Lindsay Clancy: When Sympathy for a Mother Erases Three Dead Children and Their Father

There are three names that should be at the centre of every discussion about the Lindsay Clancy case:

Cora Clancy. Dawson Clancy. Callan Clancy.

Cora was five. Dawson was three. Callan was just eight months old.

On 24 January 2023, all three children were strangled in their family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

Their mother, Lindsay Clancy, admits that she killed them.

That fact is crucial because, as Lindsay Clancy's murder trial continues in Massachusetts, an extraordinary parallel trial appears to be taking place on social media — one in which evidence, admitted facts and three dead children sometimes seem secondary to a determination to portray Lindsay as the ultimate victim.

And in some corners of TikTok, even Patrick Clancy — the father who came home to discover his three children dying or dead — has somehow become an object of suspicion.

What the trial is actually about

There should be no confusion about the fundamental issue before the jury.

Lindsay Clancy has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder. But her lawyers do not dispute that she killed Cora, Dawson and Callan.

The Boston Globe reported before the trial that Clancy admits killing all three children. Her defence is what Massachusetts law calls a lack of criminal responsibility defence — commonly described as an insanity defence.

Her lawyers contend that she was suffering from severe postpartum mental illness, including postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder, and was therefore not criminally responsible for what she did.

Prosecutors emphatically disagree.

They contend that Clancy acted deliberately and rationally. Among the circumstances they have highlighted is that Patrick left the house to collect food and medicine shortly before the killings. The prosecution alleges Lindsay deliberately created the opportunity to be alone with the children.

That dispute is what the jury must decide.

It is perfectly legitimate to believe that postpartum psychosis is a devastating psychiatric illness. It is perfectly legitimate to argue that somebody suffering a sufficiently profound mental disorder may not satisfy the legal requirements for criminal responsibility.

That is precisely why the insanity defence exists.

But there is an enormous difference between saying:

“Lindsay Clancy killed her children, but she may have been legally insane when she did so.”

and saying:

“Perhaps Patrick actually did it.”

The first is a legal argument.

The second contradicts the admitted basis on which the case is being tried.

Yet social media has invented another defendant: Patrick Clancy

This is where the online reaction becomes deeply disturbing.

Social-media discussions documented during the trial show people advancing conspiracy theories suggesting Patrick was somehow responsible for the killings, manipulated Lindsay into believing she committed them, or was connected to the alleged male voice Lindsay says she heard.

These theories aren't coming from evidence presented by either side in court.

Indeed, they contradict Lindsay Clancy's own defence.

Her lawyers aren't telling the jury Patrick strangled the children.

They're telling the jury Lindsay did it but was not criminally responsible because of mental illness.

That distinction matters.

Patrick Clancy testified about returning home after collecting food and medicine. He discovered Lindsay seriously injured outside after her suicide attempt. He then went into the house looking for his children.

The jury heard his 911 call.

Patrick found five-year-old Cora face down with an exercise band around her neck. He found eight-month-old Callan with a band around his neck. He found three-year-old Dawson in another part of the basement.

He attempted CPR.

Imagine that for a moment.

A father leaves his children at home, expecting to see them again shortly. He returns and desperately attempts to resuscitate them.

Yet somehow, on parts of social media, he becomes the suspicious one.

What evidence justifies that?

None that has been established in this trial.

Where is the empathy for Patrick?

This is perhaps the most uncomfortable question.

Patrick lost every one of his children in a single evening.

Cora.

Dawson.

Callan.

Whatever verdict the jury ultimately reaches concerning Lindsay's criminal responsibility, nothing changes what happened to Patrick.

His children are dead.

He was the person who found them.

He was the person who tried to save them.

And he will live with that knowledge for the rest of his life.

Yet scroll through some of the campaigning surrounding Lindsay and the imbalance in empathy is remarkable.

There are people organising around Lindsay.

There are hashtags for Lindsay.

There are social-media campaigns about Lindsay.

There are people dressing in coordinated colours for Lindsay.

The screenshot accompanying this article advertises a planned gathering outside Belfast Courts and London Royal Courts of Justice on 20 August under the slogan “Stand In Peace for Lindsay.”

But where is the equivalent passion for Cora, Dawson and Callan?

