Texas mother hangs herself, 3 children

[WhiteTara]

Source: Yahoo news

HUDSON OAKS, Texas - A young mother who may have been depressed apparently hanged three of her small daughters and herself in a closet using pieces of clothing and sashes, authorities said Tuesday. A fourth child, an 8-month-old daughter, was also found dangling in the closet but was rescued by her aunt from the family's mobile home.
snip
Texas has seen a number of child killings by mothers in recent years.

Less than five years earlier, another Hudson Oaks family was torn apart when Dee Etta Perez, 39, shot her three children, ages 4, 9 and 10, before killing herself.

Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the family's Houston bathtub in 2001. In 2003, Deanna Laney beat her two young sons to death with stones in East Texas, and Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her daughters in a Plano bathtub. Dena Schlosser fatally severed her 10-month-old daughter's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070530/ap_on_re_us/children_killed;_ylt=ArwM.88h8o4F8lxDNHNUdJ1H2ocA

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What is wrong with this state? Oh right...it's been taken over by rw bastards who make life so hard that women go crazy and kill their children!
:cry:

[Codeine]

1. Would you blame RW bastards

and excuse the killer if it had been Daddy who hung his three kids and then himself?

[WhiteTara]

2. men don't have the same pressure that mothers do

but when an ill equiped man allowed a child to die in his care just the other day, again I blamed the rw bastards for their incredible all around inhumanity.

[sandnsea]

3. I do

I feel a great amount of empathy for men who are on the bottom of the economic pile and are expected to provide an adequate home for visitation while paying child support, and receiving no benefits to feed their kids when they have them. I also know men are more likely to find treatment for mental illness in prison.

But I also know, women suffer from post-partum psychosis and men don't. When men kill their family and themselves, it's usually due to viewing family as a possession which isn't a mental illness at all.

[TheMadMonk]

4. Usually when a woman does it she believes she is saving them...

...from growing up to suffer the same pain.

When a man does it his motivation is usually to: Hurt HER as badly as she can be hurt.

[merwin]

5. That's not necessarily true.

There's plenty of other reasons for a woman to do it, including postpartum depression... which is high on the list. There's also SO MANY reasons for a man to do it, and a lot of times it boils down to simple rage. A man who wants his wife to hurt is more likely to beat her rather than kill her.

[Occulus]

17. Hmmmm.

Do republicans believe postpartum depression exists?

I'm not talking about the fundy types, but the ones who make medical diagnoses based upon videotaped evidence.

[jollyreaper2112]

30. no, they don't

Postpartum is something only ethnic people get.

[RaRa]

18. This could be more than postpartum depression

It could be postpartum psychosis. There's a true chemical fuck-up occurring in their brains.

[TheMadMonk]

28. it may well be PPD & PPP. But that doesn't negate what I said.

PPD or no, her mind has to twist itself into a pretzel and justify to itself the killing of her children.

And commonly, (I dare say most commonly) when a woman survives a (attempted) murder suicide such as this, or simply AFTER she has killed her kids, she "explains" that she was saving them.

You have no problem "boiling" male motivation down to rage, which is a perversion of his hunter's ability to "focus on the moment", why can't female motivation "boil" down to a perversion of the female nurturing (dare I say) instinct.

And a man who wants his (ex)wife/partner to t6ruly suffer (at any cost) will do maximum harm to that which she holds most precious. And then often bows out like the coward he is, taking his own life to avoid the retribution he just earned.

I'm not denying that other motivations exist, or that reversals might happen, merely pointing out that which is most likely, something which we are at least 50% in agreement on.

[Edweird]

7. If you think women can't be as vindictive and evil as men, boy are you in for a surprise.

[John Q. Citizen]

22. Men and women can be really fucked up, and men and women can be

nurturing and loving.

Any other analysis is just sexism, IMHO.

Neither gender has a monopoly on good or bad behavior.

[TheMadMonk]

27. Please note. I said "USUALLY".

And yes, whilst women can be enormously vindictive, they don't usually use their own children's lives as coinage/playing pieces. They go after what they perceive as being most precious to him, his possessions: his $2000 suits; his mint or perfectly restored Monaro; his manhood; or him.

Women also tend to be a lot more creative when making someone suffer. Men just smash, albeit sometimes with horrifically malicious direction.

[jollyreaper2112]

31. aha!

Married much? :)

[slackmaster]

39. Someone who thinks that has never met my stalker former girlfriend

Or my ex-wife.

[mitchum]

40. Apparently, someone has never read or heard of "Medea"

[noamnety]

13. The OVERWHELMING odds are

if the genders were reversed, we would not be talking about a single parent whose partner threatened to kill her with a knife, had attempted to strangle her, and then raped her.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=962543#963084

[bleedingheart]

23. You know what...a guy here in Pittsburgh shot and killed his children

and himself...and it got no coverage across the nation....none...just local coverage.

