California mom tells police she stabbed infant son

Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2014-04-28 02:01

Story here. Excerpt:

'LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) — A young mother believed to be suffering from depression admitted to investigators that she stabbed her 7-month-old son to death in a Northern California park, police said Sunday.

Ashley Newton, 23, of San Jose was arrested Saturday on suspicion of murder, the East Bay Regional Parks District Police Department said in a statement.

Investigators continue to interview her family and friends in an attempt to make sense of the alleged crime.

"This is an extremely shocking case for us," said Chief Timothy Anderson of the park's police department.

The motive remains unclear, but Anderson said that Newton had a history of depression and appeared to have self-inflicted knife wounds on her wrist.

Police were called at 10:30 a.m. Saturday on reports of a damaged Honda sedan in the Del Valle Regional Park east of San Francisco. They found the car abandoned with the engine running and an empty child's seat.'

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... get zero sympathy. Moms? It's got a special name: "post-partum depression". As long as you kill your baby early enough after you gave birth, you get a pass. Or at least a substantially-reduced sentence and possible "diversion" into a psych ward instead of a prison.

I wonder: What if one day there's a group of psychiatrists who agree that for some new fathers, they may fall into a deep depression considering the many burdens having a new baby represent, and instead of acting like dads who want their kids, they murder them. Could that be attributed to a new DSM manual entry, like "post-paternal depression"? Or what if they get really depressed about having had the mother take off with the kids and stick them with the bill, and they get so despondent over it they try to do something really bad to someone else - I dunno, anything. Should they get a pass for that, too?

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Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2014-04-28 02:07