The Patrick Clancy Conspiracy Theories Are Rooted in the Harsh Realities of Motherhood

帕特里克·克兰西阴谋论植根于母亲身份的残酷现实

For many watching Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial, the primary takeaway has been how the deaths of her three small children—Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callen, eight months—were tragically preventable. 对于许多关注琳赛·克兰西（Lindsay Clancy）谋杀案审判的人来说，最主要的感受是她三个年幼孩子——5岁的科拉（Cora）、3岁的道森（Dawson）和8个月大的卡伦（Callen）——的死亡本是可以避免的悲剧。

Lawyers for the Massachusetts nurse are arguing that she’s not criminally responsible for strangling her children, because she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis, a rare mental health condition that causes new mothers to experience delusions and intrusive thoughts. Defense attorney Kevin Reddington has put Lindsay’s health care providers on the stand, in an attempt to demonstrate how his client repeatedly sought help for her terrifying thoughts, only for her to be minimized, dismissed, and overmedicated at every turn. 这位马萨诸塞州护士的律师辩称，她对勒死孩子一事不负刑事责任，因为她患有严重的产后精神病。这是一种罕见的心理健康状况，会导致产妇出现幻觉和侵入性思维。辩护律师凯文·雷丁顿（Kevin Reddington）传唤了琳赛的医疗保健提供者出庭，试图证明他的当事人曾多次就其可怕的想法寻求帮助，却始终遭到轻视、忽视，并被过度用药。

For others, including a thriving community of TikTok armchair detectives and conspiracy theorists, the Clancy trial has resulted in a much different takeaway: Lindsay’s husband, Patrick Clancy, was responsible, either literally or by virtue of being a neglectful husband. Many TikTokkers are convinced that he actually committed the murders and framed his mentally ill wife so she would take the fall. 对于其他人，包括TikTok上活跃的“扶手椅侦探”和阴谋论者群体来说，克兰西案的结论则截然不同：他们认为琳赛的丈夫帕特里克·克兰西（Patrick Clancy）负有责任，要么是直接行凶，要么是因为他是一个疏忽大意的丈夫。许多TikTok用户坚信，实际上是他犯下了谋杀罪，并陷害了患有精神疾病的妻子，让她来背黑锅。

To be clear, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest this is true. Patrick is not on trial for the deaths of his children, and there has been no indication that he ever will be, or that he is anything other than a deeply grieving father. (Clancy did not respond to a request for comment.) But it’s hard to overstate just how popular this conspiracy theory is, and how rapidly it has overtaken discussion of the trial. The tabloid media has obsessively focused on Patrick, constantly publishing headlines about his life with his new wife Rachel Danis in New York (Patrick remarried earlier this year), and there are countless Reddit threads parsing their social media posts and analyzing his testimony. 需要明确的是，没有任何证据表明这是事实。帕特里克并未因孩子的死亡而受审，也没有任何迹象表明他会受审，或者他除了是一位深陷悲痛的父亲之外还有其他身份。（克兰西未回应置评请求。）但这一阴谋论的流行程度及其在审判讨论中占据主导地位的速度，怎么强调都不为过。小报媒体痴迷于关注帕特里克，不断发布关于他与新婚妻子瑞秋·丹尼斯（Rachel Danis）在纽约生活的新闻标题（帕特里克今年早些时候再婚），Reddit上也有无数帖子在剖析他们的社交媒体动态并分析他的证词。

Much of the TikTok commentariat’s focus has been on Patrick’s behavior prior to the murders, especially as it pertained to his wife’s postpartum mental health struggles. Per his own testimony, he was not always present at home, even at the height of her suffering. He went to brunch with his friends amidst her struggles with suicidal ideation, and took his daughter on a skiing trip. A month prior to the killings, Lindsay had disclosed to him that she had thoughts of harming the children, but according to his own testimony he had waved them off after she’d assuaged his concerns. TikTok评论区的大部分焦点集中在帕特里克在谋杀案发生前的行为上，尤其是他对待妻子产后心理健康困境的态度。根据他自己的证词，即使在妻子痛苦最深重的时候，他也不总是待在家里。在妻子与自杀念头作斗争时，他曾与朋友去吃早午餐，还带女儿去滑雪。在案发前一个月，琳赛曾向他透露自己有伤害孩子的想法，但据他自己的证词，在琳赛安抚了他的担忧后，他便没再当回事。

Some experts following the case say that while they understand the impulse to cast suspicion on Patrick, they caution against speculation or cruelly attacking the grieving father of three brutally slain children. “It’s very easy to try to vilify the husband,” says Leslie Dobson, a forensic psychologist who covers the case on her social media platforms. “But the idea that he actually set her up, or drugged her, or actually killed the children—that’s very extreme.” 一些关注此案的专家表示，虽然他们理解人们怀疑帕特里克的冲动，但他们警告不要进行猜测或残酷地攻击这位失去了三个被残忍杀害的孩子的悲痛父亲。“试图妖魔化丈夫非常容易，”在社交媒体平台上报道此案的法医心理学家莱斯利·多布森（Leslie Dobson）说，“但认为他设局陷害、下药或亲手杀害孩子——这太极端了。”

