Religious faith or child abuse? A new documentary investigates

In Idaho, different belief structures collide, ‘with lives hanging in the balance’, says the film’s producer, Jess Lichtenstein

Jason Wilson

The Guardian
September 22, 2018

The Followers of Christ is a Pentecostal church that believes in faith healing. Its members refuse to avail themselves, or their children, of modern medical care.

In many states this exposes them to prosecution. But in Idaho, Nixon-era religious shield laws protect them from charges of child neglect.

Critics – including ex-members – say that the Followers are getting away with murder, or something close to it. They also allege that the reclusive group permits other forms of abuse.

The Guardian shone a light on the Followers in Idaho two years ago. Now the makers of a new documentary film have gained unprecedented access to the church.

No Greater Law, directed by Tom Dumican, will be shown on A&E on Monday night, following screenings at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and a nomination for best international documentary in Britain’s Grierson Trust Awards.

No Greater Law depicts the debate over Idaho’s shield laws from a range of perspectives, including the Followers’ most vehement critics. But the film also allows the Followers of Christ to present their side of the debate, and invites them to explain how they balance the lives of their children against the demands of their church.

A central figure is Dan Sevy, whose own children have died in failed attempts at faith healing, and who now acts as an unofficial spokesman for the group. Others featured include Linda Martin and Brian Hoyt, two ex-adherents who report horrific abuse at the hands of church members, and Kieran Donohue, the sheriff of Canyon county, where most of Idaho’s Followers live.

The Guardian spoke with the film’s Portland-based producer, Jess Lichtenstein, about the process of making the film, and the tensions that run through the story.

How did you come to make a film about the Followers of Christ?

Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, the Portland journalist, had written about the trialof Followers of Christ parents in Albany, Oregon. He became fascinated and engrossed in the story and just driven to explore the issue of these faith-healing cases and something deeper beyond it.

When I read Shane’s work, I was drawn to the characters in the story. Their children’s lives hung in the balance and these outcomes were dictated by their faith. These are life and death consequences that I couldn’t imagine as an outsider.

The Followers of Christ are a somewhat reclusive group. How did you gain access?

Through the very patient, long-term, deep-access work of developing contacts in the Idaho legislature and in the [Followers] community in Idaho and Oregon.

But that community was so skeptical of journalists and the liberal media. That was a big stumbling block. We had to approach everyone by differentiating ourselves from investigative journalists, [identifying instead] as film-makers and storytellers.

There are big tensions in this story. There are people who have survived severe abuse in the church, and who actively campaign for the repeal of Idaho’s shield laws. And there are people still involved in the church, and willing to sacrifice quite a lot to adhere to the church’s doctrines. How did you negotiate that tension?

Well, I think that any story has two sides. No one is the villain of their own story.

The perspective from people like [ex-Followers] Linda Martin and Brian Hoyt, and other people who lived through experiences in the church and then left … the abuse that they suffered was unimaginable.

But when you talk to the church members, to them, the [anti-shield law activists] are outsiders trying to change their faith, trying to take their freedom away. When you are committed that way – to walk by faith and to live your life for God – then there’s no compromise. There’s no other side to see.

The people who have left the church have led very difficult lives, and it’s been a challenge for them, I think, to succeed and re-enter society in a normal way, because [they were raised] to see the world as a frightening place of outsiders who don’t understand their faith.

In the film, Willy Hughes says, “It’s like being a newborn baby. You go out into the world and it’s like everything is new, and everything is different, and you have no preparation.”

You were able to get past some of the Followers’ antagonism towards you, as representatives of the media, but there is a hostility to the secular world that’s kind of built into their worldview, right?

Yeah, they definitely feel themselves to be under scrutiny and under attack. They also see themselves as the last frontiersmen, fighting for freedom. That’s their narrative – the fight for freedom.

How do you think they expect their views to be received by the outside world? They must know that children dying from lack of medical care is something that is hard for the secular world to process as a legitimate practice.

I think they expect their beliefs to be criticized and they’re ready to stand up for their faith when it is called extremist. It’s a point of pride. It’s what separates them from the outside world – that conviction.

If there was any fear or doubt in their faith, then they wouldn’t be the individuals that they are. They know that the outside world is going to judge them and they see that as a weakness of the outside world, that the outside world’s faith is weak.

They call people outside the church “the worldly”, and it’s almost derogatory in their vernacular.

The Idaho shield laws are an artifact of the 1970s, though in Idaho some people talk like the laws have been there since time immemorial. But other jurisdictions, like Oregon, have repealed shield laws, and parents who neglect their children because of their religious beliefs have been prosecuted. Do you think the Followers understand the recent origin of these laws?

I didn’t get the sense that many Followers in Idaho were really very informed or concerned with the origins of the laws. They conflate them with the religious freedoms in the constitution.

I think, for them, biblical law governs how they see right and wrong and the law of the land is secondary. God’s law is their law and there is no greater law.

In a lot of other states, where there’s a different political climate, there is a different balance between individual and communal good. In Idaho, there’s an incredibly individualistic sentiment, and there’s a committed group of politicians who are not interested in making changes to laws that affect religious freedom.

I got the sense, talking to certain Idaho politicians, that they also think theBible and religious doctrine overrule the law of the land.

In the film, you see, at one point, that even in a state senate committee hearing, people are quoting the Bible. People are quoting God’s law and talking about healing by faith.

I did [encounter] politicians who didn’t seem to believe in a separation of church and state. Mostly because they saw it as positive that the church was involved in the state.

This seems to be a film about the deep cultural and political divides that characterize the whole country at the moment. The difference in Oregon’s and Idaho’s treatment of shield laws seems to illustrate that.

Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. We saw the film as illustrating a cultural fracture. And those divisions – those conflicts, that polarization – have never been greater.

So, that was a huge part of the film as well. It was never meant to be a film about a sinister religious group. It was a film about different belief structures colliding, with lives hanging in the balance.

From one side there was a story of villains and child abuse and a cult. From the other side, it was a story about families doing the best that they could to protect the eternal life of their children.

And to them, if their child died while they prayed, they were with God and they were saved. Even if their life wasn’t saved, their soul was saved, and that’s hard for most outsiders to accept.

It’s about a refusal to compromise, and an absolute commitment to faith regardless of the cost. There’s a support and admiration for that stance in the Idaho legislature.

Dan Sevy is a central character. He seems to have an informal position interfacing with the outside world, turning up to hearings, talking to journalists, taking the church’s message to the outside world. He is a compelling character. Were you persuaded that he is living as the dictates of his conscience require?

Dan Sevy was an incredible person to get to know. He really shattered a lot of my preconceived notions, and I think for everyone that worked on the film. [Sevy] is a very likable, charismatic, outgoing person. He’s a showman. He’s a musician. He’s charming. I think that through the film, you really identify with him, and he’s been through an incredible amount and had his faith tested at many turns. I didn’t always agree with things he would say, but it wasn’t my job to judge him.

His faith has been tested because he’s lost kids?

He’s lost numerous children to a genetic condition and has witnessed them suffer terribly over the years. He and his family cared for them in the way their faith dictated and in a way the outside world finds unbelievable.

The film shows [Canyon County] Sheriff Donahue and Dan Sevy in conflict. As the drama of the film unfolds, you see two men with their own moral codes. Both are men of faith. Sheriff Donahue’s a Catholic with a very strong faith. They’re both trying to protect children in these opposing ways.

Dan said to us early on [that] he wanted to warp our minds, and I think he did.

It was our job to bring his story out and to tell it, and I think that we did. That’s what we wanted to do, to bring people into the Followers’ world – to see the faith the way they see it, to see politics the way they see it, to see religious freedom the way they see it.

Speaking of going into their world, you attended Followers of Christ services, right? What was that like?

It wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t a Pentecostal, snake-handling, theatrical, speaking-in-tongues spectacle. It was very austere, very soft-spoken. Elders of the church read passages and people give testimony that’s very personal, and their services are very simple. They speak about their experiences and how God has touched them or healed them or tested them in that week or month and what that meant to them.

It was very eye-opening to see that, especially given what we knew as outsiders. All we knew was about the child mortality rate and about the way that medical care is denied in favour of prayer.

The film is visually very strong. It’s especially beautiful in its treatment of the landscape of that part of Idaho.

I think that was inevitable. We couldn’t help but showcase the Snake River Valley, because anywhere you point a camera is this incredible western landscape.

The landscape, the characters – [everything] made an almost natural western. I give a lot of credit to our cinematographer, Arthur Mulhern, for the visual scope that he brought to the film and to the screen.

It was a great privilege to bring that Idaho landscape to the screen. Idaho’s really a character in the film.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.



https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/sep/22/religious-faith-or-child-abuse-a-new-documentary-investigates

Are decades of needless child deaths a thing of the past for the Followers of Christ?

Travis and Sarah Mitchell

By Aimee Green

The Oregonian/OregonLive
July 15, 2018

Prosecutors hope a groundbreaking statement by the young parents who failed to summon medical help before one of their newborn twins died marks a turning point for the faith-healing Followers of Christ in Oregon.

At least two dozen children of church members have died since the 1950s because they didn’t get the medical help they needed to survive treatable ailments ranging from pneumonia to a urinary tract obstruction.

One of them was the premature daughter of Sarah and Travis Mitchell on March 5 last year.

“We should have sought adequate medical care for our children and everyone in the church should always seek adequate medical care for our children,” reads the statement signed by both Mitchells.

The couple had embraced a church-based philosophy of shunning modern medicine and relying on prayer instead. They didn’t call 911 when their twins struggled after a home birth. At their sentencing Monday in Clackamas County Circuit Court, the Mitchells each received six years and eight months in prison and renounced their once-held belief in prayer alone.

Adding weight to their declaration was a third signature, that of Walter “Matt” White, a patriarch of the church. He’s the father of Sarah Mitchell and the son of the late Walter White, who began the Oregon City church in the 1930s.

As part of the Mitchells' plea deal, the document must be posted in the 1,000-member church for all to see.

“Our hope is that this is the tipping point -- the point where things turn around and people are given the excuse to do what they need to do, what they want to do,” said Bryan Brock, one of the Clackamas County deputy district attorneys who prosecuted the Mitchells.

In the past decade, Brock’s office has filed charges against the parents of four deceased children for medical neglect.

The extraordinary public shift by the founder’s family illuminates a divide that has grown in the church for years, say both those inside and outside the community. Some church members have quietly but regularly sought medical intervention when needed.

Others have wanted to do the same but have felt peer pressure from a core group that believes seeing a doctor represents a weakness in faith. “They don’t want the scorn,” Brock said, and so follow the strict line.

The core group believes that anointing the ill with olive oil and praying is the best and only course of action.

The questions now are: Have the Mitchells had a true change of heart? And why would Walter “Matt” White sign the statement after a lifetime of believing so strongly in faith-based healing?

No one contacted from the church by The Oregonian/OregonLive is talking.

Calls to the church’s phone remained unanswered and people at the church and White’s home declined comment. The church also hasn’t had a designated leader since its founder died in 1969. Sarah and Travis Mitchell’s attorneys -- Steve Houze, Jacob Houze and Jason Thompson -- also declined to comment.

Faith healing appears to be on the decline nationwide, said Rita Swan, whose toddler son died of meningitis in 1977 in Michigan after she embraced faith healing. She has traveled the country for decades lobbying for change.

Some of the credit goes to states that have repealed laws exempting faith healers from criminal prosecution, Swan said. Oregon is among 21 states that currently offer parents no legal protections against criminal charges. Swan temporarily moved to Salem in 2011 to help lobby for the changes to Oregon law.

But mindsets are changing, too, Swan said. Followers of Christ live like most everyone else and have been exposed to mainstream ideas, she said.

They hold down regular jobs and many send their children to public schools. They also have TVs -- and computers to privately search the internet and learn about the science of disease, she said.

“They can also find out there are people who are critical of their church,” Swan said.

Church member Marshall Phillips, now in his early 40s, told Clackamas County sheriff’s investigators that he’s a lifelong Follower of Christ and he grew up believing that doctors must be avoided at all costs. But then as an adult, he couldn’t find anywhere in scripture that said he must rely solely on prayer when medical emergencies strike.

He said several years ago he rushed his preteen son to Randall Children’s Hospital in North Portland after the boy became lethargic and started breathing oddly. His son fell into a coma, but medical staff saved him. They diagnosed him with diabetes and the boy had stabilized his condition by monitoring his blood sugar and injecting himself with insulin.

Phillips suspected that other members of the church looked down at him for bringing his son to the hospital. His son lost some friends, he said, and adults in the church appeared to avoid him.

“You kind of get more of like the silent treatment from some people,” Phillips said. “You know they disapprove of what you’ve done, but they don’t want to talk to you about it.”

If Sarah and Travis Mitchell had been convicted of the most serious charge against them -- murder by abuse -- they would have been sentenced to life in prison with a 25-year minimum.

The prosecution’s case against the Mitchells was strong. But so was their defense.

Prosecutors would have pointed out that Sarah Mitchell, then 24, hadn’t visited a doctor in the seven months leading up to her labor and that she told investigators that she learned all she needed to know from the book “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”

Travis Mitchell, then 21, also said he read from parts of the book. It warns of the serious dangers of underdeveloped lungs in premature babies -- especially those born as early as their twins, at 32 weeks.

Prosecutors also planned to argue that the Mitchells certainly would have known there was something unmistakably wrong in the four hours from when the twin took her first breath to when she took her last.

The 3-pound, 6-ounce girl they named Ginnifer was half the size of a typical newborn. She would have worked desperately to breathe, turning from pink to blue or purple as her body became deprived of oxygen, medical experts said.

Sarah Mitchell’s older sister, Shannon Hickman, had given birth to a two-month premature baby in the same bedroom of their parents’ house in 2009. The boy, David, died nine hours later from underdeveloped lungs after no one called 911. Sarah Mitchell was there for the birth, and she testified at her sister’s trial and knew the danger of not seeking medical care for Ginnifer, prosecutors planned to argue.

A series of texts between church members show that word quickly spread that both babies were small and struggling. Within seven minutes of the first twin’s birth, one texted, “It’s a girl, just heard small. Bad breathing.” Half an hour later, after Ginnifer was born, another member texted “not good breathing.”

About 2 ½ half hours later, a birthing assistant who helped with the delivery texted that Ginnifer “keeps changing colors. She’ll get dark and then (pink) back up.”

One text explained that people at the house were laying hands on Ginnifer and asking for other members elsewhere to pray. About half an hour later, the newborn was dead.

Brock, the deputy district attorney, said he would have contended during a trial that the Mitchells had to have known their daughter was losing the battle for her life if news of her struggles was making it to members of the church miles away.

“How could it be that these people who are not even there know the condition of your child better than you do?” Brock said. “How is that possible?”

Defense attorneys could have made strong arguments that the first-time parents weren’t in control or aware of the serious health crisis facing their tiny daughters, as 20 or more church members crowded into the house.

Sarah Mitchell told investigators that she was focused on herself because she was in enormous pain, having just delivered twins -- a surprise discovery. The first baby also was breech, and she received no pain medication.

Sarah Mitchell said she didn’t hold Ginnifer before the women who helped with the birth whisked the newborn away to a warm bathroom. A birthing assistant later told a prosecutor that she had briefly placed the baby on Sarah Mitchell’s chest.

