CounterPunch-Fran Shor However, beyond whatever contributing factor her husband's neglect played, Andrea Yates was tormented and goaded by another man, a so-called religious adviser. Representing the worst side of punitive and patriarchal religion, this man condemned Yates's children to hell-fire and damnation. Reinforcing the paranoia and isolation Andrea Yates already felt in the madness of her nuclear family, this rabid preacher administered an even stronger drug than those Yates was taking for her diagnosed psychological condition.