But a major driving force behind the antipathy toward Patrick appears to be that women recognize the broad contours of his alleged behavior toward his wife—and they are pissed as hell about it. This is evident when you look at the social media comments on the TikToks accusing Patrick, which are filled with harrowing stories from women whose husbands treated them insensitively while they were struggling with postpartum anxiety or depression, left them for another woman while they were at their lowest, or even emotionally or physically abused them. 然而，针对帕特里克的反感背后，一个主要的驱动力似乎是女性们从他对待妻子的所谓行为中看到了某种普遍的影子——她们对此感到愤怒至极。当你查看TikTok上指责帕特里克的视频评论区时，这一点显而易见：那里充斥着女性们令人心碎的故事，她们在产后焦虑或抑郁期间，丈夫不仅表现得麻木不仁，甚至在她们最脆弱的时候抛弃她们去寻找新欢，甚至对她们进行情感或身体上的虐待。

(As many TikTokkers have pointed out, Rusty Yates, the husband of Andrea Yates, the woman suffering from severe postpartum psychosis who drowned her children in 2001, reportedly urged her to get pregnant again while she was in recovery from postpartum depression after her fourth pregnancy, against her psychiatrist’s advisement.) （正如许多TikTok用户指出的那样，2001年患有严重产后精神病并淹死自己孩子的安德里亚·耶茨（Andrea Yates），其丈夫拉斯蒂·耶茨（Rusty Yates）据报道曾在她第四次怀孕后从产后抑郁中恢复期间，不顾精神科医生的建议，敦促她再次怀孕。）

Many right-wing (male) pundits have been inclined to dismiss these comments as the ramblings of female hysterics, who are somehow using their own terrible experiences with new motherhood as an excuse to demonize men or exonerate Lindsay. In an X post from last week, far-right pundit Matt Walsh referred to Lindsay’s defenders as “psychotic women on the internet … outright exalting or celebrating” her, attributing this sentiment to “a deep sickness in our culture.” Others have criticized those casting suspicion on Patrick as frivolous misandrists, who are too obsessed with true-crime podcasts and millennial feminism to maintain a logical perspective on the case. (An astrology meme suggesting that Patrick killed his kids because he was a Gemini is often cited as evidence of this perspective.) 许多右翼（男性）评论员倾向于将这些评论斥为女性歇斯底里的胡言乱语，认为她们利用自己作为新手母亲的糟糕经历作为借口，来妖魔化男性或为琳赛开脱。在上周的一篇X帖子中，极右翼评论员马特·沃尔什（Matt Walsh）将琳赛的辩护者称为“互联网上的精神病女性……公然推崇或庆祝”她的行为，并将这种情绪归因于“我们文化中深层的病态”。其他人则批评那些怀疑帕特里克的人是轻浮的厌男者，认为她们过于沉迷于真实犯罪播客和千禧一代女权主义，以至于无法对案件保持逻辑视角。（一个暗示帕特里克因为是双子座才杀害孩子的占星梗，常被作为这种观点的证据。）

Walsh’s reading is an extremely shallow one. The fact that women are empathizing with Lindsay does not suggest they are “celebrating” or “exalting” her, let alone excusing her crimes. But what it does suggest, pretty damningly, is deep structural perversity—not just with the institution of maternal health care in this country, as so many commenters have pointed out, but with the state of motherhood in the United States. Lindsay’s suffering ran so deep that ultimately she thought the only way to end it was to end her own life, and take the lives of her children. Nobody seems to be asking why so many women empathize with that. 沃尔什的解读极其肤浅。女性对琳赛产生共情，并不意味着她们在“庆祝”或“推崇”她，更不是在为她的罪行开脱。但这确实令人痛心地揭示了一种深层的结构性扭曲——正如许多评论者所指出的，这不仅关乎美国的孕产妇医疗保健制度，更关乎美国母亲的生存现状。琳赛的痛苦如此深重，以至于她最终认为结束痛苦的唯一方法就是结束自己的生命，并带走孩子们的生命。似乎没有人问，为什么这么多女性会对这种想法产生共情。

The statistics tossed out every time someone proffers an analysis on why American mothers are so damn unhappy offer some insight. Mothers who work full-time in the US do 1.6 times as many childcare duties and household labor as full-time working fathers. Mothers are more likely than fathers to report feeling stressed or exhausted by parenting, and also more likely than fathers to report feeling like their parenting is being judged. Mothers are more likely to report higher levels of depression and anxiety than fathers; and a study published in 2021 found that suicidality rates among moms have nearly tripled within a decade through the mid 2010s. One study found that anxiety levels in some new mothers were equivalent to that of combat soldiers; similar findings were found… 每当有人分析为什么美国母亲如此痛苦时，所引用的统计数据便提供了一些洞察。在美国，全职工作的母亲承担的育儿职责和家务劳动是全职工作父亲的1.6倍。母亲比父亲更容易报告感到育儿压力大或精疲力竭，也比父亲更容易感到自己的育儿方式受到评判。母亲报告的抑郁和焦虑水平也高于父亲；2021年发表的一项研究发现，到2010年代中期，母亲的自杀倾向率在十年内几乎翻了三倍。一项研究发现，一些新手母亲的焦虑水平相当于战斗士兵；类似的发现也出现在……