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BEHIND THE YATES KILLINGS: |
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AANEWS: March 13, 2002 |
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The case and trial received national coverage. Last year, Yates called 911 to inform police that she had lured the youngsters into the bathroom and drowned them in the tub. Defense attorneys claimed that extreme postpartum depression rendered her incapable of rational thought, and that Yates was clinically insane at the time of the killings. They pointed to a long history of mental problems, including confinement in institutions, suicide attempts and a history of prescribed anti-depressive drug treatments. Yates' precipitous slide into mental illness become the subject of reports on television and print media, including a feature story in Time Magazine. A book, "Breaking Point" by Texan author Suzy Spencer, delved into the Yates' family life. One disturbing thread in the Yates saga involves the role of religious belief, and the family's ties to a controversial fire-and-brimstone street preacher named Michael Peter Woroniecki. Some accounts suggest that Woroniecki's extreme Christian fundamentalism may have contributed to Andrea Yates' psychological problems, which included a fixation with demonic possession and the view that human existence was continually "under the curse of sin and death." Both Andrea Yates and her husband, Rusty, had a close and lengthy relationship with pastor Woroniecki and his wife, Rachel. Rusty first met the evangelist in the 1980s while a student at Auburn University. Woroniecki was touring the country in a trailer, preaching at college campuses and distributing literature reflecting his brand of cranky Old Testament religion. According to the Grand Rapids Press newspaper, Rusty Yates described Woroniecki as "a quiet and simple preacher" who had broken with orthodox Protestantism and challenged "fat cat preachers" about their watered-down beliefs. Woroniecki and his wife then became "spiritual advisers" to the Yateses, who despite their marginal lifestyle often sent money to help the traveling preacher with expenses. Woroniecki preached a stern and patriarchal doctrine. In letters and taped messages to the family, he claimed "all women are descendants of Eve and Eve was a witch. The women, particularly women who worked outside the home, are wicked." According to Spencer, one of those letters was sent to Andrea Yates in the spring of 1999, just a few months before her first suicide attempt. "The Woroniecki's letters are hammering her about her salvation," Spencer said. Woroniecki's street ministry has included not only informal appearances at college campuses where he berates students about sex and the devil, but stints at events like the Mardi Gras, the Rose Bowl and even the Olympic games. He sets up his microphone and begins a religious rant, frequently exchanging verbal barbs with onlookers. According to his brother, Woroniecki also travels to Mexico and has visions of establishing a ministry throughout Center America. Michael Woroniecki was raised a Roman Catholic and spent his teenage years playing sports. He became a fullback for Central Michigan University. While hospitalized for an injury, he began reading a Bible given to him by his mother. "Once back on the field, Woroniecki wore a gold cross on his maroon CMU helmet," noted the Press. "By 1980, Woroniecki had morphed into one of Grand Rapid's most notorious street preachers," and began using a bullhorn on street corners to denounce sinners. Public events like concerts or even gatherings at local churches became a favorite venue. He was arrested at least five time for a variety of offenses, including disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. In October, 1981, Woroniecki allegedly accosted a women who was attempting to purchase tickets for a circus, and told her "she was a sinner who was going to hell." Charges were filed, and as part of a plea bargain, Woroniecki agreed to leave Grand Rapids in exchange for no prosecution. He moved to Florida where he began touring the country with his wife and six children in a 17-foot travel trailer. Despite his peripatetic lifestyle and self-imposed exile to the fringes of American religious culture, Woroniecki still somehow managed to make ends meet, and even take his family on international trips. In 1992, for instance, he preached outside the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, Spain. Three years later he was in Morocco where a confrontation with Muslims ignited a small riot. The van he and his family were touring in was vandalized, and the Woronieckis were jailed, questioned and later released. Woroniecki is also known to have made trips to Russia, Greece and Belgium. In 1996 he was back in the United States where he preached to visitors at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. And in October, 2000, Woroniecki returned to Michigan where he and his daughter "sprinted across the field in Spartan Stadium during a Saturday football game in Lansing. Both were carrying pro-Christian banners." The greatest publicity for the loquacious street preacher, though, would come from his close ties to the Yates case. Andrea Yates was obsessed with religion and the power of Satan. Following her arrest, for instance, she told doctors that the deaths of her five children were punishment, and that only execution would free her from the clutches of the devil. She also wanted her head shaved so she could see the number 666 on her skull, the alleged "Mark of the Beast." At home, the Yates family lived a lifestyle saturated with stern, patriarchal religion -- most of it conforming to the teachings of Michael Woroniecki and his wife. In one letter, Rachel Woroniecki wrote, "Life is so short. It is so very cruel. It is so lonely and empty. You must accept the reality that this life is under the curse of sin and death." Noted Spencer in her book "Breaking Point, "They (the Woronieckis) constantly equate loneliness, depression, anything negative in your life is separation from God and alignment with Satan." Indeed, Yates later discussed a trip to Florida during the summer of 1998 when she and her husband met the Woronieckis and discussed the purchase of a motor home. It was, according to Andrea, the first epiphany that "the devil had gotten into her," Spencer said. There were also the peculiar views of Rusty Yates, who saw his wife's mental illness as an indication that her resistance to evil had been lowered. And, too, there was the non-stop sequence of pregnancies and births. Birth control was not part of the agenda at the Yates household. The youngsters were home-schooled according to Woroniecki's teachings, placing more stress and responsibility on their mother. Randy Yates had also absorbed the patriarchal teachings of Michael Woroniecki which held that women should occupy a subservient position in the home. This and other elements of Christian fundamentalism were encouraged through a regimen of family Bible study three nights a week, presumably since Rusty had not found a church compatible with his beliefs. According to the Apologetics Research web site, Andrea was "moved by the repent-or-burn zeal" of Woroniecki's teachings. "The role of woman is derived .. from the sin of Eve," wrote the itinerant preacher. There was also the belief that bad "seed" leads to generational contamination - that sinful parents will spawn sinful and evil children.
