The Skriker Actor Packet

feed a mouth that couldn’t work. The myth of the changing, in many ways,
helped people justify infanticide !Ashliman".
A Modern Explanation...
# The changeling myth was also likely created to explain birth defects and
developmental disabilities that people at the time had no name for yet.
Defects such as autism or Down syndrome, often have symptoms that match
descriptions of changelings. Symptoms of autism include poor social
interaction, delay in learning to speak, or repetition of phrases, as well as
mental retardation. Children with Down syndrome su$er from intellectual
disability, stunted grown, and di$erent facial features. Many of these symptoms
generally correspond with descriptions of changelings. Sickly infants, or infants
who do not thrive as well as others, and need extra care, could be thought of as
subhuman, without any form of medical information.
Infanticide Today...
Today, infanticide is defined as the act of killing an infant,
and is split into two categories: Neonaticide !the act of
killing a new newborn less than 24 hours old" and Filicide
!the act of a killing a child older than 24 hours".
Great Britain’s Infanticide Act !established in 1922 and
expanded in 1938" which abolished the death penalty for
women who murder their children as a result of a mental
imbalance !such as postpartum disorders" caused by the
birth. The law is only applicable if the child is less than one
year old.
Above, Andrea Yates, who in
2 0 0 1 , w a s c o n v i c t e d o f
infanticide when she drowned
her 5 children in a bathtub.
She, too, was found not guilty
by reason of insanity.
While the U.S. currently has no such legislation, its cases of
infanticide have followed Britain’s precedent of leniency. Even in some of the
most shocking and recent cases of infanticide in the United States, the
defendants have, at worse, received life in prison, but far more often are able to
plead not guilty by reason of insanity !often due to postpartum depression or
psychosis" and spend time in a mental institution before release.