The Wrong Priorities in Clancy Trial

Rachel Danis is fixing her hair. She's stretching to reach and adjust a barrette or scrunchie; we see a closeup of her baby bump.

After looking at a few of the photos published by the New York Post, I had to ask myself: Why are there paparazzi following Rachel Danis around?

Danis, in case you don't recognize the name, is not an up-and-coming actress. She is the wife of Patrick Clancy, the former husband of Lindsay Clancy. Patrick and Lindsay, as you are likely aware, had three children who were killed by their mother. But they weren't killed by Danis nor by her husband. Making Danis and Clancy tabloid fodder seems like an additional cruelty, and possibly a sign of cultural rot.

At this point, there's almost nothing we don't know about the Clancy case, which was eventually declared a mistrial. We know that some of the jurors considered themselves additional expert witnesses behind closed doors, giving their assessments as nurses and other professionals. We also know what they thought of the single holdout who insisted that Lindsay Clancy was guilty of the murder of her children — the lone Black man in the jury. We even learned about some missteps in his past, in a further twist. We all know too much about the murder of the Clancys' children and the circus surrounding it without knowing what's really important — the reality that three children will never see adulthood, and how to make sure that other children don't suffer the same fate.

And we haven't even gotten into the famed Boston criminal defense attorney, Kevin Reddington. Some of the women on the jury loved him for giving them comic relief, they've told us. He's already a celebrity in Boston; the girlfriend of Irish mob boss Whitey Bulger has been among his clients.

"The 75-year-old is a black belt in karate and keeps brass knuckles as a paperweight," one news story read. He became a spectacle during the trial, constantly holding court among the women who regularly assembled in support of Clancy during the trial. Clancy's claim that she committed the murders in a state of postpartum psychosis — a condition she says she sought help for, but to no avail — resonated with women across the country who have felt overlooked, ignored or abandoned at one point or another in their lives.

I wasn't on the jury, and I am grateful for that; I don't know how I would have weighed the evidence before me. But I know three kids are dead because their mother strangled them, and the cultural response to that fact is terribly troubling.

The murders of Cora, Dawson and Callan are not an episode of "Law & Order." They're a reality that Patrick Clancy must live with every day. He is a father living with intense grief — who has been helped by trauma therapy to move forward — working with a foundation he established to help prevent future tragedies in other families. A healthy culture would focus there. There is no Hollywood ending for Patrick Clancy — or even for Lindsay Clancy — no neat restart or tidy redemption. There is only permanent loss and lives forever damaged. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can let Patrick Clancy and his new family heal — and start working to prevent Lindsay Clancy's story from repeating.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.

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