The Left’s Victim-Perpetrator Reversal
Thinking about the Lindsay Clancy case has been life-draining in a way I haven’t experienced since the aftermath of October 7.
The original act of this mother of three who killed her own children by strangling each one to death with an exercise band—her daughter Cora, aged 5, and sons Dawson, aged 3, and baby Callan, 8 months—isn’t even the worst of it. The worst, as with the October 7 massacre in Israel, is the reaction of a portion of the public. What would be the only rational and sane impulse—indignation at the deed, condemnation, a public reckoning and a clear stance against an evil act—has turned into a perverse spectacle of compassion and “understanding”, sometimes even a celebration of the perpetrator. At least, the left-leaning, feminism-oriented online Lindsay Clancy fan club has repeatedly made excuses for her crime—blaming the meds, “Big Pharma”, and some even Donald Trump—if not fawning outright over the former pediatric nurse who committed this most horrendous of crimes. Such an idealizing view of the murderer, as I have written elsewhere in the case of the October 7 pogrom, tortures the survivors with their own grief, and, in both cases, provides the victims with, at best, a minor, slightly inconvenient role in a grand play in which the real star is the murderer-heroine.
Such an idealizing view of the murderer tortures the survivors with their own grief and provides the victims with a minor, slightly inconvenient role in a grand play in which the real star is the murderer-heroine.
The parallels between the left’s reaction to the pogrom in Israel and the killings of three little—and therefore definitionally helpless—children in a Duxbury, Massachusetts home, on January 24, 2023, belong to a wider psychopathology of the left, that has normalized victim-perpetrator reversal. It did not take the fetishization of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, of Luigi Mangione, the killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, or of, or the heroization of Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s assassin, to see that something was gruesomely wrong with the “good people” of the left.
But sometimes it takes one gruesome crime and its aftermath to grasp the full potential of left-leaning women’s will to deliberately harm the most vulnerable members of society. As Caitlin Flanagan observed in the Free Press, “women, especially young women, don’t care about children as much as they did when I was growing up”.
No shit. Perhaps the treatment of children during COVID—the cordoned-off playgrounds, the cancelled playdates and birthday parties, the locking of children with “suspicious coughs” for days in their rooms—could have given a clue; nevermind the prescription of puberty blockers and chest surgery to healthy teenage girls, or, in Germany, the pedophilia platform on which the Green Party ran in federal elections until the 1990s (“decriminalization of consensual sexual acts between adults and minors”), for which an official apology to the victims of child abuse wasn’t issued until 2013. And it was the left of the political spectrum that pushed for the suppression of investigations of the UK-Pakistani rape gangs.
The Clancy cult may just be the latest iteration of the barely hidden wish to harm children: “I could have been Lindsay Clancy” became a tagline of the gathering outside the Plymouth County Superior Court in Plymouth, Massachusetts, among the pink T-shirt clad crowd of female supporters. The organizer, Renée Kimball, didn’t seem to find it necessary to address the victims—the dead children—because it was enough that “women were sharing their stories and embracing for hugs”. That women, even if they are perpetrators, can only be victims seems to be the founding idea of this new brand of children-hating 5th or 6th or 7th wave (I’ve lost count) feminism. One specifically horrific trend has emerged on TikTok (where else?) showing mothers “coming out” on their child abuse. Not that the open display of rage and violence in these Clancy-imitating “breakdown moms” has stemmed donations to Clancy’s defense—her GoFundMe has collected well over US$ 1 million.
The Clancy cult may just be the latest iteration of the barely hidden wish to harm children.
Jury deliberations began on 27 August. On 31 August, two jurors returned to the bench wearing pink, in obvious solidarity with the defendant, which would be reason enough for declaring a mistrial—which has indeed now been declared, however for different reasons. After seven days, roughly 38–40 hours of deliberation, and two reports that they were deadlocked, the jury found it could not reach a unanimous verdict, but was split 11:1. At this point, Judge Sullivan announced his intention to declare a mistrial. The defense then asked for an emergency stay so it could appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Court and have the jury continue deliberating. The court denied the request, and Judge Sullivan formally declared the mistrial on September 4. The retrial is set for September 29.
One person, reportedly a man, did not concur with the other jurors in what was assumed to be a decision to acquit.
If Clancy is indeed acquitted on the grounds of her central line of defense—that she was not criminally responsible because she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder—this will mean that hardly anyone can ever be convicted of the act of filicide, nevermind infanticide. Because who in their right mind would kill children, especially their own?
If Clancy is acquitted, this will mean that hardly anyone can ever be convicted of the act of filicide, nevermind infanticide. Because who in their right mind would kill children, especially their own?
Aren’t the roughly 500 mothers and fathers who kill their children annually in the US then not all victims of circumstance—and their dead children just a particularly sorry outcome of the failure of the healthcare and social system, Big Pharma, or Donald Trump to provide for parents in need?
