Media disparities mask the important conversations

Maternal filicide, the act of a mother killing her children, accounts for 5.2% of all child homicides in the United States. One such case that has been widely discussed in the past few months is that of Lindsay Clancy. A Massachusetts woman who attempted suicide after she killed her three children, Clancy’s legal case recently ended in a mistrial after one holdout juror prevented the jury from reaching a unanimous verdict. These court proceedings brought the topic of postpartum psychosis and mothers’ mental health to the forefront of American discourse.

The Clancy trial gained national infamy across all major media outlets and particularly social media, with her claims of suffering from postpartum psychosis dividing the countrywide audience. TikTok and Instagram users were split over their opinions on the case, with support for Clancy coming primarily from other women and mothers. The New York Times website is filled with articles about Clancy, her trial and the next steps. At the same time, important advancements in other similar trials were happening at the same time with zero national coverage.

Another Massachusetts case centered around a mother killing her children was recently granted a retrial because the defendant was not originally allowed to introduce mental health medical records during her first trial. This case was presided over by the same judge that oversaw the Clancy case. Latarsha Sanders was arrested in 2018 for killing her two sons and she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia following her arrest. The title of the New York Times article about her retrial is titled, “A Woman Whose Case Resembles Clancy’s Just Won a Retrial.”

Dimone Fleming, a Black woman living in New York, was found not responsible for killing her two children while suffering from postpartum psychosis. Judge Audrey Stone handed down the decision on Monday, Aug. 24. Despite the obvious similarities of her case with Clancy’s, and the fact that the trials were occurring at the same time, the New York Times published one total article covering Fleming. Why?

What makes Clancy’s case more notable than those of Sanders and Fleming? Sanders lived, and committed these actions, in Massachusetts, just like Clancy. Fleming was held not responsible for her actions because of her psychosis; this is exactly what Clancy’s supporters were calling for. So why do most of the country know who Lindsay Clancy is, and very few people have even heard of Dimone Fleming or Latarsha Sanders?

It’s because Clancy is a middle class, younger white woman and Fleming and Sanders are poor Black women. Their cases are swept under the rug because The New York Times and all the other big news outlets can make more money from covering the Clancy trial.

The major issue with this is the obvious racial discrimination. When publishing an update about Sanders’ case The New York Times doesn’t include her name in the headline but mentions Clancy. Even the Boston Globe, a more local paper to Sanders and Clancy, employs the latter’s name to draw readers to their articles about the former. For many of you who read this piece, if I had not mentioned the Clancy case you would not have been interested in the first place. It should not be necessary to lead with a white woman’s experience to get people to care about Black women’s stories.

At the same time, the important conversations about these cases are not being had. With the Fleming and Sanders situations, no one is even having any conversations. With Clancy, the focus is on different interpretations of the evidence and asinine theories that aren’t even anywhere in the realm of reality.

What people should be talking about is what led to these cases in the first place. These are women who were suffering, and the systems that exist were not equipped to help them. At the time of her actions, Fleming was living in a family shelter in the Bronx with her two children, a facility that is in no way, shape or form prepared to deal with someone undergoing a mental health crisis. Sanders was prescribed medication that would treat major depressive disorder, but the stigma surrounding those types of medication played a part in her refusal to take the pills, her brother said in a Boston Globe article from December 2025. These women needed help, and they had nowhere to turn to get it.

The next time you find yourself engaged in any conversations about these cases, ask yourself not where the guilt lays, but instead how we can better serve our neighbors so these situations no longer become the result.