Another woman murderer gets away with a light sentence

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Here in Alberta, a case that came up a few years ago has reared it's ugly head. A woman named Allison McConnell was in the middle of an ugly divorce. She killed her two children, ages 24 months and 10 months, by drowning them in a bathtub. Then she leaped off a fairly small bridge, ostensibly in a suicide attempt. The attempt failed. She was given a pretty light sentence because people believed she was so depressed -- when she held the two children underwater as they struggled desperately to stay alive -- to know that what she was doing was wrong. It certainly wasn't an attempt to hurt her husband with whom she was in a nasty divorce and custody battle, nosirree!

Anyhow, she spent some time in a mental asylum and then a whopping 10 months in a prison and now she is all better and not a danger at all to anyone, so now she is released from custody.

Because she is an Australian citizen, the Federal Government instituted a deportation order against her, and when she was released they carried it out. Now, the Provincial government was appealing her ridiculously light sentence and is a little ticked that she is back in Australia before that appeal could be processed. The wheels of justice grind slowly.

My problem here is the total lack of balance. No man would be believed if he were to kill his kids and say it was just because he was depressed. Nope, it'd be a guarantee that he did it because he wanted to hurt his (ex) wife. A HATE CRIME against women. And if the children had been female, again, a HATE CRIME against women. He'd be in jail for at least 8 years here in Canada*. But it's a woman, and Western society is obsessed with making up any and all possible excuse for the vicious criminal acts women carry out.

As for the deportation order, I see where the Provincial government is coming from, as justice was clearly not served in this case. But, with apologies to Harbourboy, I think it's great that we've just gotten rid of her murderous hiney. We don't need that $!## here in Canada**, and she has no right to be here.*** Send 'em packing if we won't do anything more to her.

Now I know the usual suspects will tell me that I'm too harsh on the mentally ill, but this mentally ill person killed two tiny children. If she was so mentally disturbed that she didn't know it was wrong to hold the flesh of her flesh underwater while they begged the one person in their lives they should have been able to trust more than any other, then am I supposed to believe a few short years in an asylum is going to cure THAT severe degree of craziness? I am not a health care professional, but that concept just strains credulity.

Harbs, let me know if this story gets any traction in your neck of the woods.

* Still a stupid sentence, and I am not advocating for shorter sentences for men. I'm advocating for gender blind sentences for killers that accurately reflect the heinous nature of the crimes.

** We have plenty of home grown pieces of garbage here, and we pay ungodly amounts to incarcerate them and try to "rehabilitate" their evil souls. The more we can just get away from us the better, IMHO.

***I'd totally understand if another country did the same thing with a Canadian national who committed a felony on their soil -- if a Canadian woman killed her two children in Australia, I'd totally support them punting her to Canada.

 

The whole sexual equality thing is still SO out of balance. I disagree that it ALWAYS favors women; sometimes it does, and sometimes it still favors men. In any case, I don't think gender should matter at all. What bothers me most, as a woman who is polite and respectful, is the notion that it's okay for women to slap (or in other ways do violence to) men for trivial irritations. There's this sense of entitlement that some women seem to have. It makes us all look bad. I would never slap a man like that.

That said, I don't know the whole story of this situation, and without having seen all the evidence first hand, I don't feel qualified to comment on the end result.

 

LKD - Harbs is from New Zealand, not Australia (and yes, just like you hear US news as a nearby neighbor, I'm sure Harbs hears Australian news, but just sayin').

In the US we wouldn't have this problem. Deliberately drowning someone is 1st degree murder, and being severely depressed (the so-called temporary insanity defense) hasn't played so well in the past couple of decades over here. Since it was a double murder, the death penalty would be on the table in states that allow it. Even overlooking that possibility, the minimum sentence in any state for 1st degree murder is 25 years, and since there were 2, she'd be spending the next half century behind bars.

So by a US standard, even the 8 years that a man would get seems incredibly light. But I don't know to what extent women are punished less. Women as a whole do commit fewer violent crimes than men. I can recall so many more high profile cases involving men as compared to women, that I'm left to wonder how pervasive it really is.

The last high-profile murder case involving a woman in the US was the Casey Anthony trial. Of course, that doesn't really provide a great basis for comparison, as she was found not guilty of the murder charge. The only thing she was found guilty of was three counts of lying to police officers. The maximum sentence for that crime was 1 year for each count, which she received. However, since she had already spent 2 years and 51 weeks behind bars awaiting for trial and then going to trial, she spent just one more week in prison before being released.

