I met Lindsay Clancy supporters who also suffered – Latest News
When I drove to Plymouth Superior Court on Thursday morning to talk with supporters of Lindsay Clancy, I anticipated to satisfy a bunch of ghouls.
But it rapidly turned clear that the people wearing vibrant pink exterior the courthouse, supporting the triple youngster killer have their own psychological struggles. They are utilizing Clancy to represent of a bigger critique of our mental health system.
“I think she’s a victim of a failed medical system, and I think women’s mental health isn’t taken seriously enough,” 41-year-old Melissa Merrill stated. “I’ve been a mom where you don’t want to say how you feel because of the stigma… ‘If I say I feel this way, what if my kid gets taken away?’”
Lindsay Clancy supporters Melissa Merrill, middle, and her son Joshua Molina-Merrill, proper, stand exterior Plymouth Superior Court, Mass. firstly of jury deliberations in Clancy’s trial over the death of her three kids on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (Josh Reynolds for NY Post) Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
To them, Clancy was a girl prescribed too many medication and never taken severely enough when she stated her postpartum mental health was deteriorating. They imagine she’s solely in her present place as a result of docs and the medical industrial advanced fail to take ladies severely.
But it appears to me there are a million higher methods to raise awareness for postpartum mental health struggles than standing exterior a courthouse in assist of a girl who admits killing her own toddlers.
“I felt like I needed to be here,” Sarah Miller, a 38-year-old mom, advised me. She had pushed 17 hours from Indiana and slept in her car to be exterior the courtroom because the jury broke for deliberation on Thursday.
Miller advised me she had skilled postpartum despair after giving start to her second youngster and associated to Lindsay as a result of that they had each grow to be a “guinea pig for medications.”
Lindsay Clancy supporter Sarah Miller (left), of Indiana, and Danielle Buckley, of Bridgeton, Maine, (proper) wait exterior Plymouth Superior Court during the second day of jury deliberations, Aug. 28, 2026, (Josh Reynolds for NY Post) Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
Lindsay Clancy supporter Sarah Miller, who flew out from Indiana, at Plymouth Superior Court as jury deliberations in Clancy’s trial begin on Thursday, August 27, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass. (Josh Reynolds for NY Post) Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
“As a mother, as a female, as someone who has struggled with mental health themselves… I understand,” she advised The Post.
She’d watched each second of the case from begin to end on YouTube. The solely second Miller missed have been the closing arguments delivered on Thursday whereas she was driving, earlier than jurors broke for his or her first day of deliberations about Clancy’s destiny.
The 36-year-old mom despatched her husband out for takeout in Jan. 2023, then strangled her three younger kids — aged 5, three, and eight months — with train bands, slashed her own wrists and making an attempt suicide by leaping out of a second story window. She survived, however is now paraplegic.
Lindsay Clancy watches jurors as they enter the courtroom in Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass., on Friday, August 28, 2026. (USA Today 2026) USA TODAY Network through Reuters Connect
Patrick Clancy is pictured along with his kids Cora, 6, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, whom Clancy is charged with murdering in 2023 at their Duxbury home. GoFundMe
She doesn’t dispute that she killed her kids, however her protection attorneys say it occurred because the consequence of postpartum psychosis — the end result of a months long mental health wrestle during which psychiatrists failed her by prescribing a cocktail of medication.
“She’s in her own hell. She lost all of her babies. She lost her husband. She’s in a wheelchair. I mean, she’s going to live with this for the rest of her life,” Merrill stated. “I don’t think prison is going to help her with her mental state.”
Danielle Buckley rests her hand on a box containing her son Evan, who died by suicide, whom she brough to Massachusetts for the Clancy trial. (Brian Snyder) REUTERS
Merrill got here out from Saugus, Mass., to assist Clancy and introduced her 20-year-old son, Joshua, together with her. Like nearly each different supporter there, postpartum mental health dysfunction was in her previous.
“I had suicidal ideations against myself — and nobody else — so it kind of touched some heartstrings because I had been there,” she advised The Post. “I had the anxiety of a new mom of being like, am I doing things right?”
I’ve been following this ugly case for a whereas, baffled by the ladies who have gone to this point out of their option to not simply defend, however assist a girl who allegedly murdered her own babies. However, assembly them in actual life made clear that it was much less in regards to the info and patterns of Clancy’s case and more about their own ache.
Lindsay Clancy supporter Danielle Buckley of Bridgeton, ME, proper, waits exterior Plymouth Superior Court on Aug. 28. (Josh Reynolds for NY Post) Josh Reynolds for The New York Post
This was particularly clear speaking to Danielle Buckley, a 53-year-old from Maine, who drove down on Wednesday with the cremated stays of her 22-year-old son, Evan, who died by suicide in 2024.
“I wanted to make a bold statement,” she advised me. “I went to the closet where I keep him, and I said, ‘Do you want to come?’ And I think today he would be like, ‘We’re going to do this for Lindsay.’”
Buckley, an electrician’s helper, advised me being exterior the courtroom was “therapy” for her. She’d skilled postpartum despair after giving start and believes each she and her late son have been failed by mental health professionals.
“I’m not really thinking about the children,” she admitted. “I think probably my son’s death has colored that because I’m in grief over my own child… That disconnects me from the trauma of the kids, and I’m more one-to-one with Lindsay.”
The complete spectacle on the courthouse was a residing testomony to how mental sickness rips aside lives. It was exhausting to not really feel for these ladies. But it appeared to me like half of an rising trend within the digital age — of turning hideous tales into fables about bigger social ills, and making perpetrators into quasi-heroes.
The apparent parallel is Luigi Mangione supporters, who contemplate a younger man who killed a father and insurance coverage government a hero for calling consideration to issues with the health industry.
Here, exterior the courthouse, the brutality of Clancy’s crime might be neglected as a result of she’d remodeled into a image of maternal ache, postpartum struggles, and the shortcomings of mental health remedy.
But we’re dropping the plot if we start seeing harmless lives as collateral in our social critiques.