Trial Revelations
Woroniecki's role as a "spiritual leader" and friend of the
Yates family emerged at the close of the trial. Defense attorney George
Parnham admitted into evidence a copy of Woroniecki's newsletter,
"The Perilous Times." One section included a poem excoriating
the disobedient children of a "Modern Mother Worldly.""What becomes of the children of such a Jezebel?" asked the poem. Houston psychiatrist Lucy Puryear testified that this type of literature is "what her (Yates') delusions are built around." Another incident underscored Woroniecki's authoritarian and misogynistic religious beliefs. During a 1994 rant at Brigham Young University, for instance, he described women as "contemporary witches." "Go and be a 20th century career woman and forget about your families," he told an informal gathering of curious Mormon students. A pamphlet distributed by Rachel Woroniecki to onlookers proclaimed, "As man was created to dominate, God reveals was woman was created to be his helpmeet (sic)." On the stand, Randy Yates repeated that sentiment, telling the court "Man is the breadwinner and woman is the homemaker. It's the way it's been for years." He also detailed his family's close relationship with Michael Woroniecki, noting that the preacher believed that by the time a child reached the age of 14 or 15, it may be too late to undo the damage of the secular world. Attorney Parnham pressed for Yates to explain. "I think what he's (Woroniecki) saying, it might keep them from following the Lord long-term. The vast majority of people are going to hell..."
A Growing Fringe: Demonic Possession, Exorcism
Jurors decided that Andrea Yates was "sane" and knew right from
wrong when she systematically enticed her children into the bathroom and
methodically murdered them. The trial produced overwhelming evidence,
however, that there were time throughout her life when she was caught up
in the web of mental illness, enthralled by delusions about her own
sinfulness and lack of self-worth, and the immanence of demonic control.
These ideas are quietly shunned by many mainstream Christian
denominations, but they inform a growing subculture of American religions
who see the world as a stage of "spiritual warfare" between God
and Satan. Most might reject the low-rent tactics of an crude, loutish
preacher like Woroniecki, but many of his teachings concerning a
subservient status of women, emphasis on suffering and guilt, and the
notion of demonic possession resonate in a thriving and growing
subculture.Since the late 1970s, for instance, there have been periodic waves of "Satanic panic" involving fears of devil-worshipping cults, or the belief that Satan exists as a real force in human affairs. The recent popularity of the Harry Potter juvenile book series, for instance, was accompanied by concerns that the novels enticed children into Satanism and the occult. The 1973 hit movie "The Exorcist" has remained popular fare on television and VHS. That contributed to the pop-culture fascination with "Satan's Underground," the subject of numerous -- and questionable -- books, documentaries and media specials through the 1980s by self-styled experts who warned of a proliferation of cabals of powerful devil worshippers. Not surprisingly, there has been a steady proliferation of claims involving demonic possession. From 1989 to 1995, over 300 possible exorcism cases were examined by the Roman Catholic Church in the New York City. Pentecostals, Charismatic Protestants and others have joined the exorcism road show, and the ritual now incorporates emotionally-charged "prayer meetings" and "healing" gatherings. Michael Cuneo, author of the new book "American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty" observes that the fascination with demonic possession and exorcism has recently moved closer to the cultural mainstream. "I have seen several hundred impeccably groomed, middle-class Americans writhing and shrieking and groaning (some simulating masturbation) while attempting to free themselves from demons of sexual perversity ... I have watched an avuncular physician exorcise spirits of guilt and self-hatred from one of his patients..." And what about the resurgence of harsh, Old Testament style Christianity? As enrollment in mainstream denominations declines or stagnates, it is the energetic fundamentalist, Charismatic and Pentecostal churches that are finding a new, wider and credulous audience. Christian Reconstructionists advocate the creation of a "Bible-based society" founded on Old Testament law. Such a regime would ban abortion, punish a wide range of trivial offenses (such as disobedience to one's parents or the practicing of "witchcraft") with death, and eviscerate the First Amendment separation of church and state. On a less politically explicit level, books and videos dealing with themes such as the Apocalypse, demonic possession and "spiritual warfare" are enjoying new-found popularity not only within religious groups but with the wider culture as well. Andrea Yates may not have been technically "insane" under the law when she murdered her five children, but she was certainly disturbed, mad, and wracked with religious delusions. Not everyone who follows fringe evangelists like Michael Woroniecki, or might agree with many of his Old Testament teachings would commit such a ghastly act, of course. But the line separating authoritarian religious conviction and mental illness may be more tenuous than courts, or American society, might wish to admit.
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