My abusive mother was not a victim — and neither is Lindsay Clancy

You would think that growing up under an abusive, personality-disordered mother would immunize a writer like me from shock at women's bad behavior. That's what I always thought at least.

Then I witnessed the extraordinary outpouring of female sympathy for Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who killed her three children in 2023.

Some Clancy girls now claim Lindsay’s poor husband, Patrick, actually killed the kids and framed her. How do they know this? Astrology of course.

Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, is now on trial for murder. Her children were Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, eight months old.

There is no dispute about who killed them. Clancy's defense admits she strangled all three children with exercise bands in the basement of the family's home while her husband, Patrick, was out picking up medicine and takeout. The question for the jury is whether she was criminally responsible when she did it.

Her lawyers say she wasn't. They argue that Clancy suffered from postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder and that psychiatric medications worsened her condition. Prosecutors say she deliberately arranged to get her husband out of the house and knew exactly what she was doing.

Clancy girls

I don't know what the jury will decide. What I do know is what thousands of women have decided already.

Across social media, a group of women I'll call "Clancy girls" have turned Lindsay Clancy into an object of identification and affection. They see her as a poor, unsupported, overwhelmed mother who begged for help and was failed by everyone.

Does this shock you? I hope it does. It is real, and it is deadly serious.

We have a dire, immediate, society-wide problem of women identifying with evil, sympathizing with evil, and financially supporting evil.

It should be socially unthinkable for anyone, let alone thousands of women, to openly weep for a woman who killed her three children by strangling them with exercise bands. Even 20 years ago, this moral derangement would have made a woman a pariah if she dared to speak it out loud.

Not anymore. In fact, the Clancy girls are going out of their way to exonerate this modern Medea.

'Wonderful mom'

Take the Musgrove Family Fund. It has raised almost a million dollars for Clancy's parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, who have relocated from Connecticut to Massachusetts and incurred substantial expenses while remaining close to their daughter throughout the criminal proceedings. The organizers are careful to say that donating does not require taking Lindsay's side: "Nothing about this fund asks anyone to share their view of Lindsay or the criminal case."

Yet judging from the comments, many of the female donors are more than happy to offer Lindsay absolution:

Strong support and hugs for Lindsay and her supportive parents. My sister was also an RN when she went through PPD+PPS. It was so hard to watch her go through it.

We stand beside and behind you Lindsay and family. I struggled with PPD and PPA and many times it felt like I was asking for help, reaching up only to grab air. I am sending lots of love and virtual hugs.

I know it feels like it now, but you're not alone Lindsay. Your emotion and love for your babies is felt through the screen. From one mom who's been through psychosis to another — I just want to wrap my arms around you and shower you with love and support. You ARE a wonderful mom. It wasn't you that day. It may have been your body, but it certainly wasn't your mind or thoughts. — from a Kentucky mom

Love and “virtual hugs” for this "wonderful mom." Personal emotional identification with a woman who committed a crime so depraved it forms one of the darkest psychological archetypes in Western mythology.

In the stars

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe Lindsay Clancy had a psychotic break. I don’t believe she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. I don’t believe that “too many psychiatric drugs” caused her to hallucinate and lose her mind. It’s hard to see how that’s possible when the evidence shows Clancy didn’t even take the recommended dosage of the drugs, or took them for a few days and stopped after that.

I believe Clancy shows the signs of narcissistic personality disorder and that she’s lying about having hallucinations to cover up the fact that she wanted her children dead because they interfered with the lifestyle and attention she believed she was entitled to. I think she killed them because their existence on earth meant that everything couldn’t be about Lindsay all the time.

It gets worse. Some Clancy girls now claim Lindsay’s poor husband, Patrick, actually killed the kids and framed her. How do they know this? Astrology of course.

Whatever the truth may be, it doesn’t ameliorate the shocking, reflexive sympathy countless women are displaying. Instead of being stunned by a diabolical, almost unthinkable murder, women across social media (and in hair salons, according to reports from my friends overhearing chitchat) see the mother who killed her children as the real victim.

This is moral depravity at a scale nigh unbelievable.

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The patriarchy did it

No one would make these excuses for a male family annihilator, which is what Lindsay Clancy is. Almost no one popped up to defend Chris Watts. No one wanted to “start a conversation about the pressure fathers are under” to deflect from the fact that he murdered his family.

No one makes mental health excuses for men who exterminate their children. It’s only women who get this sympathy.

Why?

Since the 1960s, Americans have been under a delusional spell called “feminism.” This magical spell managed to convince an entire country that women in the richest country in the world were unbearably oppressed. All of a sudden, all traditions were overturned. Motherhood became a burden. Children became a ball and chain forced on women by patriarchal men.

Feminism took over everyone’s mind, left, right, and center. Men and women. It has long been accepted as fact that women were always and ever subjugated by men. That having children was a prison sentence imposed on women. That being married and raising a family deprived women of making their mark in the world.

Feminism is a lie, and it is a tool of the narcissistic, resentful mind. It has pitted women against men and against their own children. It has convinced millions of women in the freest and most wealthy country in world history that they are “unsupported” and “exploited.”

Shock and despair

It would be hysterically funny if the consequences weren’t so egregious.

But they are. Lindsay Clancy stands a decent chance of being let off under the insanity plea because we refuse to acknowledge a fundamental aspect of human nature that everyone knew until the mid-20th century: Women have the capacity to do evil.

I put my abusive, narcissistic, psychopathic mother out of my life permanently 10 years ago. That’s long enough to be over the initial shock and despair of discovering that the one person I was supposed to be able to trust tried to destroy me. It doesn’t keep me awake nights any longer.

But I’m sleepless this week after discovering a new horror: If my mother had succeeded in killing me, my sister, or my brother, our names would be forgotten. Our mother would be seen as a tragic victim, a single mother “failed” by everyone.

At least she’d get hugs.