In March I wrote a piece for The New Republic, “Faith healing parents who let their child die should go to jail,” highlighting the egregious American laws that allow parents who kill or injure their child by neglecting medical care on religious grounds to be largely exempt from criminal or civil prosecution. Those exemptions, which hold in 43 states (with 39 giving criminal exemptions) are NOT allowed for parents who withhold medical care on nonreligious grounds; for that you can go to jail for child neglect, abuse, or even manslaughter. Such is the unwarranted privilege that religion gets in America: it allows you to kill your kid in the name of God, and then get off the hook.
A good bit of the last chapter of Faith versus Fact is devoted to this issue, which is associated with more harm than most people realize. Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many pentecostal Christian sects abjure, in whole or in part, medical care, and that has led to the deaths of hundreds of kids. It’s completely unnecessary, it can be largely avoided with legislation and punishment, and it’s based entirely on religion. What person would not give antibiotics to an infected child unless it had something to do with religious belief? Further, it’s largely our own fault, for it’s our legislatures that make laws allowing these faith-addled parents go free, and it’s our courts and juries who slap them on the wrist even when they’re convicted. It’s time to eliminate all religious exemptions from prosecution for faith-healing parents who hurt their children.
In the last bit of my book I recount the story of a member of the Followers of Christ (FoC), a particularly nasty faith-healing sect in the Pacific Northwest that has been responsible for the death of many children. Most members are in Idaho or Oregon. In Idaho they’re not prosecuted because of exemption laws, but in Oregon, enlightened state that it is, they are. (Oregon eliminated its religious-exemption law in 2011.)
And, according to both The Daily Beast (which cites my TNR piece) and an earlier piece in OregonLive.com, two parents who were members of the FoC, Dale and Shannon Hickman, have just been sentenced to at least two years and three months in the state penitentiary for letting their premature infant son die of staphylococcus pneumonia—something that would almost certainly have been cured had they sought medical care. (The Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office estimates a 99% chance of cure.) The Hickmans were originally prosecuted and convicted for second-degree manslaughter. The conviction was appealed, and was just upheld by State Supreme Court judge Virginia Linder. Her decision can be found here.
The defendants apparently argued that their conduct, because it was motivated by religion, exempted them from the state statutes that parents are culpable if they were aware that their conduct would harm the child. The Hickmans’ lawyers claimed that because the parents relied on faith healing, they were not knowingly harming the child, and so should not have been convicted. Linder found that argument insupportable, as they should have known what would happen. Her decision explicitly cites the state laws for second-degree manslaughter:
“(1) Criminal homicide constitutes manslaughter in the second degree when:
*****(c) A person, with criminal negligence, causes the death of a child under 14 years of age or a dependent person, as defined in ORS 163.205, and: “
***** “(B) The person causes the death by neglect or maltreatment, as defined in ORS 163.115.”
She did not find religion a factor that reduced criminal negligence. Curiously, though, Justice Linder noted that had the Hickmans mounted a truly religious defense, they might have either gone free or gotten a lighter sentence. From her decision:
As we stated in Brumwell and reiterate in this case, parties who present an as-applied challenge to a generally applicable and neutral law must make “an individual claim to exemption [from that law] on religious grounds.” Brumwell, 350 Or at 108 (citing Cooper, 301 Or at 368-69). Defendants have not requested a religious exemption from the second degree manslaughter statute. Instead, they have—from pretrial and consistently since—argued that, under Meltebeke, the state bears the burden of proving a culpable mental state higher than that required by ORS 163.125. This case does not present—and accordingly we decline to consider—the broader question of when a generally applicable and neutral law must yield to an individual’s claim for exemption on religious grounds.
That’s a cop-out, I think: deciding the case on the narrowest possible grounds so that future religious defenses (which, again curiously, aren’t allowed under Oregon law) might be feasible. At any rate, I think this decision should serve as a deterrent to sects like the Followers of Christ to stop withholding medical care from children either too young or too indoctrinated to make their own healthcare decisions. We simply must stop allowing religious people to kill their kids by relying on faith instead of scientific medicine.
Here’s a picture of the defendants from 2011; apparently the sentence was reduced by four years after the appeal:
h/t: daveau
We heard a presentation at last weekend’s FFRF Convention addressing the Oregon legal changes dropping faith-based exceptions.
Oregon seems to have gotten things right and deaths from childhood medical neglect have dropped considerably among these religious communities. But it may be due to people packing up and moving next door to Idaho where protections for children who are victims of religious medical abuse are lax.
