Texas Justice gets it right. Wife kills child--husband charged

[Horse with no Name]

:applause:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/052508dadarrests.3b41412.html
MANSFIELD – Michael Maxon knew his wife was losing her fight for sanity.

Mental-health experts warned him that Valeria Maxon was despondent and psychotic and, if left alone, could endanger the life of their 1-year-old son, Alexander.

Mr. Maxon recorded tapes, homemade therapy for his wife when she became depressed. On them, a police affidavit said, Mr. Maxon repeatedly chanted: "Our son is riding on the short bus." "Life is so deliciously miserable." "I am a mother. It's all my fault."

In a case tragically similar to Houston's Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001, a solitary Mrs. Maxon drowned her baby on June 30, 2006, at the couple's Mansfield residence. Authorities familiar with Mrs. Maxon's history of mental disorders weren't surprised.

The bigger shock came late last month when police charged her 54-year-old husband with child abandonment, a second-degree felony, in connection with the child's death.

[Catch22Dem]

1. sick fuck nt

[MichiganVote]

2. "Authorities" familiar with her mental disorder should also be culpable.

if they were suspicious that she would harm the child.

[Horse with no Name]

3. "if left alone"

Are you advocating that the State take custody of all children with parents who are mentally ill?
Surely you are not.

[MichiganVote]

16. No. But the law does require mandated reporters to act on the suspicion of abuse or neglect

[Horse with no Name]

20. The father accepted the responsibility

He was sane. He was supposed to protect them both.
He didn't. Had he done what he was entrusted to, there was no suspicion or neglect.

Let me ask you a question. If your spouse was incapacitated and the Doctor told you not to leave them alone with the child or harm would come to either of them...would you leave them alone?
And how fast would you hire an attorney if your Civil Rights were breached if the State stepped in and assumed the role of protector of your family without any cause?
You are AWARE that mental illness is not a crime?

[MichiganVote]

21. Hey look...you have completely misread my post and I'm not in the mood to play word fight.

So you just keep reading into my posts whatever the hell you want and I'll just place you on ignore so we don't play this game again. Honestly Horse, sometimes you are infuriating on this board but ok, free speech, you must be the expert, and all that.

And for the fucking record, I am a mandated reporter, I know the law because I apply it on a daily basis, I have worked with parents with and without mental illness and the word "sane" is a legal term only.

Goodbye and get a grip.

[Horse with no Name]

22. Please feel free

:hi:
However...there was no reason for the State to be involved when the child was entrusted to the care of the Father.
I am a mandated reporter too. Maybe we can have a party.:sarcasm:

[DiverDave]

23. So, children should be left with

parents that could KILL them?

Can a child get justice in this country?
Not with people like you, they cant.

Always err on the side of caution, ALWAYS!

[KSinTX]

13. Hadn't thought of that one.

Good point!

[RazBerryBeret]

4. that judge did get it right...

I've always thought Andrea Yates' husband should have been held responsible also....that one hit me really hard. her oldest was my oldest's age at the time.
and just the thought of a mom doing that....still makes me tear up.

[Horse with no Name]

5. Absolutely.

It mentions that in this article-if you didn't read the entire thing.

>>>snip
Mr. Yates was widely criticized for fathering a fifth child with his wife knowing she had twice attempted suicide and suffered severe postpartum depression. However, Harris County officials determined he was not criminally responsible for his children's deaths.

"I think we're more sensitized to the obligations of husbands after the Yates case," Mr. Dix said. "There is a great deal of difference in in that he was warned specifically not to leave his wife alone. I can't think of another case like this."

[Warpy]

12. So did the jury, apparently

because a few of them spoke to the press later and said they wished he'd been facing charges, too.

This case is different, though, because the tapes prove he took an active part in worsening her psychotic depression. The only proof in the Yates case was that she was producing a baby every year against doctor's advice.

[RazBerryBeret]

14. and he had taken her to the Dr.

and had asked his mom to stay with her when he was at work--she wasn't there that day.
so he KNEW there was a problem. guess he just didn't think it was that bad, and again, who would..I guess.....

[TomInTib]

6. Mansfield....

I wonder if meth was a factor.

Mansfield is a sorry little place.

[Horse with no Name]

7. Oh yeah.

It is a breeding ground for republicans too. I don't know which is worse...republicans or meth labs?:shrug:

[TomInTib]

8. Worse.... meth-head repubs.

The worst....

[WindRiverMan]

9. Living with a mentally ill spouse is very very hard

and I can assure you from personal experience, in a lot of judge's eyes, it does not matter WHAT a woman does, a man is not going to get custody of the kids. So you stay, and you suffer, and you hope for the day they turn eighteen, and you mitigate like hell to keep things somewhat normal.

I don't know what this guy did, sounds like he was certainly did not help, and probably hurt. However, in general, guys have it tough, even wtih a mentally ill wife, to get their kids and get the hell out.

