The Lindsay Clancy trial has sparked an unusual wave of public sympathy. While Clancy does not deny killing her three children, some supporters say they see her case as a warning about postpartum mental health and women struggling to get the help they need.
Supporters say Clancy’s mental health story feels familiar
Clancy’s supporters have gathered outside Plymouth Superior Court wearing pink and have also shared messages of support online. Many are women who say they have experienced postpartum depression, anxiety or other mental health struggles.
Melissa Merrill, 41, said, “I think she's a victim of a failed medical system, and I think women's mental health isn't taken seriously enough. I've been a mom where you don't want to say how you feel because of the stigma... ‘If I say I feel this way, what if my kid gets taken away?’”
Merrill added, “She's in her own hell. She lost all of her babies. She lost her husband. She's in a wheelchair. I mean, she's going to live with this for the rest of her life. I don't think prison is going to help her with her mental state.”
Sarah Miller, 38, who drove 17 hours from Indiana and slept in her car to be outside the courthouse, told the New York Post, “I felt like I needed to be here.”
{{/usCountry}}Sarah Miller, 38, who drove 17 hours from Indiana and slept in her car to be outside the courthouse, told the New York Post, “I felt like I needed to be here.”
{{/usCountry}}Miller said she related to Clancy because they had both become a "guinea pig for medications."
She added, “As a mother, as a female, as someone who has struggled with mental health themselves… I understand.”
Also read: Lindsay Clancy 'has no remorse': Viral murder trial courtroom video sparks fury; 'Pure evil'
Online support: ‘Same, Lindsay’
Along with the courthouse rallies, there has been a huge wave of online empathy.
On social media, people have shared their own experiences trying to get mental health support after childbirth, with some posting statements like, "I am Lindsay Clancy." Others have posted photos of themselves during hard times along with the words, "same, Lindsay."
"No matter what we say, nothing useful happens. Many of us lie, fearful of having our kids taken. Those of us who tell the truth are usually met with some combination of stigma, dismissal, and blame- rarely any meaningful support," Zawn Villines wrote on Substack.
"This Lindsay Clancy trial has hit me so viscerally, and it's so close to home," Liz Cadeaux said in a tearful TikTok video where she urged other moms having a hard time to seek help, as per CBC News.
Experts weigh in on why people relate
Dr Crystal Clark, head of psychiatry at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, said she thinks people are resonating with the trial, but not because they identify with Clancy's final actions.
"They resonate with the suffering, the help-seeking, the distress and despair she was experiencing prior to that, that they recognize in themselves," Clark told CBC News. She said increased awareness of conditions like postpartum depression means more people can now name what they have experienced, including not feeling heard. "Not being heard is very scary," she said.
Clancy, 36, is accused of killing her three children in 2023 while her then-husband was running an errand. She strangled Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and eight-month-old Callan with exercise bands in the basement of their home in Duxbury, and then tried to take her own life by jumping out of a second-floor window, which left her paralyzed. Her defense argues she isn't criminally responsible because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, while prosecutors say she plotted the killings and is guilty of first-degree murder.