The trial of a woman who claims the devil made her drown her five children has revealed the effects of religious fundametalism on the mentally ill. According to the L.A. Times, Andrea Pia Yates lived in:
a home in which the husband and wife stuck to traditional roles. It was a home in which medicine was frowned upon, school systems were unacceptable and institutional religion was a tool of evil. Doomsday leaflets mailed to the house gave hysterical warnings against demonic influences that threaten young children.I cannot stress how serious the whole thing is: By the time a child is 14 or 15 years old, it's too late,the Perilous Times newsletter said. Yates' husband, Russell 'Rusty' Yates, read aloud from the tract during Thursday's testimony.
She had been receiving counselling, was suffering from catatonic states and psychosis and had attempted suicide several times. Religious Zeal Infused Yates' Lives, Testimony Shows, L.A. Times, March 1st 2002.
![[LJ syndication icon]](http://www.prattle.net/graphics/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
Leave a comment
Evangelism, witnessing and similar activitites go by one name here—, and is no different from spam for viagra, penis enlargement products and pornography. We do not take advertising. If you want to advertise your imaginary friend, please spend your own money on your own web space to do so. Any attempts to use the comments section for advertisements will be deleted, and the perpetrator barred, unless they are particularly stupid, in which case I reserve the right to pinch an idea from Teresa Nielsen Hayden and delete all the vowels.
Allowed HTML:
a href, b, br, p, strong, em, ol, ul, li, blockquote, q, pre. If your name has accents in it, things will (hopefully!) work better if you use the XHTML entities for those letters. The same applies if you are using a word processor to compose your comment, then copying and pasting the text—either turn off curly quotes and avoid using em-dashes, or edit your comment after pasting to get rid of them. Garbled comments usually get deleted.