Let's put it this way, do you really think if Brittney Spears were a guy, and pulled the stuff she pulled, she would still have unsupervised visitation?

It's a bad situation, and the kids are the ones who suffer.

[Horse with no Name]

10. To start with

Brittany does NOT have unsupervised visitation so your argument hits a snag right off the top.
This man was TAUNTING his mentally ill wife with TAPES. That is criminal.

FWIW, this was NOT about a custody issue.

[MichiganVote]

17. This husband sounds as sick as the wife to me.

[LWolf]

11. What kind of "therapy" is that?

:grr:

"Our son is riding on the short bus." "Life is so deliciously miserable." "I am a mother. It's all my fault."

That "therapy" for a mentally ill woman looks like a blatant invitation to suicide or worse, to me.

[DMCarter]

18. Who will hear the crys of the innocent

As far as I'm concerned he was guiltier for the murder of his
son than his wife. 

[Schema Thing]

15. Until WE ALL have screamed, yelled, worked, faught and finally, forced society to provide

mental healthcare for every American, from cradle to grave, WE ARE ALL guilty.

Those quotes of course, sound really bad, but we don't have context or his side.



Professionals don't know what to do with mentally ill people. We non-professionals surely don't.


I just spent a year feeling helpless, and frankly, like I was going a bit crazy, in a relationship with person who has severe, but mostly undiagnosed (and she has no intention of ever getting a <I>full</i> diagnoses; who wants to think they are crazy? who wants to think they are not good for their own children?) mental illness and personality disorders. She has 3 kids. I don't think for a moment that she'll kill them. No one thinks she'll kill them. But she's certainly lived a life that included a lot of stuff that wasn't good for them, due to her disorders.

[Horse with no Name]

19. there REALLY is NOT any context that those tapes would be appropriate

It sounds like their INTENDED target was for the wife to kill herself. The child dying was supposedly an unintended consequence...and by the horrible things he said about the child "riding the short bus", I wonder if the child was also mentally challenged and he had no desire to be burdened by either. One has to wonder if perhaps he intended on using the "Rusty Yates" defense.
I've taken care of the most horrific child abuse (where the child lives) that you can imagine when I worked trauma at an inner city Children's Hospital committed by mentally ill people. I understand the complexities of the situation and am able to discern when someone is not responsible for their actions. You cannot shock me when it comes to the atrocities that are visited upon children by the people entrusted to take care of them.
By law (and rightly so), a judge CANNOT remove a child from a parent just because there is a diagnosis of mental illness. That is a slippery slope that nobody should ever climb.
However, as was stated in the article...the DIFFERENCE in this case and all of the others was that the husband was TOLD that she would harm the child if left alone.
He mentally abused an already mentally unstable woman and then left her alone with his child. There really isn't any difference in this act and an arsonist lighting a long fuse (to give him time to escape) next to a pile of rags saturated with gasoline. I think he should be tried for murder myself. He was "supposedly" the sane one.

[Schema Thing]

24. We just don't have any information

I'm not going to waste any time defending this guy; as I said, it sounds horrible.

otoh, I don't think we know much of anything from this news article. I read the news article this morning too. And my initial reaction was "ugh, scumbag" when I read those quotes. But the story is not out yet. It just isn't.

The simple truth is that we don't know what he said, and certainly not the context. Just like it's not really accurate to say that "Reverend Wright said 'God damn America!'". Because that's not really what he said. Those just happen to be three dramatic and (to some ears) horrible sounding words you can pull out of what he really said.

Sometimes the urge to punish is much easier than the real cure. And SOMETIMES there are rare things for which there is no cure. If mental illness was dealt with properly in America, I believe that fewer people suffering from it would go ahead and have children, because they've have an open, honest, non-self judgmental frame of reference that would allow them to take it seriously, but also take the limitations that come with it seriously. And those that did go ahead and have children, would have a better understanding of what feelings they are having that mean they need help to not hurt their kids.

Personally, I'm happy to let more of this story come out before I pass judgment.

[Jack_DeLeon]

25. I'm not sure if I'm comfortable having the government...

going around and having the power to declare people mentally unhealthy, seems like another potential tool for abuse.

[Horse with no Name]

26. Thank you. I'm glad you get it.

Depression is considered a mental illness. How many people would forgo treatment if the State had the inherent right to intervene if a parent was not mentally healthy?

[Schema Thing]

28. I'm not either, but that's not really related to my comment.

my comment is about healthcare, and specifically mental healthcare. It's no different than other types of healthcare; but the need is very under reported, in my view.

[apocalypsehow]

27. My parents, in their retirement, are both deeply involved in CASA. Think I'll run this by them

and see what they think about this case at our family get-together tomorrow.

I'm not sure I share your enthusiasm for the course this case has taken, but I don't know enough about such matters to really have an informed opinion.

[JI7]

29. what a piece of shit that guy is