Yes, Oregon has many things right. (Physician-assisted suicide among them. Now they just need to legalize recreational MJ, like their neighbor Washington has.)
Unfortunately, I think your prediction/observation about the FoC moving to Idaho is probably correct. The Mormons have done this for years (moved along to places where they are free to perform their religious nonsense — Idaho, Oregon, and Washington are full of Mormons too).
Crap. The judge essentially told future litigants exactly what to do to either get off or get lighter sentencing. Not sure if this was just showing off, or what.
More likely the judge used that part of her decision to notify the legislature they need to close that loophole in the law. (As a judge, she can’t personally lobby for changes in the law.) Hope the Oregon legislature is paying attention; no hope the Hawaii legislature is.
Aha. Makes so much better sense. Thanks. I hope that is the deal.
If the child improbably survives a potentially fatal illness, is there any penalty at all?
No — because then the parents were right and a miracle really DID happen. Hooray! Hooray!
Yeah. Part of the reluctance to prosecute the faithful probably rests on a general reluctance to deny the existence of miracles — and, by extension, the existence of God. Anything is supposed to be possible if we’re allowed to invoke the supernatural. The law is supposed to remain neutral on this question.
But of course, how can it? A genuine hands-off policy means that children will die under circumstances which are extremely predictable to any rational person. Acknowledging this though means that religion has the same status as other irrational and illegitimate beliefs.
When faith has consequences, when it comes to the law it can no longer be indulged and treated like irrelevant personal hobbies or lifestyles, something people have a “right” to whether it makes sense or no. When it is, that’s not a matter of being fair or neutral to religion. That’s gifting it with an unearned privilege.
Your comments are always good, but this is one of your better ones. Not to sound cliche but, insightful and well said.
Agree.
Sometimes, I think the children denied medical care would be better off if they were removed from that environment altogether. Practically, it would be a nightmare to do but I have to wonder if worth it if it saves the lives and minimizes the suffering of those kids.
Children can’t consent to medical decisions. They must rely on their care-givers, so it’s not really a matter of religious freedom for the child. I think they should be removed from the family at birth if the parents don’t agree to take the child to a real doctor if sick. If it’s considered animal cruelty not to take a sick cat to a vet, it should be a felony not to take a child.
Speaking of veterinary services, it would be something to consider if the potential parents in these sects were “fixed” on the wedding day. Why wait?
What does “The Law” generally hold a child to “be”? What is her/his (“its”?!?) legal status (noun name)? I understand that a child is a “minor.” (Does the law use the term “major” to describe an adult?) Is a child kinda-sorta “property”? A quasi-slave/prisoner/indentured servant?
“*****(c) A person, with criminal negligence, causes the death of a child under 14 years of age or a dependent person, as defined in ORS 163.205 . . . .”
What’s the deal with “under 14 years of age”? That starting at age 14 it is somehow OK to let a kid die from parental neglect? Is a child not still a “minor” at age 14?
Here at least there are “special rules” about being a minor with regards to setting one’s own treatment. This came up in school in the context of family planning education – if you’re 14 you don’t need parental consent to get an abortion, for example. (And this applies to any medical procedure; so presumably one can refuse them at that age too.)
In Canadian law at least, children are considered special cases because they are, well, children. This means that you can be held liable if a child drowns in your pool if you didn’t put up a fence, for instance, where you might not be as liable if an adult did so.
You can say you have reached your majority, or something like that, when you do become an adult.
Then as a society we have failed as ‘care-givers’ for these children. This is all the more reason why religion is child abuse. No child should be taken to church, be brainwashed into a faith, until they are at least 14 years old.
What’s the point of extending societal child-care if the religious refuse? Their beliefs are centuries, if not millennia, behind the moral standards of secular democracy.
Of course these people should be punished for criminal negligence for seeking a cure through faith-healing. Any reasonable religious practitioner knows that the only way to mollify an angry god is by burnt animal offerings.
Or, if your kids are brats, kill only the one who is well behaved.
Just the ones who use bad grammar.
CHILD, Inc (Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty) does really good work, including maintaining an informative website where one may see state-by-state variations on this theme, as well as historical background and accounts of amicus briefs.For anyone interested in an additional source: http://childrenshealthcare.org/?page_id=24
@jac: I’ve got another example that may interest you.
