NEWS COLUMN • Lindsay Clancy made sure she was alone with her three small children and strangled them with exercise bands. Three years later, hundreds of women dressed in pink stand outside the courthouse, applaud her lawyer, and demand “Justice for Lindsay.” At the same time, the case has become a symbol for a women’s movement that seems increasingly interested in the suffering of the murderer – and less and less in her three dead children.
Lindsay Clancy, 36, worked as a nurse and lived with her husband Patrick and their three children in Duxbury outside Boston, Massachusetts.
After the youngest son, Callan, was born in the spring of 2022, she began experiencing mental health issues and repeatedly sought medical help. She was treated for depression and anxiety, among other things, and was prescribed several different psychotropic medications in the months leading up to the murders.
The defense now claims she suffered from postpartum psychosis, while the prosecution disputes that she was psychotic when the children were killed.
On January 24, 2023, Clancy, according to the prosecutor, ensured she was alone at home with the children. Her husband Patrick was first sent out to pick up food and run a pharmacy errand, while Clancy had searched how long those trips would take.
While he was away, she took the children – Cora, five years old, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months – to the family’s basement and strangled them with exercise bands.
Afterward, Clancy injured herself and threw herself out of a second-floor window. When Patrick returned, he found her severely injured outside the house and asked where the children were.
He ran down to the basement and found all three with exercise bands around their necks. Cora and Dawson were pronounced dead that evening, while eight-month-old Callan died at the hospital a few days later.
A woman stands accused of strangling three children and her defense lawyer is met as a champion for women’s rights. What right is really at stake here? And as if the support for Lindsay Clancy weren’t odd enough, conspiracy theories have begun to spread alleging it was actually her husband Patrick who killed the children and framed his wife.
Jonas Andersson
Clancy survived the fall from the window but was paralyzed from the waist down. She has admitted to killing the children, but her defense claims she was in a psychotic state at the time, and among other things, heard a male voice ordering her to kill the children and then herself.
The prosecutors, meanwhile, argue that her actions before and during the murders show planning and that she understood what she was doing. That is the question now before the jury – and which at the same time has made the case the center of a much larger American debate about female perpetrators, mental illness, and personal responsibility.
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Then the Murderer Became the Victim
You might think that Cora, Dawson, and Callan would now be at the center of the story. Instead, Lindsay Clancy has gained something resembling her own feminist fan club.
Hundreds of people, mostly women, have gathered outside the courthouse dressed in pink. They have carried messages like “Believe”, “She Needed Help” and “Peace For Lindsay.” They have held hands, formed hearts with their hands, and applauded when Clancy’s defense lawyer arrived.
One of the organizers explained that the women feel that “it could have been any one of us.” When the lawyer arrived at the courthouse, people shouted that he was a “fighter for women’s rights.”
Pause for a moment at that phrasing.
A woman is on trial for strangling three children, and her defense lawyer is greeted as a fighter for women’s rights. What right is actually at stake?
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And as if support for Lindsay Clancy were not strange enough, conspiracy theories have begun to spread that it was actually her husband Patrick who murdered the children and set up his wife.
On social media, the theory has gained millions of views, and reality profile Lisa Rinna has claimed before her nearly one million TikTok followers: “Patrick did it. Patrick is the one who did it. Not Lindsay.”
There is no evidence for this accusation – both prosecution and defense agree that Lindsay killed the children. Still, the grieving father has now become someone to also suspect for those who want at all costs to see Lindsay as a victim.
“Compassion, not punishment”
It does not stop with the people outside the courthouse. The Clancy case has grown into a broader American discussion about women’s mental health, maternity care, and how the judicial system should treat women who commit crimes during or after postpartum-related mental illness.
A political narrative is emerging in which women who kill their children are cast as society’s victims. Healthcare failed her. Psychiatry failed her. Medications failed her. Hormones failed her. The system failed her. In the end, it seems that everyone can be given a role in the murders – except the adult whose hands actually killed the children.
Jonas Andersson
There is now even an activist project called “The Lindsay Clancy Database.” There, cases are collected involving women who committed serious crimes after childbirth, and the message on the front page is clear: “Women need compassion – not punishment.”
Women need compassion – not punishment. Really? And the children?
The project describes its mission as gathering support for women with postpartum problems whom they believe have been unfairly punished by the justice system. The cases include not just Clancy but also a woman who killed her two small sons.
This deserves some thought. Because it is no longer just about whether Lindsay Clancy legally meets the criteria to be held criminally responsible.
A political narrative is emerging in which the woman who kills her children is herself placed in the role of society’s victim. Healthcare failed her. Psychiatry failed her. Medications failed her. Hormones failed her. The system failed her.