Travis Mitchell told investigators that he’d never seen a newborn baby before.

He described first holding her at some point later in the day when he was called to the bathroom because she was struggling. He said she looked pink, and he rubbed olive oil on her and prayed through his tears. Then she died.

He repeatedly said he didn’t know how much time had passed from the moment he learned Ginnifer was in trouble to the moment she died.

Jurors also might have viewed the Mitchells and their church favorably for abiding by a standing agreement with authorities to call the medical examiner’s office to notify it of any child deaths.

If a church representative hadn’t voluntarily called the office, police and prosecutors might have never learned of the death and the Mitchells could have avoided prosecution.

Both Mitchells also sat down with detectives for extensive interviews.

In the end, the Mitchells pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and first-degree criminal mistreatment.

Shortly after her sister’s death, Evylen, the surviving baby, was placed with Phillips, a distant cousin of the Mitchells’.

Phillips told investigators that the Oregon Department of Human Services entrusted him with the child because he had a proven track record of seeking medical care for his son.

Child protective workers told Phillips that Evylen might live with him for weeks or even years.

Until the Mitchells’ sentencing Monday, child welfare workers had been taking Evylen -- now 16 months old -- to the Clackamas County Jail for weekly visits with her parents.

It’s not impossible that the Mitchells could regain custody of their daughter when they’re released from prison, child custody experts say.

But that’s with one big caveat, lawyers say: They must stand by their written statement and promise they’ll always seek medical care for her whenever needed.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com


https://www.oregonlive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/07/c6430fe46a2145/are-decades-of-needless-child.html

When a faith-healing sect's children die, one Idaho sheriff wants to investigate. First, he needs the law on his side

Nigel Duara
Los Angeles Times
April 18, 2017

The coroner’s van pulled into the driveway sometime after midnight, and for a moment — her dead daughter in her arms — LaTisha Shippy hated God.

“I had hate in my heart for him,” Shippy said. “I questioned my faith, and why this was happening. You don’t lose four children and not have some of that.”

Canyon County Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris found Shippy in bed and the baby’s body, cleaned and dressed, on a changing table in another room. “It was apparent that she had been dead for a while, as the skin was slipping off the entire torso of the baby,” DeGeus-Morris wrote in a coroner’s report.

The baby had been dead inside Shippy's womb for days, DeGeus-Morris concluded, and yet Shippy had sought no medical help when she’d felt the nearly full-term baby stop moving. She and her fellow Followers of Christ consider professional medicine an engine of the devil. Instead, she had prayed.

In most states, failing to seek medical care for a nearly 40-week-old fetus might be a crime. Idaho is one of at least four states that provide religious groups broad exemptions from criminal prosecution and civil liability for the deaths of children attributable to medical neglect.

In deep-red Idaho, where the right to be left alone trumps all ideologies, lawmakers have repeatedly rejected proposed changes to the law that would impose criminal or civil penalties for failing to seek medical care for children with life-threatening conditions.

But a growing resistance to Idaho's faith-healing statute is building here in the suburbs west of Boise, home to a group of Followers of Christ, a small Christian denomination that believes in faith healing and strict shunning of those who stray from the church’s teachings.

Faced with three deaths linked to faith healing in the county over the last four months, Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue has launched a campaign to change the law, and remove any religious exemptions for the legal obligation to seek medical care for children.

Donahue believes the law allows children to die unnecessarily, and painfully, in ways that the Followers of Christ may not medically understand. He has formed a unit in his department to investigate the death of every child connected to the group — and hopes his findings will prompt the coroner to conduct more complete death examinations of the children.

In Canyon County, children of church members have died from pneumonia, infection of the fetal membrane, failure to administer insulin for diabetes and other preventable causes, and critics say public officials have accepted the deaths too easily.

In the Shippy case, breaking with the custom of most American death investigations — especially those involving a child — DeGeus-Morris did not take the baby’s body with her or call the sheriff.

“It’s an atrocity,” said Donahue, 54, who first investigated faith-healing deaths as a Canyon County deputy. “If it was cattle being treated like this, no medical care, in distress, if you saw that from the street, we’d have a search warrant and we’d be kicking down doors.”

Donahue testified before a Senate committee in March, arguing that adults should be held criminally liable when they fail to seek medical help for seriously ailing children.

“I’ve heard we don’t want to criminalize the parent. If the parent is criminal, we need to prosecute,” he said. “It’s an embarrassment to our state.”

But Donahue may have been too optimistic about the Legislature's intentions.

“Do you think that bill is going to pass?” Majority Leader Bart Davis asked on the Senate floor during debate later that month. “It won’t. Because this body is reluctant to punish people criminally for a firmly held religious belief.”

Like previous attempts to change the legislation, the bill was killed on the Senate floor.

Legislators from the Canyon County area vigorously defend the Followers’ right to their religious beliefs, and DeGeus-Morris appears to be conducting few investigations of the deaths of Followers’ children. The Canyon County prosecutor, citing the exemptions granted religious groups, doesn’t take potential cases of medical neglect if the family involved is a member of the Followers of Christ church.

Each year, on average, three children in Idaho die of causes for which they would have otherwise been hospitalized, according to a gubernatorial task force, and the child mortality rate among the Followers of Christ from 2002 to 2011 was 10 times that of the rest of Idaho.

Yet the church has found sympathetic ears in powerful quarters.

At a news conference in January, Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill said legislators want to recognize religious beliefs and help children. “Most of the people in this room believe that God can help heal,” he said.

::

Dan Sevy’s voice is low and measured, the twang of his career as a country music singer lying heavy on every vowel. He has made a powerful ally in the Legislature, and when he told a Senate subcommittee about his two sons’ lungs filling with fluids as they slowly drowned in their own bodies, his voice never wavered.

“We happen to practice what you call faith healing,” Sevy told committee members. “As far as adherence to any law, who do you better obey, God or man?”

Sevy has become the public face of the Followers of Christ, in part because of his relationship to Idaho state Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, who represents Sevy’s district. Sevy’s band served as the musical entertainment for one of Lodge’s fundraisers last year, and she has emerged as one of the strongest voices opposing changes to the faith-healing law. She is not a member of the church.

“These are good people,” Lodge said. “They have a right to live as the law allows them without interference, that is what our Constitution [grants] them.”

On March 30, 2011, Sevy’s 14-year-old son Rockwell was reported dead after having been ill for “about two weeks,” according to DeGeus-Morris’ report. He had been running a fever and experiencing difficulty breathing, the report said, and died in his mother’s lap. Three years earlier, in 2008, DeGeus-Morris had issued the death certificate for Rockwell’s older brother, Gabriel Joe, 17. The cause of death was pneumonia.

In both cases, she confirmed the deaths, noted a lack of outward signs of trauma and left the bodies to the family.

In most death investigations in the U.S., the coroner is responsible for the body and the police are responsible for the scene. Donahue has been critical of the Canyon County coroner’s office for failing to call in his department in these cases — a policy that he said could result in a dangerous assumption about the nature of the death while also potentially corrupting the scene.

Without an autopsy or sign of violence listed in the coroner’s report, Donahue has no legal right to look into the deaths. And on the rare occasion when he thinks he might have a case, Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney Bryan Taylor or his deputies inform Donahue that they cannot prosecute because of Idaho’s religious shield law.

Taylor deferred questions to a county spokesman, who said Taylor follows Idaho law and is interested in protecting all of Idaho’s children. DeGeus-Morris did not respond to questions and asked a reporter to leave her office.

According to Idaho law, coroners must conduct a death investigation in certain cases, such as stillborn children without a known disease, or for deaths unattended by a physician. But Idaho investigators are limited by the final clause in the statute making an exemption for faith healing: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the tenets of any church or religious belief.”

