infant less than a year old – though rare in Jamaica, does happen and according to the Police Statistics Department, there were four known cases in 2004, none last year, and none so far this year.

The Andrea Yates story

Andrea Yates, a Texas mother with a history of psychological problems, drowned her five small children in the bathtub of her home on June 20, 2001, claiming she was suffering from post-partum psychosis, a severe form of post-partum depression.

She was charged with capital murder in the deaths of eight-month old Mary, Noah, 7, and John, 5. She called police to her home afterwards and admitted drowning the children along with their brothers Paul, 3, and Luke, 2.

On July 26, 2006, Yates was found by a Texas jury to be not guilty by reason of insanity.

It was after the birth of her second child that Yates became reclusive. After the fourth child, she was urged by her therapist not to have more children, since it would guarantee future psychotic depression.

Yates was captivated by the teachings of a travelling minister with non-traditional religious views who preached that bad mothers created bad children and would go to hell. She was suicidal, depressed, hallucinated, and in 1999 was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and was medicated.

On June 20, her husband had just left for work, when she filled the tub with water and systematically drowned the three youngest boys, then placed them on her bed and covered them. The baby was left floating in the tub. The last child alive was the first born, seven-year-old Noah. He was dragged and forced into the tub and drowned next to his sister’s floating body. She said that Satan had already won the battle with her children.

Yates later contended that she was suffering from a severe case of recurrent post-partum psychosis. She said her first episode of post-partum psychosis had occurred after she had her fourth baby. She was committed to a state mental hospital.

Moms who kill in Jamaica

In February 2002, the Observer reported that a 16 year-old girl of Capture Land in Highgate, St Mary was admitted to hospital under police guard after she dumped her newborn baby in a pit toilet in the area.

The girl had gone to a neighbour’s house and asked to use the toilet. After she left, someone went in and saw the baby inside, wrapped in a blanket in a black plastic bag.

The infant, who was still breathing at the time, was removed and taken to a nearby medical facility where she was pronounced dead.

The teenager was already mother to a 2 1/2-year-old boy.

In February 2004, the police arrested a St Ann woman whose newborn baby girl was found buried in a shallow grave in her yard.

According to the police, citizens contacted them and reported that the 30-year-old had dumped her baby in a pit latrine.

The woman took the police to the latrine but no baby was found then. Later the infant’s body was found wrapped in a plastic bag and buried in a shallow grave.

In June 2004, six-month-old Jamal Grant was thrown from the balcony of his Tivoli Gardens home in Kingston, allegedly by his 25-year-old mother.

After the baby’s skull shattered from making contact with the pavement, the mother was held by her neighbours who handed her over to the police.

The police said the incident occurred after the woman and her mother had a domestic dispute. There was some speculation that the 25-year-old vented her anger by hurling her child from the building.

Psychologist Dr Leachim Semaj theorised then that if that were the case, the mother’s action may have been the result of depression.

“Everybody has their pressure points and she may have used the child as a pawn, depending on how important the child was to her mother,” he said.

In August 2004, the Clarendon homicide unit was called to investigate a case of suspected infanticide after the discovery of the remains of a day-old male child in a pit latrine in White Chapel District in Mocho.

According to the police, a 22-year-old woman, whose relative discovered that she was bleeding profusely, was taken to the May Pen Hospital and when she was examined, it was found that she had recently given birth.

The police were then called in and after interrogating the woman, they went to her home where the infant’s body was fished out of the pit latrine. The child had a piece of black cloth tied around his neck.

-PC