But Clancy was not a “mother in need”. Compared to millions of postpartum or other mothers with psychological disorders who do not strangle their kids to death, Clancy had far more assistance and support, both from institutions and immediate family. She received 18 weeks of maternity leave with the option to extend it, and two of her children went to daycare. She had a competent nanny and help from her parents. Her husband, Patrick Clancy, worked from home. Clancy’s psychiatrists and nurses were highly responsive to her requests and needs, and the reason she had so many prescriptions was in part because she went to different doctors and did not stick to one plan—she was not taking two thirds of her prescribed drugs. Clancy also voluntarily left an inpatient program and was not coldly “turned away” from postpartum mental health treatment, but was instead given other options for her generalized anxiety and depression. When she called a suicide hotline, she disclosed no specific plan to hurt herself or anyone else.
The Legal Question
I may not be an expert on criminal law, but, as a member of society, I have a fundamental interest that it function in a way that protects citizens from crime, especially children. So here is my view: if Clancy is indeed found “not guilty”, we will need to have a re-education program hammering it in to this narcissist cult that in a society of free individuals the act of the killing of children must be punished.
If Clancy is found “not guilty”, we will need to have a re-education programme hammering it in to this narcissist cult that in a society of free individuals the act of the killing of children must be punished.
It’s a
As if not only Clancy herself, but also many others, are beginning to refuse to understand the idea of right and wrong, online arguments made in favor of Clancy often involve a peculiar logic against the idea of punishment. They range from “a conviction won’t bring her dead children anyway”—aw shucks, what’cha gonna do?—through “nobody benefits from putting her in prison”, to the unavoidable “maybe her children are better off dead anyway”. With that logic, it is not only okay to murder kids, but it would be wrong not to when you’ve had a bad day at work. Suicidal—or rather homicidal—empathy with the perpetrator-turned-victim has rocked large parts of (not only) online discussions.
Suicidal—or rather homicidal—empathy with the perpetrator-turned-victim has rocked large parts of (not only) online discussions.
In a free and democratic society, punishment does not aim to “make it all good”. Rather, the fact that a convicted criminal goes to prison or even to an electric chair means that he or she has violated the law upon which that society exists in a functioning, intelligent and self-preserving manner.
The purposes of punishment are discussed in the theory of criminal law. Roughly, the theory accounts for three purposes: the general prevention of crime (i.e. in setting an example to society as a whole), the special prevention of crime (to prevent an individual from committing another crime), and the retributive aspect of punishment. While in Clancy’s case, the first and the last seem appropriate, the second—crime prevention—seems inapt at first sight. Clancy has killed her children. If released after a few years in a mental institution, she could not possibly do it again. I will return to this and show that at least one historical precedent has shown otherwise.
But the real challenge lies in the plea of insanity. Unfortunately, the law, and especially Massachusetts law, is not a great help. As Yale School of Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld explains, “in most of the country—and in federal prosecutions as well—when criminal defendants plead insanity, it’s up to them to prove it. But in Massachusetts, the state has to prove that Clancy was not insane, and it must do so beyond a reasonable doubt”.
But the real challenge lies in the plea of insanity. Unfortunately, the law, and especially Massachusetts law, is not a great help.
Leaving aside the additional problem that, in a case of recognized insanity, the charge would ordinarily have to be “voluntary manslaughter”, but Masachusetts law does not recognize that charge either (it only speaks of “manslaughter”, without the “voluntary”/”involuntary” distinction), the bigger question is this: when is insanity proper a defense to a charge? Rubenfeld:
“The insanity defense is appropriate when a defendant’s psychotic delusions prevent him from understanding what he’s doing. If a person actually believes his neighbors are space aliens who are plotting against humankind, he’s not guilty of murder if, in his derangement, he kills them. Murder is the intentional killing of another human being, and he doesn’t know that he is killing a human being”.
In view of this, Clancy is guilty of murder. The killing was premeditated: she put the children to bed and sent her husband on an errand in a far-away part of the district (to buy a specific laxative and get takeaway) that would make sure he wasn’t at home when she killed her sons and daughter. The murder weapon, the exercise rubber band, was determined at an earlier point in the planning of the murder. This was not a spontaneous act. She knew what she was doing. The circumstances indicate that she knew it was wrong. This implies a conscious act. And the fact that she neither showed remorse during her testimony, nor apologized for her act—all we heard with regard to the crimes was a self-pitying “I can’t do this”—only leaves me with the chilling conviction that, once she got to it, she enjoyed murdering her children.
