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On Monday, March 11, 2002, at 10:34 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> [wonder if Newt Gingrich will blame this in Xitan nuts the way he
> blamed similar things on the 60s]
>
> New York Post - March 11, 2002
>
> PREACHER 'PREYED' ON YATES
> By MEGAN TURNER
>
> March 11, 2002 -- Andrea Yates' "spiritual leader" once sent her a
> newsletter that called modern mothers "Jezebels" and expressed concern
> for their "disobedient" children.
>
> Evangelist Michael Woroniecki's influence over the mother accused of
> murdering her five children has become an issue as testimony in her
> trial comes to a close, Newsweek reports.
>
> Houston psychiatrist Lucy Puryear told the jury that Yates' delusions
> "are built around" the contents of Woroniecki's newsletter, "The
> Perilous Times," which he sent to Yates and her husband, Rusty.
>
> The newsletter, put into evidence by Yates' lawyer, George Parnham,
> contains a poem lamenting the disobedient kids of the "Modern Mother
> Worldly" and ends with the question, "What becomes of the children of
> such a Jezebel?"
>
> On June 21, one day after Yates - who has pleaded not guilty by reason
> of insanity - drowned her children in a bathtub, she told a jail
> psychiatrist that her bad mothering had made the kids "not righteous"
> and that they would "perish in the fires of hell."
>
> She believed that if she killed them while they were young, God would
> show mercy on their souls.
>
> Woroniecki, 48, denied negatively influencing Yates and pointed the
> finger of blame at her husband.
>
> "I warned him over and over again that his life was headed for
> tragedy," Woroniecki wrote in a letter to Newsweek, adding that he
> thought Yates and the children were in desperate need of Rusty's love.
>
> Rusty, who declined to comment, first met Woroniecki preaching at
> Auburn University in Alabama, where he was a student. Rusty later
> introduced the preacher to Andrea.
>
> During a 1994 protest at Brigham Young University in Utah, Woroniecki
> branded the school's women "contemporary witches," telling them
> sarcastically, "Go and be a 20th-century career woman and forget about
> your families," Newsweek reports.
>
> And one of his pamphlets declared, "As man was created to dominate, God
> reveals that woman was created to be his helpmeet."
>
> Woroniecki denied he had anything to do with Andrea's decision to quit
> her job and stay at home with the children. "Although she was an
> excellent nurse, she never wanted to pursue a career," he said.
>
> In 1998, the Yateses bought a Greyhound bus from Woroniecki, who had
> toured the nation in it with his wife and their six children, Newsweek
> reports.
>
> Rusty told the jury that he agreed with the preacher's support for
> home-schooling and living the "simple life" in a bus, but psychiatrist
> Puryear says adopting such practices had caused Andrea significant
> stress.
>
> Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz went further, saying these factors led
> to Andrea's two suicide attempts.
>
> Woroniecki insisted to Newsweek that he and his wife were "a very
> compassionate and caring couple who did all we could to love [the Yates
> family]."
>