Late on this but.. I had this friend in high school who was very sweet and quiet. She was Hmong and I often felt bad because her family was so strict and the Hmong culture in our town was, while often awesome (their food and traditional dress are dope!), also kind of backward. She was only 14 and already cooking for all the kids in her home and the parents, and I would often walk her home because in their culture if a man kidnapped her and kept her overnight, she'd have to marry him. Many afternoons we walked home with 40 year old Hmong men following us in their cars. Yuck.
Anyway so besides that, she also often had violent seizures. I remember one day in PE we were out at the basketball courts and she had a seizure, hitting her head hard on the concrete. It was really scary and she was hauled off, unconscious, in an ambulance. She ended up being ok. Often she'd have no memory of her seizures, and nothing seemed to stop them from happening quite often. Otherwise she was a quiet, funny, and very maternal girl (she often brought extra batches of sticky rice to school for me and our other friends).
A few years after graduating, I'd mostly lost touch with her but I suddenly ran across her in a Kmart. She was a cashier. I got excited and said "hey! How are you!?"
It was like she looked right through me. She just started scanning my items and absolutely showed no sign that she recognized me at all. It was weird and sad but I also suspected that the repeated seizures had messed up her brain/memory or something.
Anyway, fast forward to maybe 8 years later and a mutual friend sends me a news link. Turns out she was arrested for the murder of her baby daughter. She put the baby in a microwave and turned it on.
Her family claims she had a seizure and had no recollection of anything. I was definitely inclined to believe this as I know of her seizure history, memory loss, and love of children. I also looked up some similar crimes and other women who had done similar also had seizures.
I was really shocked by the crime but almost more by how instantly the public wanted to tear her apart when the story hit the news. I get it. The baby's death is gruesome and tragic and horrific. Absolutely devastating. But people were describing in detail how she should also be burned alive and put under other forms of torture. How she shouldn't have had kids if she didn't want them. How she's the devil and going straight to hell.
On top of that I don't think she has any/much legal assistance or hope. The culture is very closed and women don't hold much value. Her family is also definitely not well off. At least online, I see that no one believes her seizure story. They says she's faking. I can only imagine there should be tons of documentation but I have no clue if she has anyone at all in the world who is working to really help her.
It's a confusing situation but what it has really taught me is to not judge even the most terrible situations because you just don't know all the details.
I imagine she'll be behind bars for life but I still see the sweet girl who never had much chance (she did better Than many of our other Hmong classmates in that she made it to high school grad without being pushed into a marriage by her family). A sweet girl with a terrible disability and an increasingly damaged brain and almost no resources.