Further evidence for Clancy’s vicious intent is little Callan’s autopsy report that indicated linear abrasions around his neck and petechial hemorrhages (tiny blood-vessel hemorrhages) on his face, as well as severe brain swelling (edema), which must have taken several minutes to bring about (Callan was the only child who was not killed immediately: he died three days later in hospital). The force Clancy must have used despite his cries and pleading, not understanding why his mother hurt him, could only have been relentless. But Clancy “heard a voice”—a voice that strangely only appeared once, making her act abnormally in this very instant, when the rest of her life she did normal things like we all do.
Accordingly, not for one second do I believe that she also intended to kill herself. She was a nurse and had a cabinet full of drugs, but she inflicted superficial wounds to her wrists and neck and threw herself out of an upstairs window instead. She only wanted the children dead—for whatever reason. the three crucial elements for a conviction —offense, unlawfulness, and culpability—are fulfilled.
That culpability is precisely what is contested by the defense is what makes the case so impenetrable. But US law, like the law in most EU countries and the UK, seems to favor the perpetrator and dismiss the victim in the instances of the insanity defense. It would need serious revisions in the wake of the Clancy trial. Pleading insanity cannot be a ground for not facing punishment. This would mean that the perpetrator—the person whose actions led to the death of another—did not really cause the death of another, because insanity made him unaware of it: a contradiction in terms.
This is different from the circumstance of error in negligent or involuntary manslaughter, where, say, a hunter accidentally shoots a person instead of a deer. Here, the accidental killer is indeed unaware (though one doesn’t need to be a regular Midsomer Murders viewer to know that it could get complicated). There is a body, there is a perpetrator, there is the unfortunate circumstance. This is why we speak of manslaughter, not murder. But “unfortunate circumstance” is not what happened in Clancy’s case. She didn’t accidentally strangle each crying and screaming child to death for several minutes on end.
In the legal question of culpability, insanity takes a special place. It is different from exempting children and teenagers from culpability, and also the case of the so-called “act out of necessity”, which is rather similar to (though not at all the same as) self-defense. In pleading insanity, there is a strange epistemology at play.
When we look at the insanity defense of murder specifically, law seems stuck in George Berkeley’s subjective idealism of the late 1700s. Berkeley, whose epistemology can be summarized by his famous formula “to be is to be perceived” (esse est percipi) argued that everything exists by virtue of being perceived (by us, and in case we’re not around, by God), so that material objectivity is an illusion. The law basically repeats the claim to culpability in the same terms: if you have perceived yourself as a murderer with intent you are one, but if you don’t—you didn’t know what you were doing after all! —you are not. Case dismissed!
It is wild to me that one’s subjective evaluation of one’s mental state, even if “confirmed” by experts, should be a standard for culpability. Who will account for the objective fact of one or several dead bodies that were alive before the “insane” person’s deeds? If Peter says, “I can fly” and jumps out from the fifteenth floor, we do not blame the air for not holding his bodily weight.
A lot needs to be done and investigated in criminal legislation, especially its epistemological foundations.
The Psychological and the Philosophical Profile
No one says that a Cluster B narcissistic personality disorder, as criminal profiler Pat Brown sensibly suggests classifying Clancy’s specific ailment, is a walk in the park. But the postpartum psychosis argument does not hold water and could hardly serve against conviction, even in terms of the law. Clancy did not think her children were space aliens plotting against mankind. She thought, as she wrote in her journal, that they were “in the way”. In the journal, if the online reports of the trial are to be believed, her obsession with her own looks, body, and well-being jump off every page. I would wager that this woman not only knew exactly what she was doing but planned everything, including the postpartum psychosis/depression false claim for a soft outcome, and manipulated everyone around her. Me, me, me. No one could say that this last wave of feminism hasn’t found its appropriate icon.
Me, me, me. No one could say that that in Lindsay Clancy, this last wave of feminism hasn’t found its appropriate icon.
An acquittal would be a big win for narcissistic/sadistic women everywhere. It would prove that manipulation works, that one can literally get away with murder. Rubenfeld: “If acquitted on grounds of insanity, Clancy will suffer no punishment at all for her heinous crimes. She will likely be confined, perhaps for a very substantial period of time, in a mental-health facility—which is care, not punishment—but even that much is not guaranteed”.
In 1954, in the state of Maine, Constance Fisher killed her three children. It was ruled that she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and couldn’t be put on trial. She was put in a mental institution and released in 1959. After her release, she had three more children with the same husband. She killed these children, too, in 1966. Three healthy children.
Sometimes I see my downstairs neighbors playing in the garden with their three kids, aged 8, 10, and 12. I often chat with the kids, especially the girl of 10, but I do not talk to the mother a lot. I see and respect that she is keeping to herself, though she gives off an air of not always being happy. But when I see her playing with the kids in the garden, not catching the ball her youngest threw at her—for which he earns a kiss as a prize each time—I see that she loves them. And that this—not the hate—is what is normal, and what most of us feel for our children: unconditional love.
Special thanks to Anna Sutter who provided advice, helped tighten, and put my argument on clearer legal grounds.
