A local blogger, a mother and woman with experience in the mental health field,
writes about the murder of Sandra Cantu, and the woman arrested for her rape and killing:
As a woman, and mother myself, I want to automatically label Melissa Huckaby
as sick instead of evil. She must be suffering from mental illness. And
this is no excuse for her behavior, please don't read me wrong. I just
want a tangible explanation to hold onto when disturbing images of this
case flicker through my head.
[...]
Her daughter is 5 years old so we can't blame the hormones that cause postpartum psychosis. Unless there was another pregnancy or abortion not reported to the media.
[...]
What diagnosis, what treatment for Melissa Huckaby, could have helped Sandra Cantu still be alive? I am personally convinced there is a psychiatric
diagnosis here to be had, which I don't think excuses her from criminal
prosecution. The alleged location of the molest and murder, in a
church, just smacks of delusional thinking.This blogger goes on to emphasize that she is not excusing or defending Melissa Huckaby, just "speculating on what would drive a woman to molest and kill a little girl."
Rather than label killers monsters, these supernatural things that do not exist, it is important to explore what drives one to abuse and murder. Why is it, though, that we are much more likely to do that with female criminals than those men who kill? We, as a society, have much less empathy for the male abuser/murderer's crimes. Is it because their numbers so vastly outweigh their female counterparts? Or is it because we view men as more patently "evil," more prone to bad deeds. Women are seen as gentle nuturers and gatherers, men as ruthless hunters.
Do you agree that female killers get more sympathy than men who murder?
