How do we stop moms from killing their kids?
Once again, we are shocked, stunned, downright sick at heart.
Arizona has another home-grown horror story. Another mother who police say murdered her children. Three of them this time, not a single one having reached the ripe old age of 4.
According to court records, she sang to her children as, one by one, as she smothered them to death.
Can you imagine?
Of course, you cannot. Such a thing as three babies dead is unthinkable and hideous and worse even when we’re told it was done by the hand of their mother.
Rachel Henry was arrested Monday night after her children were found dead in a Phoenix home. Police say the 22-year-old mother admitted to killing her 3-year-old son and her daughters, who were 23 months and 6 months old.
Can you imagine?
Of course, you cannot. Yet it happens too darned often.
This time, it’s Rachel Henry. In 2018, it was Jenna M. Folwell, whose 4-week-old son was found dead in a duffel bag in her Chandler apartment. The 19-year-old mother told police her child had been abducted from a park. Police say Folwell eventually admitted to getting in the bathtub with her baby ... and just letting him go.
It seems she settled on drowning her son so she wouldn’t have to hear him cry, according to court documents.
Police checked the web browser on her phone and found she’d been searching for information on why parents kill their babies and how long it takes an infant to drown.
If only she’d searched instead for help.
She awaits trial for first-degree murder.
In 2017, it was Andrea Portillo, 29. She killed her 5-month-old son, re
peatedly stabbing the baby in the neck then she called the child’s grandmother and asked her to come over.
Buckeye police arrived to find the grandmother screaming as she held the mortally wounded baby. Behind her stood the child’s mother, covered in blood.
Portillo, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, told police she killed her child after hearing voices in her head. Her 3-year-old daughter witnessed the murder, telling police, “Mom cut the baby’s neck.”
In 2016, it was Octavia Rogers, 29. Phoenix police say she stabbed to death her three sons – ages 8, 5 and just 2 months old — inside their north Phoenix home. She awaits trial for first-degree murder.
Her mother told reporters that Rogers “loved her boys unconditionally.”
In 2015, it was Mireya Alejandra Lopez, a 22-year-old Avondale mother who drowned her twin 2-year-old sons in the bathtub and attempted to drown a third child.
Lopez told police she drowned her children “because nobody loved them and nobody loved her.” She was found guilty but insane.
And now Rachel Henry. Family members told police that Henry, who has a history of methamphetamine addiction, had been “acting strange” in recent days.
According to court documents, Henry told police she wrestled with 23month-old Mireya before placing her hand over the child’s mouth. This as Zane, her 3 year old, pleaded with his mother to stop and tried to punch her in the face. Then it was Zane’s turn, his last view one of his mother straddled him with her legs and smothering him as she sang to him.
And then 6-month-old Catalaya, who also died as her mother sang her a song. Can you imagine?
Of course, you cannot.
I can’t either. I couldn’t in 2018 or 2017 or even in 1994, the first time I ever heard such a horror story.
Then it was Susan Smith, a 23-yearold mother who strapped her 3-year-old and 14-month old sons into their car seats and pushed the car into a South Carolina lake. She is now serving life in prison for drowning her children though she will be eligible for parole in another four years.
A few years ago, Smith wrote a letter to a reporter explaining that she is “not the monster society thinks I am.”
“Something went very wrong that night. I was not myself,” she wrote. “I was a good mother and I loved my boys ... There was no motive as it was not even a planned event. I was not in my right mind.”
Clearly, no mother could be in her right mind, not that state of mind matters for the children robbed of their lives.
It’ll be up to the courts to decide Henry’s fate.
It’s up to us, meanwhile, to decide how to respond to a tragedy such as this.
Are they monsters? Certainly, they’ve committed monstrous acts. Unforgivable acts.
But where is the talk in this community and in this country about a response to these unthinkable tragedies that apparently aren’t so unthinkable after all?
This 22-year-old woman gave birth seven months ago. Was there no one close to her who could have seen this coming?
Can the rest of us find a way to help before the inconceivable happens yet again, before another mother who gives life to a child suddenly snatches it away?
I’ve posed this question before but it bears repeating now, with three more children gone:
Might the availability of more mental health care result in the availability of more babies living long enough to see their first birthdays? Or their second? Or their fourth?
Or shall we shrug our shoulders once again and say such unimaginable acts just can’t happen?
Until next time.
Reach columnist Laurie Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.
Where is the talk in this community and in this country about a response to these unthinkable tragedies that apparently aren’t so unthinkable after all?