Three Children Are Dead. Why Has Lindsay Clancy Become the One Some Women Are Rallying Around?

OPINION

By Lucretia Hughes Klucken

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — There is something deeply troubling about watching hundreds of people gather outside a courthouse dressed in pink to support Lindsay Clancy while three children — Cora, Dawson and Callan — are dead.

Those children cannot tell us what happened inside their Duxbury home on Jan. 24, 2023. Their deaths are now at the center of a murder trial involving extraordinarily difficult questions about mental illness, postpartum psychosis and criminal responsibility.

Clancy has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and related strangulation charges. Her attorneys do not dispute that she killed her children but argue that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible for her actions.

Prosecutors disagree. They contend that although Clancy experienced mental health problems, she understood what she was doing and knew her actions were wrong.

That distinction is for the jury to decide.

But outside the courtroom, another debate is unfolding — one in which Clancy has increasingly become a symbol for women who believe America’s health care system fails mothers experiencing severe postpartum mental illness.

I have a problem with where that conversation is going.

Not because postpartum mental illness isn’t real. Not because women shouldn’t receive better mental health care, and certainly not because severe psychosis cannot cause a person to experience a terrifying break from reality.

My problem is that three dead children risk disappearing from their own story.

Cora. Dawson. Callan.

Say their names.

Cora was 5 years old. Dawson was 3. Callan was only 8 months old.

They were children, not political symbols or footnotes in America’s debate over maternal mental health.

According to evidence presented in court, the children were strangled with exercise bands in the basement of the family’s home. Clancy then injured herself and jumped from a second-story window, leaving her paralyzed.

Her husband, Patrick Clancy, discovered what had happened after returning home from an errand.

The defense argues that Lindsay Clancy was experiencing psychosis and command hallucinations at the time. Experts called by her attorneys have testified that Clancy described hearing a male voice ordering her to kill the children and herself.

That is serious evidence and deserves serious consideration.

Prosecution experts, however, have challenged that account and offered a different interpretation of Clancy’s mental state. They have questioned whether she was acutely psychotic when the children were killed and whether her actions demonstrate that she understood what she was doing.

That conflicting expert testimony is precisely why there is a trial.

The public does not get to determine legal insanity because one explanation feels more compassionate. Nor should anyone decide guilt because the crime itself is almost impossible to comprehend.

The jury must evaluate all the evidence.

Then Came the Women in Pink

The case took another turn outside Plymouth Superior Court when hundreds of supporters, many of them women dressed in pink, gathered in support of Clancy and greater awareness of postpartum mental illness.

Some carried messages saying “She Needed Help.” Others wore clothing bearing the word “Believe.”

Many of those women have their own stories involving postpartum depression, anxiety, psychosis or interactions with a medical system they believe failed to recognize how seriously they were struggling.

Those stories deserve to be heard.

America should improve maternal mental health screening. Doctors and families need to recognize warning signs, and women experiencing hallucinations, delusions, suicidal thoughts or other symptoms of psychosis need immediate psychiatric intervention.

Postpartum psychosis can constitute a medical emergency, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

But I keep coming back to the same question.

Where are Cora, Dawson and Callan in this demonstration?

A movement can advocate for better maternal mental health care without making the mother accused of murdering her three children the emotional center of the tragedy.

We should be capable of holding two thoughts at once: A woman may have been catastrophically mentally ill, and three children were still killed.

Compassion for mental illness should not require forgetting its victims.

Television Turned the Debate Into Another Shouting Match

The controversy spilled onto television during a heated discussion involving political commentator Thomas Corbett-Dillon and Democratic strategist and former Obama administration adviser Laurie Watkins.

Corbett-Dillon criticized the women rallying around Clancy and questioned why anyone would publicly demonstrate in support of a mother who killed her children. Watkins responded that people could condemn what happened while still showing empathy toward a woman who may have been experiencing severe mental illness.

The conversation quickly deteriorated. Watkins called Corbett-Dillon’s remarks disgusting, said he should be ashamed and eventually walked away from the discussion.

That is unfortunately where too many serious American conversations end today.

I don’t believe calling hundreds of women crazy advances a thoughtful discussion about postpartum psychosis, criminal responsibility or murdered children. Many of the women demonstrating may be speaking from deeply painful experiences of their own.

But beneath the shouting is a legitimate question that should not be dismissed simply because asking it makes people uncomfortable:

Why has supporting Lindsay Clancy herself become a cause?

Advocating for postpartum mental health care is one thing.

Turning an accused triple murderer into a symbol of that movement is another.

Mental Illness Can Explain — But the Jury Must Decide Whether It Excuses

This is where precision matters.

Mental illness is real. Postpartum psychosis is real. Hallucinations and delusions can profoundly distort a person’s perception of reality.

But a psychiatric diagnosis does not automatically determine criminal responsibility.

The legal question before the jury involves Clancy’s mental state when she killed her children and whether her condition prevented her from appreciating the wrongfulness of her actions.

Defense experts say she was psychotic.

Prosecution experts dispute that conclusion.

I wasn’t standing in that basement. Neither were the women outside the courthouse, the television pundits or the millions of people watching clips of this case on social media.

The jurors have heard evidence most of us have encountered only through news reports and short video segments.

They should be allowed to do their job.

The Victims Cannot Become an Afterthought

There is one part of this case that does not require a psychiatric degree or a jury instruction.

Three children died.

Whatever verdict is ultimately returned, Cora, Dawson and Callan remain the victims of this tragedy.

If the jury concludes Clancy was suffering from a catastrophic psychotic episode that left her legally incapable of understanding the wrongfulness of her actions, America should examine every step that preceded that night. We should ask whether warning signs were missed, whether treatment failed and what could prevent another family from experiencing the same horror.

If the jury determines she understood right from wrong and was criminally responsible for killing her children, then she should be held accountable under the law.

Either way, turning this case into another tribal political battle accomplishes nothing.

This is not men versus women.

It is not Republicans versus Democrats.

It should not be mothers versus prosecutors.

And questioning the public celebration surrounding Clancy is not an attack on women or an argument against mental health care.

Women deserve appropriate psychiatric care.

Mothers deserve help when they are struggling.

People experiencing psychosis deserve treatment.

Children deserve protection too.

And when children die, they deserve to remain at the center of their own story.

Cora.

Dawson.

Callan.

Before another television panel erupts, before another social media influencer picks a side and before another crowd gathers outside that courthouse, remember those three names.

The jury will determine Lindsay Clancy’s criminal responsibility.

The rest of us should make sure three little children are never reduced to footnotes in the debate surrounding the woman who killed them.

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