Edwin Sonnenberg, a retired coroner in nearby Ada County, said he tried, with limited success, to get Followers of Christ families to notify his office of stillbirths or deaths, especially of children.

Failure to do so could pose a risk to the community, especially if a person died of a communicable disease, he said.

“The coroner’s responsibility is to protect the citizens of a county,” Sonnenberg said. “If you’re not sure why a child died, just because you’re with a good family, doesn’t mean you just wash your hands of it.”

Officers from the investigative unit Donahue formed say they are hampered by their inability to obtain search warrants or preserve potential crime scenes. “If the law was the other way around, it’d be a totally different situation,” said Lt. Mike Armstrong, who heads the unit.

In nearly every instance involving the Followers of Chirst, the scene of a child’s death is corrupted, Donahue said. Bodies are moved, the scene is cleaned and witnesses to the death will not respond to questions from police officers. Deputies may not be called to the scene for hours after the coroner responds.

“They’ll just stare at you, not saying a word. And at that point, our crime scene is gone. All we have is a body,” Donahue said. “We don’t know whether they killed the kid, whether they starved the kid to death — we don’t know.”

Shippy and her husband have lost two other infants during childbirth, a girl and a boy. Another son died at 2 months old. In all, just three of their seven children are still alive. Such a grim litany is not uncommon for the Followers of Christ.

The latest in the Shippy family was the baby girl named Fern Lilly, who stopped moving inside her mother three days before her stillbirth on Nov. 27, 2014.

“Of course there was sorrow. Nobody wants to see their child die,” Shippy said in an interview. “Then I felt peace and I felt comfort in the knowledge that the Lord had taken her.

“Where else would I rather her be than with God?”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-idaho-children-20170418-story.html

Autopsy: Infant born to faith healer died from prematurity

Followers of Christ Church

GILLIAN FLACCUS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 15, 2017

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon's chief medical examiner said Tuesday that an infant born to members of a church that practices faith healing died from complications of prematurity as authorities conducted a criminal investigation into the child's death.

The baby, Gennifer, was probably "a couple of months" premature and her lungs were too underdeveloped to allow her to breath unassisted for long, Dr. Karen Gunson, the chief medical examiner, said in a phone interview.

Clackamas County sheriff's investigators will present the case to prosecutors but have not finished interviewing witnesses, Sgt. Brian Jensen told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

She died a few hours after her birth at her grandparents' home on March 5 in Oregon City, where the Followers of Christ Church is based. Her birth was attended by three traditional midwives, family members and other church members, authorities have said.

No one called 911 when the baby began to have trouble breathing, Jensen said.

A deputy medical examiner responding to a call about Gennifer's death noticed the surviving twin, Evelyn, was also struggling and called law enforcement, who persuaded the parents to get her medical treatment.

That baby girl is doing well in the neonatal intensive care unit at Oregon Health & Science University, Gunson said.

"Given the fact that her sister is doing pretty well, I suspect she probably would have done pretty well too," she said. "I can't tell you for sure whether she would have survived, but the fact is, there's a twin that is doing well."

Gennifer and Evelyn's parents, 24-year-old Sarah Mitchell and 21-year-old Travis Mitchell, did not return a telephone message seeking comment. Gunson said Sarah Mitchell did not know how far along the pregnancy was because the mother received no prenatal care.

The church, which operates in Oregon and Idaho, has about 1,000 members and is rooted in Pentecostalism, although it is not affiliated with any denomination.

Members believe in a literal translation of the Scripture, which states that faith will heal all and if someone dies, it is God's will. The congregation shuns traditional medicine in favor of prayer, the laying on of hands and anointing the sick with oils.

Several members of the church have been convicted of crimes for failing to seek medical care for their children, including Sarah Mitchell's sister and brother-in-law. Children born to church members have also died in Idaho.

In 2011, a judge sentenced Sarah Mitchell's sister and brother-in-law to more than six years in prison after a manslaughter conviction in the death of their son, David. The boy was born prematurely and weighed less than 4 pounds.

An autopsy determined he died of staph pneumonia and complications from a premature birth, including underdeveloped lungs.

Another couple was convicted that same year of first-degree criminal mistreatment and sentenced to 90 days in jail for not getting medical treatment for their infant daughter, who developed an abnormal mass of blood vessels across her face and left eye.

A third couple was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced to 16 months in prison after their 15-year-old son died of a urinary tract blockage.

Of 78 children buried in the church's cemetery from 1955 to 1998, at least 21 could have been saved by medical intervention, according to a 1998 analysis by The Oregonian.

In 1999, state lawmakers passed a law that eliminated religious protections in cases of second-degree manslaughter and first- and second-degree criminal mistreatment.

The law left religious immunity in place for some other crimes but gave prosecutors more options for charging parents in such cases.

Repeated attempts to pass bills in Idaho to loosen religious exemptions in such cases have failed.

A vigil for the dead children of the church's members is planned by former church member Linda Martin at the Idaho statehouse on March 21.

https://apnews.com/0616781dfb5f4b339671501c61e6fe8d

Investigation begun in death of baby born to Followers of Christ Church members

Followers of Christ Church

Jim Ryan

The Oregonian/OregonLive
March 09, 2017

The Clackamas County Sheriff's Office is investigating the death of a baby born to members of a church that spurns traditional medical treatment and whose members have been convicted in previous child deaths.

The girl was one of two born Sunday to Sarah and Travis Lee Mitchell, who are members of Oregon City's faith-healing Followers of Christ Church, the sheriff's office said in a news release. The surviving girl was admitted into OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, deputies said.

Previous cases

In four recent cases, parents from Oregon City's Followers of Christ church were held criminally responsible for failing to provide medical care for their children.

Dale and Shannon Hickman: The Hickmans, who are related to Sarah and Travis Lee Mitchell, received the mandatory minimum prison term under Measure 11 sentencing guidelines for failing to seek medical care for their son, who was born two months prematurely in 2009 and lived less than nine hours. An autopsy found he had staph pneumonia and underdeveloped lungs.

Raylene and Carl Brent Worthington: Fifteen-month-old Ava Worthington died in 2008 at her parents' home of bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection. Her parents conducted faith-healing rituals but never sought medical treatment. Carl Worthington was convicted of misdemeanor criminal mistreatment and sentenced to two months in jail. Raylene Worthington was acquitted on all charges.

Jeffrey and Marci Beagley: 15-year-old Neil Beagley, brother of Raylene Worthington, became ill from a urinary tract blockage and died two weeks later in June 2008. The Beagleys said they followed their son's wishes in treating him only with prayer and faith healing. Both parents were convicted of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Timothy and Rebecca Wyland: As an infant, Alayna Wyland developed an abnormal mass of blood vessels that grew across her face and engulfed her left eye. Child protection authorities took custody, and Alayna improved under court-ordered care. The Wylands were convicted of first-degree criminal mistreatment and sentenced in 2011 to 90 days in jail.

-- The Oregonian/OregonLive

Sarah Mitchell's sister and brother-in-law were sentenced in 2011 to more than six years in prison in the death of their newborn son, who died less than nine hours after he was born in 2009.

Sarah Mitchell, 24, delivered the girls Sunday afternoon at her parents' home on South Loder Road in Oregon City.

The second newborn developed apparent breathing problems and died in the home a few hours later, deputies said.

None of the midwives or family and church members who witnessed the birth called 911, according to the sheriff's office. The agency said a church elder contacted the county medical examiner's office to report the death.

The medical examiner determined the surviving newborn required medical treatment and called law enforcement officers to the home. The officers persuaded the Mitchells to pursue professional medical treatment for the surviving infant, who they believe was born several weeks premature.