 

Haven't heard a word about this in Aus, but I didn't see a single mention of Post Partum Depression in your post or the article you linked to. Having seen it first hand, severe cases can be quite unsettling (healthy mother in a stable life with a decent income and single child, has a second child and decides she hates it, can't explain why, can hardly bear to touch it, second child suffers terribly, luckily the mother realises this is all very wrong and sought help), and this condition is almost entirely exclusive to women (the number was 1-5% of fathers suffer from it from memory). There's a specific video I'd like to link that's quite difficult to watch, but I'm just in between essay paragraphs right now, have a read up on PPD.

 

Thanks for the reminder, Arkite. I knew a woman with post-partem depression once, and the main difference between it and regular depression, from what I remember IS the fact that the woman hates the child. It's like a phobia, but with hatred instead of fear, from what I recall.

 

Yeah the lady I used in the example was at a pretty... severe stage, this isn't the original video I wanted to link, but this lady gives a honest account of her own experiences, specifically, intrusive thoughts about harming her baby:

 

None of that changes the fact that killing innocents (and the helpless, in the case of small children), is unacceptable no matter what the conditions. So how do you prevent that - mandatory postpartum depression screening?

 

I agree, and just doing research in this area is incredibly (personally) difficult, seeing children who haven't formed a normal secure attachment or developed normally is very difficult.

I'm not sure why you're asking me this, I'm not writing the DSMV... I'm just trying to raise awareness of a condition that if left untreated, can have fatal consequences, something that the original tabloid article failed to do. It is the job of the press to inform and educate, in this case they have a narrative, evil babykiller woman on the loose, mentioning postpartum depression takes away from the weight of the story, so they didn't do it. The result is that people come away from the story with a belief that random evil women suddenly turn deranged and kill their babies.

I'm not arguing that bad things don't happen, I'm saying that the next woman with PPD who only reads tabloid papers won't know that intrusive thoughts are a symptom of a condition, won't know that PPD is real, won't know that it can be treated, won't know that there is support available, and in all possibility if she doesn't get help will go on to be the next 'babykiller'.
If you don't believe me just watch the video I linked, the woman, was blown away that PPD was a thing, that these thoughts she was having about harming her baby were a symptom of a condition, and that she could get help.

This tragedy can be learned from, or repeated.

 

FWIW, here are articles from Huffington Post (Canada) and news.com.au, both of which mention depression but neither of which mention postpartum depression specifically. Do we know that she actually suffered from it? Also, is the Edmonton Sun a tabloid type paper? (Honest question for Edmontonians.) Point is anyway, I'm not sure that any of the sources cited thus far are really manipulating the facts for shock value. The Sun even mentioned depression.

Anyway, I do acknowledge the significance of even 'regular' depression as a potential mitigating factor, and my question (directed moreso to SP at large) was more of a rhetorical one, as I personally don't see any good solutions popping up before my eyes. But I think we are off track a bit, as LKD's original thesis here was that there is inequality in prosecutions of males and females as regards these types of crimes.

 

She did, was first thing I checked out as soon as I read the original story. Found this edmonton paper that covered the story mentioning PPD Edmonton Journal and so did my local the Adelaide Advertiser, and it's a tabloid rag. Just so long as they mention PPD, they can say whatever they want, sorry to get excited, but a paper leaving out facts like that bugs me.

 

No problem, thanks for the clarification.

 

A little off topic, but the Sun chain of newspapers in Canada prints in the tabloid format rather than the broadsheet, and they tend to slant to the right more than the rest of the country, but I wouldn't use tabloid as a pejorative in relation to their content.

In any event, I get the tremendous power of depression. I myself suffered from a serious case of it. And yet, despite that, I managed not to forcibly suffocate any babies. I know plenty of people who have had depression, and the severity of their cases has ranged from mild to suicidal. Not one of them has harmed another human being. Depressed people, tens of thousands of them, are all around us. They do not commit murder.

I cannot state strongly enough that depression, post partum or not, does not give one a licence to murder other human beings. To me there is nothing more to discuss in that sense, and for women to argue that their particular biological makeup is such that it excuses the cold blooded murder of innocents is regressive in the extreme. I refuse to "be more understanding about her situation and feelings." Categorically. It is the ultimate crock o' horse waste.

I heard on the news this morning that when old Allison arrived in Australia with her mom (lucky for her, her mom managed to not drown her a few decades ago) the media was all there. Allison refused to speak with them -- what the <curse word> would she say to them, anyway? I'm sure her mom is feeding her a nice home cooked meal, a specialty of Australia. Meanwhile, those kids are still dead and won't be eating anything, ever again. But hey, Allison's feelings and rights were rigorously defended, so that's something good, right?

