Feature
- Are You Breastfeeding For the "Right" Reasons?
- CarLashes: Because Even Your Car Needs a Vagina
- Would You EVER Take These Sex Tips?
- When Strippers and Churches Protest One Another
- Your Children Are Disgusting Perverts and It's Never Going to Change
- Would You Allow a 14-Year-Old to Get Permanent Makeup? This Mom Did.
- Rapper Cee Lo Green's "F*ck You" Goes All Viral on Women
- Sure, Women Will Have Equal Pay ... in 57 Years
- Miley Cyrus: Not Such a Good Role Model After All
- Where Have All the Masculine Men Gone?
Amanda Jo Stott-Smith, 31, of Portland, Oregon was arrested yesterday for attempted murder and murder of her daughter and son. Respectively.
Stott-Smith (and I’m currently wondering if she’s any relation to the infamous Susan Smith) dumped her two children, ages 4 and 7, into the nearby Willamette River early Saturday morning.
After disposing of her children, authorities cornered her on a rooftop, where it was apparent that she was attempting suicide. Stott-Smith, mother of more children who hadn’t been dumped in a river, threatened to jump after officers tried to apprehend her. It’s too bad she didn’t. Sorry.
The children were thrown into the river at approximately 1:20 AM Saturday morning, and were rescued by a neighbor who heard the children screaming for help. The neighbor searched for an hour prior to actually finding the children. Stott-Smith’s daughter, 7, was able to be resuscitated. The young boy, however, was not.
Incidents like these, which are not so uncommon, upset me more than any other crime possibly could. How a woman, disturbed though as she may be, could kill her own children, exceeds my realms of capacity for comprehension. I’m fully aware that there are legitimately sick individuals out there, people who would be better off under lock and key, at least until they were able to be rehabilitated to the point of re-entering society, but I can’t fathom how a woman could do this. How she could carry a child in her womb for nine months, give birth, raise the child for the first few years of its life, watch it take their first steps, rock it back to sleep in the dead of night while the rest of the world sleeps — and then heinously murder the same innocent child.
How terrified these children must have been. My heart breaks for the remaining family and at the horror these children must have endured while thrashing around in a cold riverbed, wondering “Why, Mama, why?”
-
-
14
that’s so depressing. Instances like this seem to be more common these days (or are at least more reported?)
What drives me crazy about murder-suicide pacts is just…. fine. kill yourself. But for the love of God, leave your children. I think I can just understand the concept of suicide so much more easily than wanting to kill your children. I can’t fathom the thought process that leads you to such a decision.
RIP little boy. And I hope that girl finds people who love her and keep her safe. She’s going to need it.
I have to think that they’re so depressed that they just don’t think like normal people anymore.
I don’t understand how they get to that point without asking for help, though.
Years ago, when my daughter was about 3, I was so severely depressed that I was considering suicide. I got really sick (physically) and decided that I would just get sicker and die.
I was definitely suicidal, but even in the depths of my depression I realized that actually committing suicide would put my daughter at risk for doing the same thing when she got older. That was so unacceptable to me that I chose the “get sick and die” route instead. Luckily my parents were paying attention and got me some help.
Recently, when I was pregnant with my son, I made my husband watch shows about postpartum depression and told him what all my personal symptoms of depression are so he could be alert to them and help me if I couldn’t ask for it myself.
I just really don’t understand women who lose that biological drive to protect their children.
Alzaetia wrote”;
“I just really don’t understand women who lose that biological drive to protect their children.”
The slippery slope of human biology is continually used to justify the second class citizenship of women.
What this woman did was heinous and tragic,but when but none of us know her, and/or why she killed her children. I don’t believe that women have an ingrown biological imperative to protect their children, it’s a combination of learned behavior and hormones. Some of us get them, Some don’t some do and then get depressed, post partum, etc. My heart goes out to this family, but let’s not hold up motherhood as this holy state.
Do you have kids?
You don’t think a species has a biological imperative to perpetuate itself? Really?
Which is really the better question, JorgeMacD.
Besides that, I don’t like slippery slope arguments. It is, by definition, a logical fallacy.
Many, many things are used to justify treating women as second class citizens. I’m not going to deny my biological differences with men because some people view a difference as a weakness.
@ A – Congratulations to you and your family for overcoming such a serious obstacle. You sound like you’ve fully got your head on your shoulders and I commend you for it. There are a lot of things with motherhood that seem like an upward haul, but if you’ve been able to overcome what you have thus far, you’re a truly impressive woman.
I’m glad that you were strong enough to get help, Alzaetia. Good for you.
Thanks for the kind words, guys. Depression is ugly, but if you anticipate it it can be managed.
Everybody jumped in a gave me a huge support system with my son and I’ve been fine. Everybody includes my daughter who’s now 16.
I wanted to be honest with her about the possibility of postpartum depression. I think it helps remove the stigma and makes it more likely she’d ask for help if she needed it.
God bless the family and especially those children. Susan Smith and Andrea Yates are both considered to have borderline personality disorder…I wonder if this woman does as well. That’s some scary stuff and usually kicks in @ late 20’s.
Alzaetia, I am not a mother and don’t want to disrespect your experience, but I am curious if it is still post-partum depression when the child is 3? I was under the (perhaps ignorant) impression that post-partum was a hormanal imbalance triggered by pregnancy that evens out within a few months.
I want to understand (especially if I am lucky enough to become a mom!).
I’d recently given birth to a second child that I’d given up for adoption. That was the trigger for the depression. I hadn’t said that, so I understand your confusion.
That must have been a horrible time for you–so glad you’ve pulled/are pulling through. Also thanks for sharing what you did to combat it. Your idea about educating your partner about the symptoms is excellent. I can only imagine in the post-birth haze of sleepless nights and never finding enough time those things can go unnoticed.
As much as a part of me would like to see anyone who commits a heinous crime against children to die, in cases like these, I thinks it more important that we learn from them. Hopefully, we can see the signs of possible trouble ahead and prevent it from happening. So, I’m glad she didn’t jump.
Still, regardless of the judicial penalty, I think anyone who molests, kidnaps, murders, etc a kid, should never have access to children again or be allowed to keep a child if they get pregnant in the future.
I obviously feel for people who have mental health issues, but I totally agree with you.
The point I was making in my original post is that even in the very worst of my depression, I would never even have inadvertently hurt my child, let alone commit an overt act of harm. That’s not the kind of thing you should get a second chance to do.