The medical examiner's office finished its autopsy of the dead infant Monday but is still investigating her cause of death, deputies said.

Detectives will give the results of the sheriff's office's investigation to the county district attorney's office, which will consider charges.

The church doesn't have formal leadership and isn't connected to any mainstream denomination, according to a 2009 Oregonian/OregonLive report. Its origins are in the late 19th century's faith-healing Pentecostal movement, according to the report.

Detectives ask anyone who has information about the newborn's death to call the sheriff's office tip line, 503-723-4949, or fill out an online form. Tipsters should reference case No. 17-6024.

-- Jim Ryan
jryan@oregonian.com
503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2017/03/deputies_investigating_death_o.html

God's will vs. medicine: Does Faith Tabernacle beliefs put children at risk?

By Ivey DeJesus
Pennlive.com
February 16, 2017

Denise Houseman was near death. She weighed 98 pounds and was bedridden with a high fever and open ulcers over her abdomen.

The year was 1985, and Houseman, then 17, had Crohn's disease but had never been seen by a doctor. Her family's church -- Faith Tabernacle -- forbade it.

Houseman was told to pray harder.

Denise Houseman, a former member of Faith Tabernacle, a faith-healing church, says she was near death in 1985 when her brother, who had left the church took her to Polyclinic Hospital in Harrisburg. Houseman furnished this photo of her from her 1984 yearbook.


A fundamental church, Faith Tabernacle rejects any form of medical care. The church believes disease is a moral issue, the result of being out of relationship with God. The remedy must be a spiritual one.

These believes have once again come under scrutiny after the death of toddler whose parents -- members of Faith Tabernacle --abided by their religious convictions and relied on prayer rather than medicine.

Ella Grace Foster was two when she died in November from pneumonia. Authorities say she likely would have survived had she received medical care.

Authorities earlier this month charged Jonathan and Grace Foster of Berks County with involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. The Fosters, who are members of Mechanicsburg-based Faith Tabernacle congregation, attributed the toddler's death to "God's will."

"Any illness or injuries that occur within their lives are considered acts of God, and they leave all of their faith in God to keep them safe, healthy and debt free," Jonathan Foster told authorities, according to court records.

Ella's death adds to the roster of children who every year die as a result of having been denied medical attention on the grounds of religious convictions. In almost all the cases, children have died from diseases or conditions that could have been treated with medicine.

Pennsylvania is one of 32 states that offer a religious exemption to state child abuse protection laws. The statute extends a religious defense, in civil court, to parents who rely on spiritual treatment in accordance with their faith's beliefs.

That exemption does not protect them from criminal prosecution. Religious exemptions don't apply in cases in which a child dies.

"We've failed our children here," said Dr. Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and long-time advocate dedicated to overturning Pennsylvania's religious exemption. "I think this in many ways is America's dirty little secret."

Offit was a young pediatrician in Philadelphia in the early 1990s when a nationwide measles outbreak surfaced in the Faith Tabernacle school in the city.

Faced with a catastrophic public health crisis, health officials scrambled to secure legal remedies to compel Faith Tabernacle parents to vaccinate their children. By the time the court order was handed down, the measles outbreak had claimed the lives of nine children, six of them belonging to the church.

Living the faith

In 1985, Houseman's condition was so grave, her older brother, who by then had left the church, drove her to Polyclinic Hospital in Harrisburg.

She spent three weeks in intensive care, not once visited by relatives. Upon her release from hospital, Houseman walked away from her church and never looked back.

Even so, she argues that Faith Tabernacle parents are good parents.

Denise Houseman, a former member of the Faith Tabernacle church, nearly died in 1985 from complications of Crohn's disease. She believes the law should compel parents to seek medical care for sick children, and prohibit them from relying on faith-healing practices. Houseman lives in Newberry Township, Cumberland County.

"These are good people," said Houseman, who lives in Fairview Township with her husband and two sons. "They are not monsters. These are people who are working with other people in the community. They don't take a penny from the state. They work two and three jobs. They bring up kids with ethics... They are hardworking and responsible."

PennLive tried repeatedly to speak to Faith Tabernacle leadership for this story. Requests were not granted.

Houseman acknowledges that the idea of putting a child's life at risk in the name of religion might be an unfathomable conviction for some people.

"It's not cut and dry," she said. "For people to say horrible things about the Fosters, well they are just being judgmental. These are good people who don't know any better."

Houseman was one of 11 children of Fred and Jeannette Zehring of Harrisburg. The family attended the Faith Tabernacle congregation once located off 19th Street. The church closed its doors some years ago and was absorbed by sister congregations in Lebanon, Mechanicsburg and Philadelphia.

Houseman and her siblings -- like all children of the Faith Tabernacle community -- attended the church school. Faith Tabernacle, which had evolved out of the healing movement that flourished in the U.S. in the late 1800s, espouses an insular community shielded from outside influence.

Should religious beliefs come before children's health in Pennsylvania?

In recent decades the deaths of dozens of children across Pennsylvania caused by denial of medical care on religious grounds have highlighted the need for reform. Here's a rundown of some of the cases.
Faith Tabernacle families are generally big; a family of 12 is not uncommon. Houseman's yearbooks, The Tab-let, depict a wholesome community. Classes were relatively small, and many of the children and faculty are linked by marriage and blood lines.

Women wear only dresses. Slacks, the church teaches, show off a woman's figure. Families eschew television, radio and popular music. All have the potential of leading the into sin.

"Life was very simple," Houseman said. "Is that really a bad thing? There was a lot of good in it."

Faith Tabernacle rejects any and all forms of medical intervention, from vaccinations to visits to the doctor's office.

Church members are forbidden to wear glasses or hearing aids. They may not use canes or walkers. Children are not vaccinated. Aspirin, Advil, cough syrup, thermometers -- anything not directly linked to prayer -- is forbidden. Herbal teas that impart medicinal properties, such as chamomile tea, are banned.

Women are forbidden to use tampons (the church believes they compromise a woman's virtue). Midwives are not allowed during childbirth, although the presence of an experienced woman is not discouraged. Alcohol and cigarettes are rigorously banned, as is premarital sex.

"It's a way of life," Houseman said. "If you are not exposed to anything else, how do you know any different, unless you are put to the test or something like this."

Former member of Faith Tabernacle nearly died because of her faith
Rita Swan says dogmatic faiths typically foster strong bonds among its flocks, the church community providing a powerful support network for an otherwise marginalized group.

"This sets up a sense of superiority to mainstream culture that can be dangerous," said Swan, whose own story emerged out a faith healing community.

In 1977, Swan and husband Douglas were devout members of the Christian Science church. That year, the condition of their son Matthew, who had been sick with high fevers, began to deteriorate.

"We were told to have more faith in God," she recalls.

Against the wishes and orders of their church, the Swans took their child to the hospital, but it was too late. Diagnosed with meningitis, Matthew died after a week in the ICU.

Death of 2-year-old was 'God's will' say parents who don't believe in medical treatment
Two-year-old Ella Foster died of pneumonia last November in her father's arms, after her parents failed to get her any medical treatment because it is against their religion.

The Swans left the church. For the past 40 years, Rita Swan has been on a mission to overturn religious exemptions at the state level across the country.

Faith-healing communities themselves remain a formidable opponent.

"Religion is not something that encourages a lot of skepticism," said Swan, head of Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, or CHILD, a Lexington, Ky.-based nonprofit that works to end religion-based child medical neglect across the country. "Every religion has an area where you can't ask questions and you have to accept it. With Catholics it's the pope. With fundamentalists it's the Bible. With Christian Scientists and charismatic Pentecostals, it's their faith healing."

In the absence of scientific rationale for disease, faith healing traditions affirm by trial and error their conviction that God can intercede in all illnesses, conditions and diseases.

