Poor, poor woman

[Mookie81]

Complete lack of support and nowhere to turn.
A terrible deed but I feel so sorry for her.
And where the fuck was her ex? Living in Spain while she was driven to despair.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9186243/Olga-Freemans-friends-reveal-agony-trapped-flat-son-loved-dearly.html

[quote BrumBoo]@PlanDeRaccordement, so you have capacity to understand that you could be a danger on the road. You have and had the capacity to realise that before an awful fact happened. That unfortunately wasn't the case for Olga and Dylan.[/quote]
Well no, not really. When I had the episode they took my driving license off me. It was a few months after that, while in hospital that I had the capacity to realise I should not drive anymore.

@CaramelCandle

Yes I can feel sorry for more than one person but not for this woman. There's no excuse for killing a child no matter how desperate the situation. Doesn't matter where the father was, it doesn't mitigate killing her child. I know my opinion is unpopular but it's the truth. What she did is unjustifiable in any circumstances. It took away the child's right to life.

I know my opinion is unpopular but it's the truth.

No it isn't.

A child who could not communicate and needed medication to sleep was smothered to death by his only adult carer. It’s a truly horrible story. Like a lot of the other posters on this board I am uncomfortable with the use of his disability to justify her behaviour. There does seem to be an underlying attitude that “it’s understandable”. It isn’t understandable to kill your child like this.

@Seasaltyhair

If any hint of abuse would have surfaced at the trial the DM would have absolutely ran with it and the tone would have been entirely different.

There was no trial. When you plead guilty that’s it. No trial.

Poor woman?? What about her child she murdered.
Yes its shit at the moment. She could have walked out and told the police, authorities etc to take him

@PlanDeRaccordement

Do you imagine for one moment that, if there were evidence of abuse, it would not have been mentioned by the prosecution?

Well there was no trial was there? So no prosecution at all. If you plead guilty, then that’s it. No trial. They just send you away while the judge thinks on a sentence.

The prosecution always give the court an account of the background to the case even when the accused pleads guilty. If there were any evidence of abuse, the suggestion that they wouldn't have mentioned it - and the papers wouldn't have reported it - is a total nonsense.

@Branleuse

Poor woman?? What about her child she murdered. Yes its shit at the moment. She could have walked out and told the police, authorities etc to take him

Yes its shit at the moment

That is quite literally the understatement of the year in regards to her story.

@PlanDeRaccordement, well then you evidently got lucky that the right people intervened before something horrific happened. Again, there wasn't even the remotest opportunity for that for either Olga or Dylan. Nobody cared until it was too late, even though everything in their situation was pointing to a family in absolute desperate need for help.

I am uncomfortable with the use of his disability to justify her behaviour.

I haven't seen that. I have seen people explain the psychotic illness she was suffering from when she killed him as caused by the extreme pressures she was under in trying to care for him without the support she needed.

Please don't think that trying to understand what happened is an attempt to say "due to Dylan's needs his life was unimportant and his killing justified". That is absolutely, 100% not the case. His life was very important and his suffering terrible, and most people taking more than a knee jerk 'punish this evil woman' response do so in the hope that understanding what went so badly wrong might save future families from the same horrors.

@FamilyOfAliens perhaps you should brush up on yours dear.

That story is linked in on the very first page of this thread and held up as a beacon of good press reporting.

I have apologised for leaving the quote of that post out of my first one. Should I flagellate myself with a branch or something?

Sympathy, like empathy, is not something that has to be weighed out and apportioned. It can be given freely.

There but for the grace of God go I.

@Draineddraineddrained
Mind is not the official source, that would be the DSM or ICD 10.

I completely agree with you OP.
So sorry for both of them.
I have been shielding my severely disabled adult DD for months. Luckily I have support from my DH, not her dad, but it is still the hardest sustained thing I’ve ever had to do and my brain is fried by lack of sleep and constant demands, noise, grabbing and hair pulling.
Fortunately I haven’t developed depression and I’m nowhere near the place Olga got to, but I feel desperately sorry for her, and contempt for the boy’s father.
I think the verdict was 100% correct. What she did was wrong and a crime, but she undoubtedly had diminished responsibility. What is the boy’s father’s excuse?