From 2007-2010, I worked for the State of Washington in a population genetics screening program (newborn screening, NBS). NBS is a required, some deem paternalistic, state-level operation for testing the blood of every hospital-born newborn for a set of treatable congenital anomalies that would not otherwise be caught before an infant is symptomatic. Most readers will be familiar, if they are parents, with the heel-stick for phenylketonuria (PKU), what used to cause significant mental retardation before screening. NBS started in the US is the 1960’s with PKU, and, as the technology has matured, we gradually added more conditions to the various state panels: congenital hypothyroidism, hemoglobinopathies, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, galactosemia, and, more recently, a variety of metabolic conditions, such as fatty acid oxidation disorders, some of which are responsible for what we think of as sudden infant death syndrome.
So, NBS is mandatory because it saves lives and dollars. But, and here is the egregious part: parents can opt out for, guess what, religious reasons. The other loophole is if the babies are born out of a hospital.
I witnessed a sad case around 2009, wherein mother opted for (what I presume to be misguided new-age or earthy health-related woo) to have her child out of a hospital and delivered by a midwife. The midwife was the baby-to-be’s grandmother. And the midwife chose not to prick the child’s heel. The child died. And it was entirely the fault of the grandmother, for the child had a fatty acid oxidation disorder.
After a nap, I wake up disagreeing with my location of blame solely onto the grandmother. The issue is that we permit exemptions for religious belief and alternative health. It’s a societal problem.
This is one reason WEIT is so cool. Outreach to so many people has power to change the fabric of policies, eventually.
This might be a classic example of Darwinian natural selection, via which, by creating an environment of rigid stupidity, these parents reduce the frequency of expression of their genes in future generations, no?
Well, there is also lack of practice of birth control. Everything is in the hands of god, you see.
I think that is a stretch given that the child would have certainly died if left to pure Darwinianism. It was premature and only modern medicine could have enabled its survival.
You could also say this is pure Darwinianism since the main driver of our survival is out intelligence and ability to manipulate the environment. So those who fail to do so get weeded out. Then again, how that balances with the religious penchant for breeding until the woman can breed no more is still open to question. Certainly those who have a lot of kids now are benefitting from the part of our species who made long term survival of mother and child all but guaranteed in the modern world. I think society as a whole at least has started to realize this and we don’t breed as much as we did when a quarter of the population died before reaching the age of 4.
I reread your comment and realize my first comment does not apply and what you said may be correct.
Prosecutions like this are a sad necessity. It feels harsh to pound on parents who, out of delusion not malice, lost a child. But we need to protect other children.
Well, sure. The punishment is clearly to deter a repeat performance by those punished, and to deter others.
I’m actually somewhat ambivalent about the punishment. Absolutely they should lose guardian status over any current or future children, because they pose a threat to kids under their care. But they don’t pose a threat to anyone else, so jailing in this case isn’t doing anything to keep the rest of us safe. As for deterrence, yes we want to deter others from killing their kids through neglect but frankly I think consistently taking away parenthood rights does that just as well, if not better, than the threat of jail time. As a parent, I can tell you I would happily choose 4 years of prison vs. losing all future contact with my kids; the latter punishment is much worse than the former. So if we do the latter and that serves the deterrence function, and we’re in agreement that they don’t pose a threat of violence to the general population, of what use is the former?
Its also interesting to see PCC come down on the pro-prison side of this one, given his fairly liberal rehabilitation-over-incarceration position on practically everything else. One can certainly hold the position that incarceration in some cases like this one is warranted while its not in others (so NO, I’m not calling anyone a hypocrite). But still, I think we self-identified liberals need to think about whether our emotional desire to punish what we perceive as an egregious crime may be influencing our policy position on this one. Policy-wise, why is rehabilitation + removing access to other children not the answer in this case?
Ask any kid who has been in foster care how that worked out for them. There must be some who find themselves in better situations, but it would seem most do not.
Foster care as a system has a ton of problems but leaving children with parents who may kill them is no alternative.
Case workers know that foster care is overburdened and what it is like. That’s why they often leave children in horrific parental homes, often until it is too late.
The answer is not to diss the concept of foster care but to fix America’s broken foster care system– get the low lifes, profiteers, and abusers seeking victims out of the foster parent pool, and fund the program properly.
If only it were so or even soon to be. Somehow the problem with child services continues, decade upon decade.