"They all have experiences of being sick and they prayed and then the symptoms changed and they are predisposed to believe that God affected this," Swan said. "It's very precious to them. That's how God becomes real to them."

The death of her son Matthew (pictured here) in 1977 propelled Rita Swan to become a advocate for the repeal of religious exemption laws. Swan was then a member of the Christian Science Church, which believes in faith healing. Swan is head of Childrenas Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, or CHILD, a Lexington, Ky.-based nonprofit that works to end religion-based child medical neglect across the country.

Such intervention is unlikely to have an impact in cases of Type 1 diabetes or bacterial meningitis.

"What happens with faith-healing folks when their children die is that they stand back and say 'I need to get close to God. I need to pray more,'" said Offit, author of the book, "Bad Faith: When religious belief undermines modern medicine."

"They don't say 'I just let my child die unnecessarily. As a parent your job is to protect. You give up your life for your own child. To say you caused your child's death is the hardest thing to do."

Exemptions in the law books

Pennsylvania's religious exemption law, like all others across the country, is a vestige of the Nixon administration.

Prominent in Richard Nixon's cabinet were two members of the Christian Science faith: H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, whose historic footnote would be sealed not by provisions in health law but their role in the Watergate scandal.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman used their power and influence to shepherd into federal law provisions that exempted from prosecution members of faith-healing churches, of which Christian Science is one.  In order for states to receive federal funding, they had to extend religious exemptions to faith-healing communities.

The federal standard has been revised, but the 49 states that passed the law (Nebraska abstained) have had to deal with the state statutes. At least seven have repealed them. Six others, including Idaho, offer a faith-based shield for felony crimes such as manslaughter.


Religious exemption laws in the U.S. have their origins in the Nixon administration. Two members of Nixon's cabinet - H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, both Christian Scientists - used their power and influence to push the provisions into law. Both were imprisoned for 18 months for their role in the Watergate conspiracy. Haldeman died at the age of 67 in 1993. Ehrlichman died at 73 in 1999.

Over the years, the statutes have been at the center of court cases involving scores of children who have died as a result of a family's religious defense.

In Pennsylvania, the Faith Tabernacle and the Amish communities account for many of those deaths. The latter do not have doctrinal opposition to medical care, but tend to favor natural remedies. In addition, the Amish tend to stay away from medical care out of concern that it will burden the faith community. The Amish do not subscribe to health insurance and believe that the community as a whole should bear the cost of a family's medical expense.

The courts, however, have been relatively lenient over the years.

In 2013, for instance, Naomi and John Stoltzfus of Lancaster County pled guilty to charges in the death of their child, who died April 21 of that year of sepsis caused by pneumonia. The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare cited the case as:

"The parents stated that the child had been sick for 10 days with high fevers for a period of eight days. The parents are of the Amish faith and stated that they were using natural remedies to treat the child."
Authorities determined that the child could have been treated and would have survived with prompt medical attention and as little as $5 worth of medication. The parents were both charged with one count misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child and one count misdemeanor recklessly endangering another person.

They were sentenced to seven years of probation and ordered to attend parenting classes.

"The Amish almost never are challenged," Swan said. "There is an awful lot of sentiment about them. People respect these quaint passivist people ... they are gentle conscientious objectors."

Amish  

Although the Amish do not have doctrinal opposition to medicine, they tend to prefer natural healing methods and shy away from seeking medical care because they do not subscribe to health insurance.


In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case, Pennsylvania's child abuse law was strengthened in 2014. The law holds that religious exemption does not apply in cases where failure to provide needed medical or surgical care causes the death of the child.

The law allows Children and Youth Services to monitor and intervene even if there is a religious exemption. The religious exemption provision does not relieve the obligation of mandated reporters.

Pennsylvania's new law reinforced provisions pertaining to child abuse but left the religious exemption provision intact.

Drawing new lines

Child advocates and the medical community largely acknowledge the right to religious freedom, but most want to draw a line when it comes to the welfare of children.

"This is a case where the personal views of the parents involved caused them to not seek routine health care for a condition that could have been treated and resulted in a child remaining alive," Dr. Benjamin Levi, a medical ethicist at Penn State Milton S. Hershey School of Medicine, said of the Foster case. "That violates legal guidelines and violates ethical tenets and basic societal norms."

Faith Tabernacle

A non-denomination and fundamental sect, Faith Tabernacle prohibits any form of medical care - immunization to pain killers, eye care or doctor's visit. The faith group has churches in Lebanon, Carlisle and Mechanicsburg.
Ivey DeJesus/PennLive

Maria McColgan, a child abuse pediatrician, wants to see the pendulum swing in favor of children and away from religious freedom.

"A two-year-old child is too young to choose to die and choose not to seek medical care because of religious reasons," said McColgan, a pediatric advisor with Prevent Child Abuse in Pennsylvania and pediatrician at the CARES Institute in New Jersey, which specializes in treatment for abused children.

"Children have the right to medical care. They have a right to live. It's not fair for a parent to impose their belief on them to the point of death."

Physicians, in fact, routinely petition courts to override the wishes of parents who oppose medical care for their sick children on ideological or religious views grounds. Often, the request is summarily granted.

"If a child is at risk from a treatable condition," Levi said. "I don't know any responsible medical professional who would let that child die because the parents did not believe in medical treatment."

When accommodations can be made, most medical professionals will work to respect the parent, Levi said. For example, when working with patients of the Jehovah Witness faith, which prohibit blood transfusions, a physician might delay blood transfusion and allow the condition to revert itself.

"There are a varieties of different ways to try to accommodate deeply held religious beliefs," Levi said.

Child protection services are mandated by law to monitor children deemed at risk and intervene when it appears the condition will result in the death of the child or cause long-term adverse health conditions.

That doesn't always guarantee that a child's death will be averted.

In recent years, among the more than two dozen deaths in Pennsylvania involving faith healing, child protection services had visited the child's home and checked on the children in most cases.

In such cases, Children and Youth Services generally can't be held responsible unless it can be demonstrated that they knew the child was going to die.

"Lots of people have pneumonia and don't die," said Lucy Johnston-Walsh, a clinical professor of law at Penn State Dickinson School of Law and director of the Center on Children and the Law.  "Did they know it wasn't serious and do nothing?"


Trying to convince legislatures to repeal religious exemptions remains a perennial battle for advocates, particularly amid the growing tide of conservative legislatures that favor religious freedoms.

The tide has been turning, and nowhere as dramatically as in Oregon.

Beginning in the late 1990s and into 2009, Oregon saw a string of high-profile children's deaths in the reclusive Followers of Christ church in Oregon City. The compelling and troubling deaths attracted international attention and compelled Swan to move to Oregon and join coalitions and advocates intent on striking the religious exemption provisions from the law.

Advocates succeeded. In 2009, the Oregon legislature repealed all nine exemptions pertaining to the medical care of children in Oregon.

"I'm proud to say there has not been a child die in Followers of Christ since September 2009," Swan said. "That proves to us that changing the law does change parental behavior."

Since then, several members of the fundamental church have been successfully prosecuted in Oregon, including Dale and Shannon Hickman who in 2011 were convicted of second-degree manslaughter after their newborn son died of a simple infection.

Offit said he is pleased that the Berks County district attorney's office charged the Fosters.

"I'm glad to hear he thinks he can prosecute that case," he said.

The Fosters on Wednesday surrendered custody of their six other children.

Houseman, who to this day lives with the long-term health effects of her near-death experience, insists government must step in and force Faith Tabernacle parents to take their children to doctors and hospitals.