@Arobase
Backgrounds are usually a timeline. They don’t go into details.

@PlanDeRaccordement

Would you care to provide those sources' definitions of psychosis, since you know them well enough to assert what they say?

I find it difficult to believe a mental health charity would just invent the definitions without referring to key sources.

Blimey.
Is it so hard to sympathise with both child and mother?
To understand that while many women struggle and suffer and manage with mental illness and an autistic child, this mother’s psychosis got the better of her?
To think that the child was horribly let down by the authorities?
That the mother was let down by the authorities and a father who parroted devotion and devastation while providing no actual help?

Human beings are not machines. And even machines break down when overloaded.

Although I'm a little concerned about your ability to accurately interpret text, given you presented an article which clearly stated she'd been convicted of manslaughter as saying she'd been convicted of murder and still haven't admitted you got that wrong.

Having had a mental illness does not make you an expert on every form of mental illness, as demonstrated by your posts.

^This too. Also, a lot of mentally ill people are not properly diagnosed. My DB was wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia for years whereas it was undoubtedly PTSD, which my DSis and I have been diagnosed with now, as a result of childhood trauma.

Another thing is that often people don't ask for help with MH issues, as there is a real stigma involved and parents worry that SS might take their children away. (I'm speaking about myself here, before I asked for help!)

@unmarkedbythat

Why, because the truth hurts you?

Look at the stats, the people that are dying and in hospital are elderly (who rightly should be cared for)
And those that are overweight.

I didn’t assume abuse. I presented it as a possibility only.

Despite the fact that there is absolutely no mention of it in any report and that it is vanishingly unlikely that the prosecution wouldn't have mentioned it if there was any evidence of it. Introducing that possibility was a wholly gratuitous act on your part designed to bolster your own agenda.

You are twisting what I said. The reports I have seen stated she had been diagnosed with depression with psychotic symptoms. I have been saying, correctly, that this is not the same as Psychosis or psychotic depression. It’s completely different. She did not kill Dylan while suffering psychosis.

Then you haven't read the reports thoroughly. They say that "Three separate psychiatric reports concluded that Freeman was suffering from a severe depression and psychosis at the time of the killing".

I have not once said it couldn’t be Psychosis because of planning.

You said upthread "It sounds very much like it was carefully planned and not a moment of insanity."

Like a lot of the other posters on this board I am uncomfortable with the use of his disability to justify her behaviour. Except posters are understanding the impact her mental incapacity had on her bhevaiour.

That his issues exacerbated hers is a fact. Not an excuse.

The whole thing is uncomfortable. It's unconscionable that this happened. And I can have pity, sympathy and empathy for both.

[quote MegtheShark]@FamilyOfAliens perhaps you should brush up on yours dear.

That story is linked in on the very first page of this thread and held up as a beacon of good press reporting.

I have apologised for leaving the quote of that post out of my first one. Should I flagellate myself with a branch or something?[/quote]
I know the other story has also been discussed on here.

I was referring to the fact that you mixed the two articles up and only realised when people pointed it out to you.

@x2boys

How can you not think the mother is not culpable ? Yes she had depression with psychotic features but she has some responsibility too and you have no idea why the father went to Spain or for what reason people are just completely blaming the father as usual and there was no support I get that I have a severly autistic child who is non verbal not in school because school isn't open , i understand more than most people on this thread how hard it is but it's the child I feel sorry for

Mildy puzzled at the poster who said "How can you not think the mother is not culpable ? Yes she had depression with psychotic features but she has some responsibility too" Erhhmmm you know those statements are at odds with each other don't you?

Perhaps you should read the entire thread than as I was responding to someone 🙄