We have a very similar situation here in British Columbia. The latest is when the agency, acting in loco parentis, cuts off all support when a child becomes 19, even kids who can’t hold a job. One committed suicide the day following her 19th birthday. Solutions seem hard to find.
I was wondering along similar lines.
I read the judgment which outlined the facts of the case and they did not actually do anything heinous.
Mistaken yes.
I disagree entirely with the assertion that these parents are free from malice.
One of the things that most people are surprised to learn about these cases is that the parents who watch their children die, sometimes suffering over days and weeks with conditions as potentially benign as diabetes, invariably do use medical care themselves. The parents take medications. They let their spouses drive them to the emergency room when they have accidents. They wear prescription eyeglasses. They even access veterinary care for pets. But they let their kids die.
In one particularly egregrious case, a family took a cat to the vet while their 14 year old son at home screamed and vomited feces which had backed up in his blocked bowel. The boy died; it’s unknown what happened to the cat.
These people are not misguided or unusually stupid or well meaning. They are not free from malice. I truly believe they are sadists, that they are actual psychopaths in the clinical sense. They are abusers with a gimmick; a gimmick that just happens to get them off scot free because the rest of us refuse to understand that they are simply evil.
Please don’t kid yourselves about these people. Read the details and the court transcripts. You will die a little bit inside, but you will never again claim that they cared about their children but were just wrong about how to care for them. These are really, really bad human beings. Basically serial killer material.
And then, last night, there are parents who allowed, when utterly well – known to be suckingly / smotheringly dangerous: Deaths xthree by sucking smothering inside truckload of canola seeds: “the family’s own harvest.” 13, 11 and 11. Three daughters.
“Kids have a great deal of freedom” and “aware of things that can go wrong,” per radio host.
“a very active part of the church we serve,” … … interviewed on As It Happens, Canada public radio program tonight. ” … … these girls are now with their Savior. And we all have to walk through this Valley together.” per Withrow, Alberta Pastor So – and – So.
http://www.tinyurl.com/ovmj423
This destruction by grain seeds in bulk format has been known, by this.same.type.of.deaths’ evidence., for just ever. For just ever.
Utterly preventable. Utter M U C K the aftermath – like “pastoral” rhetoric. These parents need prison time, too.
Blue
It’s interesting that the parents who believed their prayers can heal a child did not believe that their prayers would get them acquitted and hired a lawyer.
Check out the number of these defendants who wear eyeglasses. Do you really think they are interested in experiencing themselves the horrors they visit on their children? They are abusers. Plain and simple.
This is not quite on topic, but I was reading an article today about Ada Lovelace, the 19th-Century mathematician and computer programmer (she wrote a set of instructions to generate Bernoulli numbers using Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was never finished, oops).
When she was dying of cancer at age 39, her own mother withheld morphine from her to try to force her to convert to Christianity.
Now there is the power of religion to do evil.
Parents who deny their children vaccination should also be sued if the children or their contacts contract a preventable disease.
I’m not a lawyer, but I wonder if the judge’s decision to decide the case on narrow grounds was meant to limit the defendants’ options for further appeal. Turning it into a religious freedom issue might have opened an avenue to SCOTUS, which as currently constituted would probably decide in favor of the parents, with far-reaching repercussions. So perhaps it’s best to save that fight for another day.
I find it an odd religion that motivates believing christians to allow children die from neglect yet will encourage the faithful to be pro life and condemn abortion.
“What person would not give antibiotics to an infected child unless it had something to do with religious belief?”
Lots, unfortunately. There are a whole bunch of people these days so over-the-top paranoid about “big pharma” that they reject basic medical care in favor of “sovereign silver,” herbs, onions in the socks (cures a cold, you know), essential oils, and all sorts of other nonsense. Check out any so-called crunchy parenting group, and there they are.
That Jesus fellow has caused incredible damage over the past 2000 years or so. That he was a mere myth makes the whole drama infinitely worse.
Actually, religion is just a excuse. Check out “religious exemption” in x state. Mostly it will be from non vaccination freaks. Some of the posts even ask “what religion should I say I belong to?” The answer always being that officials don’t have the right to ask you that or to investigate if you actually belong to such religion in the case you decide to come up with a name.
On the other hand, in cases of JW parents that denied their kids transfusions, the hospital gets a court order in less than 24 hs to perform it, never saw it denied. The parents beliefs can’t put a minor (who can’t decide on his beliefs or medical care) at risk.
Let me guess: the death of their child failed to shake their faith in their cult.
