Parents face charges in healing deaths of children

Parents face charges in healing deaths of children
By Lucky Severson

MADISON, Wis.—When the 911 call finally came from Kara Neumann’s mother, it was too late to save the 11-year-old girl suffering from juvenile diabetes.

Dr. Norman Fost, a pediatrician and ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, says too many children like Kara suffer and die needlessly because their parents refused to take them to a doctor, and instead put their faith in the healing power of prayer.

The Neumann’s reportedly subscribe to the teachings of the Unleavened Bread Ministries, an online religion that practices faith healing.

Now Kara’s mother, Leilani Neumann, will stand trial Saturday (May 16) on charges of reckless homicide, and her father, Dale Neumann, will face trial in July. Fost said Kara’s death could have been prevented.

“Millions of Americans have diabetes and most children with diabetes are living reasonable normal lives,” Fost told Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. “There are complications later in life ... but Kara Neumann had many, many decades of happy life ahead of her.”

Shawn Peters, a University of Wisconsin religion professor and author of the book, “When Prayer Fails,” said there are a surprising number of religious groups that preach faith healing based on a literal interpretation of the Bible and a fervent belief in the power of a loving God.

“They look to passages from books of the Bible such as the Epistle of James ... that says, `Are any among you sick?’ And it seems to spell out treatment, and it’s treatment that doesn’t include secular medicine. It’s treatment that includes prayer and anointment with oil.”

Across the country, in a small cemetery outside of Portland, Ore., there are at least 75 tombstones of children whose parents belonged to a small church, The Followers of Christ, which relies on faith healing in lieu of medical treatment.

Church members Carl Brent Worthington, and his wife, Raylene Marie Worthington, are facing charges in the death of their 15-month-old daughter, Ava, who died in 2008 of bronchial pneumonia and blood infections after she was denied conventional medical care.

Raylene Worthington’s parents, Jeffrey Dean Beagley and Marci Rae Beagley, are also facing charges of criminally negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year-old son, Neil, who died last June of heart failure triggered by a urinary tract blockage.

In both deaths, state medical examiners said both children could have been treated with routine medical procedures or medicine.

Russ Briggs left the Followers of Christ after he buried two baby sons in the Oregon cemetery. “There’s something about holding your child in your arms while it dies,” he said. “It’s ... it’s just ... it’s terrible.”

Peters said the Wisconsin and Oregon cases that have come to public attention are only the tip of the iceberg of children who die because of a reliance on faith healing.

“It’s sort of a hidden tragedy in communities that are not part of mainstream America,” he said. “We just don’t know what’s happening to the kids in those church communities.”

Until 1999, parents whose children were buried in the Followers of Christ cemetery were not prosecuted because Oregon law had a religious faith healing exemption. Oregon ended the exemption, but more than 30 states, including Wisconsin, still allow them.

But that hasn’t stopped the district attorney in Wisconsin from charging the Neumann’s parents with reckless homicide.

That’s when Joe Farkas, the legislative affairs representative for Christian Science Churches in Wisconsin, stepped in. The church helped write the law that includes the exception, which after the Neumann arrest was viewed as protecting reckless parents. Now the church is proposing new legislation which Farkas said will give children more protection.

“We never intended it to be in any way perceived as a shield for reckless behavior,” he said. “So as people very much involved in that law, we always had wanted to protect children and we felt that we had to step in with a solution.”