The boy was London McCabe.
ADDED: "Several family members said that she had tried to get mental-health help but couldn't find any from public and private providers."
"I'm losing it a lot but holding it together," she said in a YouTube video now removed from the site. "And I feel like I'm this caregiver and I don't feel like a whole person who can take this on."...
Andrew McCabe confirmed Tuesday that his sister-in-law had written an appeal on YouCaring.com, a crowdfunding website. In it she described caring for her autistic son and her husband, Matt, who has been unable to work at his business doing e-mail campaigns since developing multiple sclerosis and a mass on his brain stem.
The appeal ended eight months ago, after raising $6,831 toward a goal of $50,000.
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“I feel really sorry for the family,” said Newport Police Chief Mark Miranda. “Losing a kid isn’t easy."
I feel sorry for the boy whose own mother threw him off a bridge!
There are no words.
Horrible all the way around.
"Voices in her head"? I find it hard to believe that this could truly be the case. Which is more probable: that someone suffered from severe mental illness and yet managed to function as well as she did, or that she got fed up with it all and figured she could claim illness?
People can do awful things in the grip of insanity. They can do things just as awful under their own volition. I tend to wonder whether someone who immediately blames the voices in her head really hears the compelling voices. I wouldn't want to have to sort it out. The insanity defense is not nearly as useful as people tend to believe it is. We'll see.
If she's truly insane, then she had no control over herself. If not, she was the ultimate feminist practicing retroactive abortion. I hope for the former but for the moment save my sympathy for the child and her husband.
I don't know what happened, and never will, so what follows is sheer speculation.
My opinion is that she saw no way out of the life that collapsed around her. A high needs child and a high needs spouse. No time off, ever. Who among us could deal with that? I am suspicious of the claim of voices in her head.
Dreadfully sad case.
Curious: why did Althouse post this one? It doesn't seem to have any depth or oddball character.
"She allegedly told detectives that she kept hearing voices telling her to throw him over the edge."
Lawyers: Is it easy, or within the realm of possibility, to fake an insanity plea by claiming that one is "hearing voices," or can psychiatrists pick out the fakes?
Also, what about the husband? He's only mentioned in the past tense.
What an awful story.
Where's the empathy? On the advice of counsel, she aborted her burden. The voices in her head originated in the popular culture.
That doesn't sound remotely like a Thomas Jefferson quote.
And she would have probably had better luck with a "mercy killing" defense if it had been the husband, not the kid.
It was Lebensunwertes Leben, and she's a women.
She'll get probation.
I look at this differently. Where were the foodstamps? Where was free care for the Husband via Obamacare? Where was hospice services for husband so she could have some time off from the home-care pressures? How about being paid by the govt to take care of her now disabled husband for home-healthcare? These programs are certainly available. And would not her husband have been eligible for SS disability after six months? (With retroactive pay from date of application.) Someone failed to counsel this woman of all the services available to her. Of course one may opine that she should have been more *pro-active* in seeking out help and assessing her various options, but people in dire straits and depression often don't think *logically*--as we see in this case. She cried out for help and, seemingly, at first blush, no one answered..
Tragic that she threw her kid off the bridge.
What is equally tragic is that she felt so alone with an autistic child and a husband with a crippling disease.
Not to be callous here, but it looks like she turned to the State for help. And was turned down. No mention of other family, or of a spiritual community to rally around and help her either.
Like I said, horrible all the way around.
According to the link from the Post, she was getting services, actually.
@virgil xenophon
We don't know the husband's condition. MS is generally a slow degenerative disease. Caught early, modern medicines can allow MS patients to live a relatively normal life for quite some time.
I watched a good friend's battle with MS, all the way from simply needing a walker to getting around until he died completely paralyzed. It took over 15 years to run it's course and he'd already been fighting MS for several years before I met him.
I didn't read the story but if she is a blogger as is claimed in the title to this post, you can bet that the prosecutors will be going over her past threads with a fine tooth comb to help blow that insanity defense out of the water.
Jane the Actuary said...
According to the link from the Post, she was getting services, actually.
All I saw was that she had applied for assistance, and set up a crowdfunding thing.
Where did it say she was receiving services?
PS: I see/know all too many totally undeserving people who are fraudulently milking the system for all its worth, yet someone who truly needs the kind of "safety net" this society is paying billions of tax-dollars to support seemingly gets nothing..
Why the sympathy for a murderer?
Because she's a woman?
Or because her son had something wrong with him? Does that make his murder more understandable? Was it his fault?
If she'd been the father and the child had been normal, would the sympathy still be there?
Hmm?
A child got thrown off a bridge. Keep perspective.
She said, "I am taking care of our son London and now Matt full-time. Luckily, we are receiving unemployment from when Matt was laid off. I am applying for any and all assistance available. The real blow for us was that we were denied charity services from Providence Hospital because they know our situation is so dire, we will receive state assistance. SSI can take months to go through and I am scared."
This was a year ago. No update on this site since then, but she speaks of using the funds to make the house handicap-accessible, not provide basic necessities.
@Jane,
Weird, I don't see that in the version I am looking at.
That's in the link from the Post, not the Post itself.
But she could have dialed "911" before throwing?
Wait a minute, a mother murders her child? That cannot be, those things do not exist. Time to pull out all the cognitive denial stops here: she was in a terrible place, she cried out for help, gosh anyone might have done the same in her shoes, maybe she's gone a little loopy the sad dear, where was the father and the state, huh? Et cetera.