And where is the compassion for their father?

Mental illness deserves compassion.

So does a father whose three children were killed.

Those positions are not mutually exclusive.

The children cannot become supporting characters in their own deaths

This is the greatest danger in the way some people are discussing this case.

Cora, Dawson and Callan risk disappearing from their own story.

The trial necessarily involves extensive evidence about Lindsay's psychiatric treatment, medication, behaviour and state of mind because criminal responsibility is the legal issue the jury must determine.

That is unavoidable.

Social-media campaigners are under no such obligation to forget the victims.

Yet some commentary seems almost entirely concerned with what happened to Lindsay, rather than what Lindsay did to three children.

That is morally backwards.

Whatever her psychiatric condition ultimately proves to have been, the primary tragedy remains the deaths of three children.

A finding of insanity would explain why the law does not hold their mother criminally responsible.

It would not make the children less dead.

It would not make Patrick's loss less real.

And it certainly would not transform Lindsay into somebody falsely accused of killing them.

Feminism cannot mean automatic solidarity with a woman

There is also an uncomfortable ideological question here.

Some prominent female commentators and self-described feminists discussing this case appear capable of extraordinary compassion for Lindsay while showing comparatively little publicly visible compassion for Patrick.

That deserves scrutiny.

Feminism, properly understood as a belief in equality between the sexes, should have no difficulty recognising male victims.

But there is a strand of online gender politics in which a woman's victimhood appears to be presumed while a man's behaviour is interrogated until somebody can construct a theory under which he is somehow responsible.

That isn't equality.

It is prejudice wearing the language of social justice.

If the genders were reversed, would people seriously tolerate social-media detectives inventing elaborate theories blaming a mother whose husband admitted killing their three children?

Would people be organising rallies centred upon the father while barely mentioning the murdered children and casting suspicion on their surviving mother without evidence?

It is worth asking.

Because equality requires consistent standards.

This is where anti-male prejudice becomes visible

We cannot know what is inside the mind of every person campaigning for Lindsay, and it would be irresponsible to claim that every supporter hates men.

But we can challenge a pattern when we see one.

When sympathy automatically flows towards a woman who admits killing three children while suspicion is redirected towards an innocent father without evidential foundation, something has gone seriously wrong.

When people need Patrick to be the villain so badly that they construct theories unsupported by either the prosecution or Lindsay's own defence, that deserves to be called what it can amount to:

anti-male prejudice.

Patrick does not become responsible for the deaths of his children simply because he is the man in the story.

He does not have to prove his innocence against every theory somebody invents on TikTok.

And acknowledging that Lindsay may have suffered catastrophic mental illness does not require turning Patrick into a monster.

Both propositions can coexist:

Lindsay Clancy may have been profoundly mentally ill.

Patrick Clancy is a bereaved father whose three children were killed.

The jury will determine whether Lindsay's illness was sufficient to remove criminal responsibility.

TikTok will not.

Compassion without accountability is not compassion

There is a legitimate and important conversation to have about postpartum psychosis.

There is a legitimate conversation about psychiatric medication.

There is a legitimate conversation about whether Lindsay Clancy received appropriate medical treatment.

There is even a legitimate argument that, despite killing three children, she should be found not criminally responsible if the legal test for insanity is established.

But none of those conversations requires rewriting history.

None requires blaming Patrick.

None requires conspiracy theories.

And none requires forgetting three tiny victims.

Perhaps everybody campaigning around this case should stop for a moment and say their names:

Cora Clancy — five years old.

Dawson Clancy — three years old.

Callan Clancy — eight months old.

They had no voice in what happened to them.

Patrick could not protect them because he wasn't there.

When he returned, he tried desperately to save them.

Whatever verdict ultimately comes back from a Massachusetts courtroom, those facts deserve far more attention than another viral TikTok conspiracy theory.

Justice may ultimately decide that Lindsay Clancy was legally insane.

Or the jury may accept the prosecution's argument that she was criminally responsible.

That decision belongs to the evidence and to the jury.

But there should be no ideological difficulty whatsoever in recognising who the victims of 24 January 2023 were.

Three children were killed.

Their father lost all three of them.

Compassion for mental illness should never require us to forget either.