"These parents will abide by the law," she said. "They are law abiding people... right now nothing is compelling them. They will comply..they will comply with the law."

http://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/02/faith_healing_faith_tabernacle.html

RELIGION Permanantly disabled Idaho woman wants her faith-healing parents prosecuted

Sky Palma
Dead State
April 14, 2016

Followers of Christ church

Mariah Walton is 20-years-old and permanently disabled. She has pulmonary hypertension and has to carry an oxygen tank in order to breathe. There have been times where there had to be screws in her bones to anchor in her breathing device. A heart and lung transplant may soon be in her future.

Things didn’t have to be this way, however. When she was an infant, a small defect in her heart could have easily been treated before the damage was irreversible. The problem was that her fundamentalist Mormon parents didn’t believe in doctors.

Living off the grid in Idaho in a fundamentalist Mormon sect isn’t ideal if you’re in need of urgent medical care. But having parents who refuse to seek out that care is an unimaginable nightmare. According to The Guardian, as Mariah’s condition worsened, her parents would prescribe her a steady regimen of prayer and “alternative medicine.” When she finally left home two years ago, she didn’t have a social security number or a birth certificate.

“Yes, I would like to see my parents prosecuted,” Mariah told The Guardian. “They deserve it… And it might stop others.”

Had they been in neighboring Oregon, her parents could have been booked for medical neglect. In Mariah’s case, as in scores of others of instances of [preventable] death among children in Idaho since the 1970s, laws exempt dogmatic faith healers from prosecution, and she and her sister recently took part in a panel discussion with lawmakers at the state capitol about the issue. Idaho is one of only six states that offer a faith-based shield for felony crimes such as manslaughter.

Some of those enjoying legal protection are fringe Mormon families like Mariah’s, many of whom live in the state’s north. But a large number of children have died in southern Idaho, near Boise, in families belonging to a reclusive, Pentecostal faith-healing sect called the Followers of Christ.

Idaho Republicans, who’ve enjoyed a long-standing majority in the state house, don’t seem interested in reforming laws that protect such practices, arguing that “religious freedoms” must be protected through exemptions. When Democratic legislator John Gannon proposed reforms of which he “never thought would really be that controversial.” The chairman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, Lee Heider, “refused to even grant it a hearing, effectively killing it.”

“Republicans didn’t feel the need to change the laws. We believe in the first amendment to the constitution. I don’t think that states have a right to interfere in religions,” Heider said.

When pressed by The Guardian on the fact that children are dying because of these religious exemptions, Heider made this odd comparison:

“Are we going to stop Methodists from reading the New Testament? Are we going to stop Catholics receiving the sacraments? That’s what these people believe in. They spoke to me and pointed to a tremendous number of examples where Christ healed people in the New Testament.”

From The Guardian:

While Idaho legislators stonewall, children in faith-healing communities continue to suffer.

According to coroners’ reports, in Canyon County alone just in the past decade at least 10 children in the Followers of Christ church have died. These include 15-year-old Arrian Granden, who died in 2012 after contracting food poisoning. She vomited so much that her esophagus ruptured. Untreated, she bled to death.

The other deaths are mostly infants who died during at-home births or soon after from treatable complications, simple infections or pneumonia.

There’s still hope. Bruce Wingate at Protect Idaho Kids is coordinating a new campaign called “Let Them Live”to pressure lawmakers to take action, and John Gannon plans to reintroduce his bill next year.

“It’s not going to go away,” Gannon said. “Dead children don’t care about the First Amendment.”

http://deadstate.org/permanantly-disabled-idaho-woman-wants-her-faith-healing-parents-prosecuted/

Letting them die: parents refuse medical help for children in the name of Christ

Jason Wilson

The Guardian

April 13, 2016

 

Mariah Walton

Mariah Walton’s voice is quiet – her lungs have been wrecked by her illness, and her respirator doesn’t help. But her tone is resolute.

“Yes, I would like to see my parents prosecuted.”

Why?

“They deserve it.” She pauses. “And it might stop others.”

Mariah is 20 but she’s frail and permanently disabled. She has pulmonary hypertension and when she’s not bedridden, she has to carry an oxygen tank that allows her to breathe. At times, she has had screws in her bones to anchor her breathing device. She may soon have no option for a cure except a heart and lung transplant – an extremely risky procedure.

All this could have been prevented in her infancy by closing a small congenital hole in her heart. It could even have been successfully treated in later years, before irreversible damage was done. But Mariah’s parents were fundamentalist Mormons who went off the grid in northern Idaho in the 1990s and refused to take their children to doctors, believing that illnesses could be healed through faith and the power of prayer.

Which issue do you want US election candidates to discuss?

 Read more

As she grew sicker and sicker, Mariah’s parents would pray over her and use alternative medicine. Until she finally left home two years ago, she did not have a social security number or a birth certificate.

Had they been in neighboring Oregon, her parents could have been booked for medical neglect. In Mariah’s case, as in scores of others of instances of preventible death among children in Idaho since the 1970s, laws exempt dogmatic faith healers from prosecution, and she and her sister recently took part in a panel discussion with lawmakers at the state capitol about the issue. Idaho is one of only six states that offer a faith-based shield for felony crimes such as manslaughter.

Some of those enjoying legal protection are fringe Mormon families like Mariah’s, many of whom live in the state’s north. But a large number of children have died in southern Idaho, near Boise, in families belonging to a reclusive, Pentecostal faith-healing sect called the Followers of Christ.

 The Followers of Christ’s cemetery is full of graves marking the deaths of children who lived a day, a week, a month.

In Canyon County, just west of the capital, the sect’s Peaceful Valley cemetery is full of graves marking the deaths of children who lived a day, a week, a month. Last year, a taskforce set up by Idaho governor Butch Otter estimated that the child mortality rate for the Followers of Christ between 2002 and 2011 was 10 times that of Idaho as a whole.

The shield laws that prevent prosecutions in Idaho are an artifact of the Nixon administration. High-profile child abuse cases in the 1960s led pediatricians and activists to push for laws that combatted it. In order to help states fund such programs, Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (Capta), which Richard Nixon signed in 1974.

But there was a fateful catch due to the influence of Nixon advisers John Erlichman and J R Haldeman, both lifelong Christian Scientists.

Boston College history professor Alan Rogers explains how the men – later jailed for their role in the Watergate scandal – were themselves members of a faith-healing sect, and acted to prevent their co-religionists being charged with crimes of neglect.

“Because Erlichman and Haldeman were Christian Scientists, they had inserted into the law a provision that said those who believe that prayer is the only way to cure illness are exempted from this law,” he said.

They also ensure that states had to pass similar exemptions in order to access Capta funds. The federal requirement was later relaxed, but the resultant state laws have had to be painstakingly repealed one by one.

Some states, such as Oregon, held on longer until high-profile deaths in the Followers of Christ church in Oregon City attracted the attention of local media; over time the state reversed course.

As a result, several Followers of Christ members in Oregon have been successfully prosecuted. In 2010, Jeffrey and Marci Beagley were convicted of criminally negligent homicide after the death of their toddler, Neal, who died from a congenital bladder blockage. In 2011, Timothy and Rebecca Wyland were convicted of criminal mistreatment and the court ordered that their daughter Aylana be medically treated for the growth that had been threatening to blind her. Later that year, Dale and Shannon Hickman were convicted of second-degree manslaughter two years after their newborn son died of a simple infection.

Next door, Idaho presents a polar opposition to Oregon. Republicans, who enjoy an effective permanent majority in the state house, are surprisingly reluctant to even consider reform. Last year, the governor’s Task Force on Children at Risk recommended change: “Religious freedoms must be protected; but vulnerable children must also be appropriately protected from unnecessary harm and death.” Democratic legislator John Gannon proposed a repeal bill which he “never thought would really be that controversial”.

The chairman of the senate health and welfare committee, Lee Heider, refused to even grant it a hearing, effectively killing it.