In the end, it seems that everyone can be given a role in the murder except the adult human being whose hands actually killed the children.
Feminism and the Woman as Eternal Victim
There is a fundamental feminist idea here that I think deserves to be discussed much more openly. The woman is regarded not just as an individual with rights but increasingly as someone whose actions must be understood through the structures she is part of.
When a woman fails, people look to the structure. When she feels bad, people look to the structure. When she commits a crime, people look to the structure.
And apparently that reflex can survive even three dead children.
What I see is that American feminists today are demonstrating for some kind of formal right for women to kill their children. That’s how absurd it actually is.
So imagine if Lindsay had been named Patrick. A father of three small children struggles with mental health and takes psychotropic medications. One evening, he makes sure his wife leaves the house, takes their five-year-old, three-year-old and eight-month-old baby and strangles them. Afterwards, he says he heard a voice ordering him to do it. Three years later, hundreds of men gather outside the courthouse in matching shirts. “Peace for Patrick,” say the signs. “Believe Patrick.” “He Needed Help.”
Jonas Andersson
But is this surprising? Feminism has long since become a pathological and hateful movement, closely allied with Islamism, the same Islamism that stones women for adultery, executes them for refusing to wear the hijab, and regards them as second or third class citizens.
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I see a women’s movement where parts of the activism have gone so far in their search for structural explanations for women’s actions that even a mother who has confessed to strangling her three children can be turned into a symbol of women’s vulnerability. It is nothing short of grotesque.
For somewhere, adults must still bear responsibility for their actions. Otherwise, we are left with only two categories of people – men who are perpetrators and women who are victims, even when the woman is the perpetrator.
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These are categories that the Swedish left, but also the Moderates and Liberals, have tried to cement in recent decades, which is, of course, nonsensical.
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Just Switch Genders
So imagine if Lindsay had been called Patrick. A father of three small children struggles with mental health and takes psychotropic medications. One evening, he makes sure his wife leaves the house, takes their five-year-old, three-year-old, and eight-month-old baby, and strangles them.
Afterwards, he says he heard a voice ordering him to do it.
Three years later, hundreds of men gather outside the courthouse in matching shirts. “Peace for Patrick,” the signs read. “Believe Patrick.” “He Needed Help.”
They applaud his defense lawyer and hail him as a champion of men’s rights. Someone says any father could have ended up there, while activists demand we stop punishing men who commit crimes during mental illness and instead show them compassion.
How would that demonstration have been described? I think we all know. Demands to reopen mental hospitals would have been made.
But She Was Ill
The defense claims Clancy suffered from postpartum psychosis and therefore was not criminally responsible. But here’s a crucial detail that disappears when activism outruns the legal process – that Clancy was psychotic when she killed the children has not been established.
That is the crucial point of contention. The prosecution’s experts say she was not in a psychosis and that she knew what she was doing was wrong. The defense’s experts claim the opposite and refer among other things to Clancy’s story about a man’s voice ordering her to kill the children. That’s why there is a trial.
At the time of writing, the jury has even informed the judge twice that they cannot reach a consensus. After about 30 hours of deliberation, the judge has returned the jury once more to try to reach a unanimous decision. If they fail, the process may result in a hung jury and possibly start again from scratch.
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Where Is Team Cora?
I can understand people who want better psychiatry and better care for women after childbirth. I can understand women who have themselves experienced postpartum depression and therefore feel fear of what severe mental illness can do to a person.
I can even – possibly – understand Patrick Clancy, the children’s father, who has chosen to forgive his wife. His grief is so utterly unimaginable that I will not presume to tell him how to handle it.
And as someone said in the debate – if you live with a woman who expresses sympathy for Lindsay Clancy – run! Just run! Pack your bags quickly and run for your life!
Jonas Andersson
But I feel physically sick at the spectacle around the perpetrator. Because the perpetrator in this case is a woman. I don’t understand “Team Lindsay,” the heart symbols, or “Justice for Lindsay.” When I see the pictures from the courthouse, I keep thinking the same thing – Where is Team Cora?
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Where are the people demanding justice for Dawson? Who holds up Callan’s name and reminds the world he was only eight months old and never even got to learn to speak? Who can even imagine the terror of the children as they watched their siblings be strangled to death by their own mother, one by one?
Lindsay Clancy is not without a voice. She has lawyers, psychiatrists, activists, demonstrators, media, and an entire movement of people who identify with her.
The only people in this story who will literally never be able to tell what happened in that basement are Cora, Dawson, and Callan. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about the children – and throw feminism in the trash where it belongs?
And as someone said in the debate – if you live with a woman who expresses sympathy for Lindsay Clancy – run!
Just run! Pack your bags quickly and run for your life!