I love my country and many of our accoomplishments, but when it comes to dealing with criminals, I just want to weep for shame at our pathetic approach and criminocentric worldview that neverendlingly urinates on the victims and their families.

 

Come on LKD, don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

 

Intrusive thoughts of wanting to harm your baby are specific to Post Partum Depression.

I agree.

That argument would have been made by legal counsel, after they received the results of a psychiatric assessment.

I wouldn't ask you or anyone else to, but it's important to know the full story behind why she did what she did, to help stop this from happening again.

All I'm saying is that the only cause of PPD is having a baby, 15% of US mothers develop post partum depression, half of these women don't seek help (this is from a 2009 study, can get the details if you're interested), and it can completely change a healthy, normal person into a totally different person.

 

I am not familiar with the case cited in the Op so I can't address it specifically. Of course I do have some general opinions. Don't I always?

1) I do not think insanity should be an excuse for committing a crime or mistreating other people. If depression of any kind is so severe that the person can't handle it there is medical treatment. I was foreman on a murder trial and we had to consider the possibility that the person committing the crime was on drugs or intoxicated. If he was then that would lessen the charge.

2) I think that by playing up depression or PPD we open the door for people to claim that as an excuse for their behavior. Instead we should be encouraging people who need help to get it. I spent several years in therapy not for depression but I was having trouble dealing with some problems.

The psychopath has no sense of right or wrong. Does that justify committing any type of crime?

 

I'd have to disagree with this. So many sincere suicide attempts can result in the victim turning his depressed feelings into a murderous rage if you try to intervene.

I remember a case of someone wanting to get run over by a train in Amsterdam. The police officer who approached him to intervene got a knife in his neck. He'll never walk again from that spinal injury.

Or a man who locked himself and his family in a car and parked it on the railroad track, killing everyone inside. If he hadn't left a note, everyone would've thought it was an accident.

People who try to jump off buildings should be handled with caution too. My motto would be 'let them jump'. Their heightened emotional state is a thing that shouldn't be underestimated, and anyone trying to intevene should not assume that a depressed person is not capable of turning self-harm into harming others.

Depressed people have all kinds of things going on in their brain that we don't fully understand. Just like a drug will make one person active and another person lethargic, depression has different effects on different people. It's wrong to make the sweeping statement that depressed people are incapable of harming others, even if you experienced depression first-hand.

Women feel far more personally responsible for their offspring due to mothering instincts (which is a subjective statement in istelf), so a depressed woman intent on ending her life may feel justified to take her children with her. The husband may be a factor, but the reasoning to end the whole family's life might not have been 'just to hurt him'.

Such women will reason that their child will be unhappy in life if she is not around to provide properly, and just wants to 'save' the child from a miserable existence. Completely forgetting that the child would want to live regardless of her non-adherence to bourgeois values of what constitutes happy family life.

 

Mental illness is a serious problem and society is not always responsive to the needs of the mentally ill. It is a disease and needs to be treated. Help is not always available and is often not wanted by the individual.

I still do not see it as justification for destroying others, abusing others.

 

Justification? Of course it isn't. Nevertheless, when an otherwise sane and productive member of society becomes so crippled by a treatable condition that they conclude murdering their own offspring is a viable solution to their woes, it is most certainly society's problem -- justifiable or not.

We need to make mental help more available than we do and would probably be wise to consider postpartum counseling part of routine treatment after having a child. Sure, postpartum depression does not justify murder, child abuse, or rooting for an expansion team -- but if proactively working to provide parents suffering from crippling mental conditions with treatment carries even the ghost of a chance of improving the quality of life of a child with a parent suffering from mental illness, the expense is well worth it.

Acknowledging the role played by postpartum depression in tragedies such as this one does not preclude us from simultaneously condemning both the criminal and the crime.

 

I agree with you, Drew, it is society's problem and we need to understand depression better. Definitely mental health care for people should be readily available. This will will cost society as a whole but if we are not willing to provide it and educate people in the various symptoms. Handing out a pill is not a solution. The pills may help but medicine has side effects and not all individuals react the same. Without close supervision and other treatment the pills are at best a stopgap measure.

 

Just be careful not to treat new mothers as would-be mental patients. Some may not appreciate being singled out in such a way. Offering up psychiatry or counseling without any justification or prior history of depression might in fact frustrate some mothers, to the point that they blame their child for branding them insane.

More access to mental help is an easy statement, but putting it into effect requires caution. High risk of backfiring if shrinks get overeager...