Reminds me of the famous Onion story:
http://www.theonion.com/article/god-answers-prayers-of-paralyzed-little-boy-475
It’s hard to see how this is any different in principle than if the Aztec religion were to experience a revival and practitioners wanted to sacrifice their virgin daughters to volcanoes. Like the girls being sacrificed, these children of faith-based healing groups have no choice but to be held slave to the religious whims of their parents. It’s not just a special place for religion that’s a problem in the laws, it’s a special place for Christianity in particular, as I’m pretty sure most Americans would not support an Aztec as they are practicing the “wrong” religion.
These are not Christians. Saying so it’s like saying that because someone who entered US territory was a terrorist, that Americans are terrorists and were the masterminds of 9/11. These are sects that capture sick and crazy people. They could claim religion but they have no idea what they are talking about or they are faking. This is not different than the Aztecs.
The problem really are the laws that to protect religious freedom are not putting the best interest of the children first. When a sect institutes mass rapes, is it protected by the law? I guess not. How is this different?
What is your criteria for saying they aren’t Christian? Historically speaking, believing that Jesus Christ was a man who lived about 2000 years ago and is also the son of God and died to redeem humanity is about as strict as you can get with criteria. Going beyond that and you’re participating in interfaith disputes among the thousands of sects that have been formed since Christianity was born.
Your analogy to Americans being terrorists here doesn’t hold because being American isn’t a belief system, it’s a nationality. I was born in America, so I’m American; it doesn’t entail any ideology, despite what some people may claim. I said we are uniquely biased towards Christianity in the sense that we seem to be much more lenient towards giving exceptions for Christian beliefs than other beliefs. Yes, if you start an interfaith dialogue, other Christian sects might have a problem with the Followers of Christ calling themselves Christians, but when it comes to national issues, it seems these disputes are brushed aside to paint everything as a secular (often conflated with atheistic) war on Christianity. I stand by my initial claim that if the Aztec religion made a comeback, the Christian Right who is constantly decrying their lack of freedom would be right there with us saying that such exemptions shouldn’t be allowed.
blockquote fail…sorry about that…
Osama Bin Laden was American. That was not the main characteristic that made him a terrorist. Just like this crazy people are not doing what they are doing because they are Christian or Jewish or atheists. In fact, many of these crazy people belong to the most varied religions or they are atheist and claim a non existent religion as the source of their craziness just to avoid the law, as so many atheists claiming religion to avoid vaccination and get a form signed.
About what makes you a Christian, it’s not believing that a person called Jesus was born but to believe in the bible and those teachings. Saying that believing in Jesus while making up or ignoring his teachings is being a Christian is the same as saying that because you visited the US or even live here, you are an American.
Moreover, stating that Christians or Jews believe in this nonsense is a generalization fallacy. Believe me, I see more cases of atheist that believe in “nature” to heal them, as well as the stars, than religious people in the same position. And I’m a doctor, I deal with them everyday.
About the 40% of Americans that believe the earth is 6000 years old…may be its not because they are Christians but because they are American…not the best educated country in the world for sure…those numbers wouldn’t surprise me if real, in USA.
Um, he was born in Saudi Arabian and was a Saudi citizen until they made him stateless in 1994. not sure what you are trying to see here.
If they believe the world is <10,00 years old, they do so because of their religious indoctrination — not because of their education (at least if taught in public schools, where good science is generally taught, including geology, geologic time, radio-isotope dating, etc.)
And: Define Christianity, if you don’t agree with calling FoC Christians.
Or, define why they should be excluded from the category of Christians: What in their doctrine prevents one from calling them Christian?
(And I don’t see Mr. Buckley making any claims that all or most or even many Christians and/or Jews believe in faith-healing.)
I never said all Christians believe this, as jblilie pointed out. The Christians in the Followers of Christ Church are the ones who believe it and you seem to have some insight as to what a “true” Christian is and that they don’t meet the criteria. I’m not making any claim about what all Christians believe outside of the traditional stance that the vast majority of them believe Jesus is the son of God and the savior of humanity and that would seem to be a pretty good rule of thumb for determining whether a religion falls under Christianity. I’ll ask again, upon what criteria do you exclude a sect from really being Christian? I’m not claiming that because a particular branch accepts faith healing that they all do, merely that your criteria of holding some irrational beliefs as being exclusionary would seem to exclude the vast majority from being “true” Christians.