Hoyt is a fit 43, and lives in a well-scrubbed suburban neighborhood. He runs a successful window cleaning business that started with a squeegee mop and a bucket after his teenage escape from home left him with no cash and few educational opportunities. When I visited him, his house was being renovated – what was once a “barebones bachelor pad” now accommodates his partner and step-children. Slowly, Hoyt has developed the capacity for family life, after a life in the sect left him “unable to relate to families” for a long time. “I didn’t understand the concept,” he said.

He lost his faith around the age of five, when a baby died in his arms in the course of a failed healing. While elders prayed, Hoyt was in charge of removing its mucus with a suction device. He was told that the child died because of his own lack of faith. Something snapped, and he remembers thinking: “How can this possibly be God’s work?” His apostasy set up lifelong conflicts with his parents and church elders.

In just one incident, when he was 12, Hoyt broke his ankle during a wrestling tryout. “I ended up shattering two bones in my foot,” he said. His parents approached the situation with the usual Followers remedies – rubbing the injury with “rancid olive oil” and having him swig on Kosher wine.

Intermittently, they would have him attempt to walk. Each time, “my body would just go into shock and I would pass out”.

“I would wake up to my step-dad, my uncles and the other elders of the church kicking me and beating me, calling me a fag, because I didn’t have enough faith to let God come in and heal me, while my mom and my aunts were sitting there watching. And that’s called faith healing.”

He had so much time off with the untreated fracture that his school demanded a medical certificate to cover the absence. Forced to take him to a doctor, his mother spent most of the consultation accusing the doctor of being a pedophile.

He was given a cast and medication but immediately upon returning home, the medication was flushed down the toilet, leaving him with no pain relief. His second walking cast was cut off by male relatives at home with a circular saw.

Other people who have left the group, such as Linda Martin, told similar tales of coercion, failed healing using only rancid olive oil, and a high level of infant mortality, isolation and secrecy. Violence, she said, was “the reason I left home. My childhood and Brian’s were very similar.” Deaths from untreated illness are attributed to “God’s will. Their lives are dominated by God’s will.”

Martin and Hoyt have both lobbied to change the laws, with Martin in particular devoting years of patient research to documenting deaths and other church activities. Hoyt has faced harassment online and at his home, and church members have even tried to undermine his business.

So far, their testimonies of abuse have not convinced Idaho’s Republican legislators. Senator Heider, for one, describes the Followers of Christ as “very nice people”.

Child advocate and author Janet Heimlich, who has campaigned against exemptions around the country, says that Heider told her before the legislative session began that “he would carry the bill” and helped with the production of a draft, but by the time the session began in October he indicated that no bill would be passed or even heard.

Heider’s repeated response to these claims was a welter of contradictions and bluster.

After telling the Guardian that no bill was lodged (John Gannon confirmed that he did, as was reported in local media in February) and that he had been told by the attorney general and the Canyon County prosecuting attorney that the laws did not need to change (both men deny saying this), Heider took refuge in the US constitution.

“Republicans didn’t feel the need to change the laws. We believe in the first amendment to the constitution. I don’t think that states have a right to interfere in religions.”

When pressed on the fact that children are dying unnecessarily as a result of exemptions, Heider makes an odd comparison.

“Are we going to stop Methodists from reading the New Testament? Are we going to stop Catholics receiving the sacraments? That’s what these people believe in. They spoke to me and pointed to a tremendous number of examples where Christ healed people in the New Testament.”

Heider blamed outsiders for stirring the pot on this issue, even challenging the Guardian’s right to take an interest in the story, asking “what difference does it make to you?” and adding “is the United States coming in and trying to change Idaho’s laws?” He confirmed that he attended a Followers of Christ service last year – a rare privilege for an outsider from a group that refuses to speak to reporters.

But if we take Heider at his word concerning the reasons for his opposition, his view of the constitution is simply mistaken.

Alan Rogers, the Boston College history professor, points to a string of US supreme court decisions that distinguish between freedom of belief and freedom of practice, which affirm the former and limit the latter where it causes harm. These stretch back as far as Reynolds v United States in 1878, which forbade Mormon polygamy, and include Prince v Massachusetts, which affirmed the federal government’s ability to secure the welfare of children even when it conflicts with religious belief.

Frederick Clarkson, a senior fellow at Political Research Associates, has long researched the connection between religion and conservatism. He points out that “almost all American politicians are cowards when it comes to religion”.

Religious liberty is a powerful idea, and a great achievement in the history of western civilization, but “it’s also used as a tool by the rich and the powerful, and by politicians who want to look the other way”.

There’s also the fact that conservatives have been mobilizing religious liberty in recent years, first as a reason to kill same-sex marriage at the state level, and now to limit the scope of the supreme court’s decision that it cannot be outlawed by states.

 A taskforce set up by the Idaho governor estimated that the child mortality rate for the Followers of Christ between 2002 and 2011 was 10 times that of Idaho as a whole.

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 A taskforce set up by the Idaho governor estimated that the child mortality rate for the Followers of Christ between 2002 and 2011 was 10 times that of Idaho as a whole. Photograph: Jason Wilson for the Guardian

While Idaho legislators stonewall, children in faith-healing communities continue to suffer.

According to coroners’ reports, in Canyon County alone just in the past decade at least 10 children in the  church have died. These include 15-year-old Arrian Granden, who died in 2012 after contracting food poisoning. She vomited so much that her esophagus ruptured. Untreated, she bled to death.

The other deaths are mostly infants who died during at-home births or soon after from treatable complications, simple infections or pneumonia.

In one Canyon County report on the death of an infant called Asher Sevy, we see the difficulty that the shield laws create for local authorities.

When Sevy died in 2006, a Canyon County coroner’s deputy attended by two sherriff’s deputies asked to take the body away for an autopsy. According to the coroner’s account, the family “were very much against this for any reason”, and informed the deputy that she “was not going with me or anyone else” and removal would have to be done “forcefully”.

After a liaison with the county’s chief deputy and the prosecutor’s office, the assembled county officials decided to leave “rather than escalate a problem that could be worse than it was now”. The conclusion? “The cause [of death] will go down as undetermined.”

Autopsies are at the coroner’s discretion, and the deputy, Bill Kirby, did write that at the time there was “no evidence of a crime”. The incident is unsettling, though.

Canyon County coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morriss, who has been in office since 1991, refused to speak directly with the Guardian. However Joe Decker, a county spokesman, insisted that the coroner and other officials had been successful in building a better relationship with the Followers.

“Back when Vicki first took office, the Followers rarely, if ever, reported a death. And when they did, they would often be uncooperative with both the Coroner and law enforcement when they arrived on scene,” Decker said. Now, they “have a relationship in which every single death is reported and autopsies are almost always performed”.

For the outsider, there may still be something unsatisfying about this – a lingering impression that exemptions from child abuse prosecutions have led Followers to form the impression that the law can be negotiated with.

Nevertheless, local officials can’t make laws, only enforce them. The frustration at the local effects of shield laws was perhaps evident in the support that Canyon County prosecutor Brian Taylor gave to efforts to change the laws.

Campaigners such as Mariah Walton, Janet Heimlich, Linda Martin and Brian Hoyt are determined not to let this matter rest in the next legislative session.

A new “Let Them Live” campaign, involving a television ad campaign featuring Mariah, is being coordinated by Bruce Wingate at Protect Idaho Kids. Resources are limited, but all are confident that improved public awareness will build pressure on legislators.

Gannon, the Democratic legislator, says for his part that his bill will be back next year. “It’s not going to go away,” he says. “Dead children don’t care about the first amendment.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/13/followers-of-christ-idaho-religious-sect-child-mortality-refusing-medical-help