Meanwhile he was a control freak that didn't want anyone talking to his wife and wanted everything the way he wanted it to be...
and when his wife left him he killed their children and himself...

[merwin]

6. At least one child survived... hopefully her life will turn out better than her

siblings. No doubt she will be scarred for life by it.

[LostinVA]

10. She's young enough that she probably won't remember the trauma

[merwin]

26. Yes, but I'm sure she will be reminded of it when she grows up.

When she asks what happened to her mother

[MichaelHarris]

8. did

Jesus tell her to do it? There's a lot of that going around.

[mitchum]

41. Once she starts putting her defense together, Jaysus will certainly...

have told her to do it

[The Sushi Bandit]

9. What doe this have to do with DU issues??

it is sad but not for a political board

[LostinVA]

11. Not everything on DU is supposed to be about political issues

LBN and GD have non-political news and discussions.

And, I believe this IS political: rights for women, better pay pay, child care, health services for workers, etc.

[Tesha]

20. Bingo.

> And, I believe this IS political: rights for women, better pay pay,
> child care, health services for workers, etc.

Bingo.

Tesha

[noamnety]

12. This IS political.

a single parent with a restraining order against the other parent because of rape and physical assault

trying to support 4 children on the salary from Wendy's ($900 per month, plus $300 in support - who knows if that actually was being paid)

with no medical insurance

denied Medicaid MULTIPLE times

That's EXACTLY what politics is about. If it was all about the rich white guys in DC, I wouldn't waste my time on this forum.

[Raine]

14. The forum is called Late Breaking NEWS

not Late Breaking Political News. I like to come here to be informed about ALL issues that are going on in the world and inspite of what some people think there is more to life than politics.

[spoony]

29. Well it highlights the need for better mental health care

As did Virginia Tech.

[fishwax]

34. it's clearly LBN, and why wouldn't it be appropriate for DU?

[bleedingheart]

15. Could have been a murder....there was a restraining order against the father

too soon to say anything...the autopsy hasn't even started...

[On the Road]

19. "Texas Mother Hangs Herself, Three Children"

I do find that after I hang myself, it becomes more difficult to deal with the kids.

[slackmaster]

24. Relieved to see I'm not the only one who can't help proofreading critically

It's a curse, but there is some entertainment value in it.

[On the Road]

33. It Comes from Reading the Last Page of The Columbia Review of Journalism

I don't know if they still do it, but for years they had a page full of these things every month:

- A picture of someone plunging off a skyscraper next to a headline entitiled "Local Factory Drops an Employee"
- Or from the Food Section: "It's Semptember -- Time for Football and Meatball Stew"

That sort of thing. Jay Leno has picked this up big time.

[guitar man]

16. delete

[donsu]

21. it's called forced pregnancies

women don't do well when forced to have children they don't want.

some religions force them

some families force them

being undereducated forces them

and face facts - every second of every day in america a woman is being raped


by stranger, S.O., or family member

what a hated pregnancy that would be

[kimmerspixelated]

25. Or,

Maybe it's none of those things. Maybe she was depressed and on any one of a number of drugs the FDA say are "completely safe"

[donsu]

35. true

nt

[benEzra]

32. Or maybe she wanted them, but then her life fell apart

and she couldn't get help dealing with it.

That doesn't excuse what she did, but it certainly could explain it.

[donsu]

36. true

nt

[free_spirit82]

37. Case Worker: TX mom wanted new life.....

HUDSON OAKS, Texas - After gathering the courage to leave the common-law husband she described as abusive, Gilberta Estrada was determined to make a better life for herself and her young daughters just a few years after arriving from Tamaulipas, Mexico.

<snip>

"I remember her telling me, 'I am worth something. I am doing this for me, and I am doing this for my girls,'" said Evelyn Haro, a case worker at SafeHaven of Tarrant County. "She said, 'I'm going to be OK.' Her self-esteem was building up."

<snip>

Officials said a relative described Estrada as depressed, but the news stunned the women's shelter and those who worked with her. Estrada had been planning the baby's baptism, Haro said, and seemed to have turned her life around.

"Obviously, every client that comes into the shelter is going to have a difficult time, and at times she was sad, but she was so eager to do better for her daughters," Haro said. "There was nothing to raise a red flag to me. She would always have a smile, and she loved, loved, loved those little girls."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070530/ap_on_re_us/children_killed

Definitely puts a different view of the mother out there. They really need to investigate this further before declaring it a murder/suicide.

[Giant Robot]

38. It certainly needs to be understood further

First to check if this is a suicide, but also as important, so that the shelter staff can understand better what, if anything, they could do differently next time. This could be used as a moment of healing and learning for the shelter staff if this could happen. I certainly hope that all those impacted by this tragic death can find comfort and get what they need from those around them during this harsh time. I also know the reality is that sometimes these things happen and there is no way that they can be controlled. Been there, done that.