You'd have to be a fairly rare person to imagine being that little boy, in that moment. There he is, falling, falling backward, the wind whipping his hair, staring back up at his mother's face as it shrinks. He's not scared yet, because that's his mother, who would never ever do something wrong...but...it does make him anxious, this falling so fast and nothing below...when will you save me, mommy? What do I do to be good now...?
I would wall her up in a tomb and bury the tomb, leaving no trace.
I Have Misplaced wrote: That doesn't sound remotely like a Thomas Jefferson quote.
Unless Thomas Jefferson was a kitten.
The voices in her head originated in the popular culture.
I really hope you are wrong about that, n.n. But something about the statement rings a little true.
Why is the woman identified as a "blogger" at all in the lede? Is this the press trying to avoid any semblance of typing the person? Or are bloggers now targets for discrimination?
Horrific.
Oh, my! When I saw your headline I thought it was in a metaphorical sense.
But, isn't it murder only if he thinks it is?
People kill children all the time, why is it suddenly wrong?
I wish she called 911 when she had the thoughts. I mean they put your kids in CPS for going to the park alone, surely "the voices are telling me to throw him off the bridge," call would get help.
Where is the family, friends or community?
I have a 35 year old relative that is severely disabled and only parrots words and is basically a 6ft 180lb 2 year old. He needs 24hr care. In their state there are respite workers (x hrs a month so if they have a wedding or another event u have a sitter) and "school" for 5 hrs a day with activities for stimulation. I know in NY there is respite housing for x-days when families need a break in care (for her husband and kid). I can't believe Oregon doesn't have something like that.
virgil xenophon,
I hope you are still here and see this. Your comments reminded me of when my wife was trying to take care of her parents in their final years. Working on her own it seemed impossible to get government help. But there was no shortage of insiders and fixers who for a fee would grease the skids to get the benefits to which they should have been entitled.
This was Milwaukee. But it seemed to me no different than Chicago. Every time I hear of how much we spend on food stamps, etc., I can only wonder how much benefit goes to the recipient, vs. how much is siphoned off by third parties. It makes me sick.
PS - I am not excusing her behavior, just noting that I know of services available to give people a break from 24/7care.
Why the sympathy for a murderer?
No kidding! Why?
Lots of people have special needs kids. Lots and lots. That's no excuse at all for committing murder. And of her own child!
Why do people do what the voices tell them?
She's a 21st Century bride, complete with self-written vows: For better, for richer, and in health.
This isn't what Princess signed up for. Her husband was the "sole provider" she was entitled to. But he got multiple sclerosis. What a blow -- to her! I suppose it may have affected him too. But when he got ill, she left him.
She came back, no doubt after finding out that whatever assistance and disability he qualified for, she would not be able to claim in a divorce. So to avail herself of them she had to be there.
But still, this kid. A problem that needed dealing with. And if she gets off on her insanity plea -- if I were the husband, I'd sleep with one eye open.
"You're painting a terrible picture," some will say. "You don't know she's such an awful person. It's just speculation and your own prejudices." True. But she killed her kid. Which way would you bet?
considering that "autism" covers a very wide range of behaviours from being a docile child to being wildly hyper-active (and including everything else that isn't the kitchen sink), this mother chose, arbitrarily, to murder her child. whether or not the kid was diagnosed as "autistic" (as if that could be an excuse), this woman ought to fry regardless of how nuts she may or may not be.
This was a horrendous situation. I know from personal experience that respite services and aid with in-home care are more hypothetical than actual. Her husband is severely disabled but not dying in the near term, so hospice was almost certainly unavailable. The relevance of her being a blogger is that the whole slow-motion train-wreck of an unraveling family is documented in writing and pictures, and her blog was apparently well known.
Her son had severe autism, and her husband, the sole breadwinner, was nearly completely incapacitated by his illness in a matter of days. Read a few entries here: https://web.archive.org/web/20130807101504/http://autisticlondon.com/2011/11/one-cup-to-rule-them-all/
Her husband's fundraiser site for covering health expenses (unsuccessful) had updates on his long hospitalizations and the completeness of his disability, but it appears to have been taken offline.
Her progress to her wits end is all there in these pages. I'll be shocked if this does not turn out to have been planned as a murder-suicide. The father must be devastated.
CWJ said...
virgil xenophon,
I hope you are still here and see this. Your comments reminded me of when my wife was trying to take care of her parents in their final years. Working on her own it seemed impossible to get government help. But there was no shortage of insiders and fixers who for a fee would grease the skids to get the benefits to which they should have been entitled.
From what I've learned from friends who had to battle the system, getting Social Security Disability Insurance is almost impossible without hiring a lawyer. It seems like the system is deliberately designed to funnel money to lawyers instead of the bureaucrats actually doing their jobs. Yes, there's a lot of fraud in SSDI with crooked lawyers and corrupt doctors being major factors, but there are also legitimately disabled people who ave to fight to get the SSDI benefits they're legally entitled to receive.
Prolix - I guess it varies state to state. My relative has not had these issues (not round clock care but occasional weekends and 5 or 6 hours a week) but perhaps Oregon isn't as compassionate as they seem. They will give u pills for suicide, but not help for the living? Mother deserves to have book thrown at her, but where was everyone else for the child? Family friends or blog readers?
He was in and out of the hospital and no one there sought to help them re after-care? Having a dr/ hospital advocate is a big help.
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