Faith Healers Found Accountable In Childs Death

[stromboli]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... em-to-him/

[A]n 11-year-old girl named Madeline Kara Neumann [photo], known as Kara to family and friends... died of undiagnosed diabetes on Easter Sunday in March 2008 at her home in Weston, a central Wisconsin village about 140 miles north of Madison.
Kara, who had been growing weak for several weeks leading up to her death, eventually became too sick to speak, eat, drink or walk. Her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, don't belong to any organized religion or church but identify themselves as Pentecostal Christians and believe visiting a doctor is akin to worshipping an idol. ...
Dale Neumann testified that the possibility of death never entered their minds. After the girl died, Leilani Neumann told police God would raise Kara from the dead.

For some reason, that didn't happen.
So the parents' defense, in court, was that they had no idea how sick their daughter was. Of course, that smacks of circular reasoning: a proper diagnosis typically requires a medical examination and a physician's expert interpretation. If you deliberately forego those things, you're going to stay in the dark.
Not surprisingly, the jury wasn't moved, and in 2009 the couple was found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide. They faced up to 25 years behind bars.
But guess what? The judge took pity on them, and gave them a sentence that I highly doubt would be available to non-theists. Not only did he order them to serve only six months; each parent would have to go to prison just one month each year. One spouse went every March, the other every September.
If I were in their shoes, I'd be thanking the Lord Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and all the lucky stars in the galaxy for such leniency. But the Neumanns were (get this) miffed. Their lawyers argued up to the state Supreme Court that the couple is owed religious immunity from criminal culpability in Kara's death.
And they got nowhere.
The court announced its ruling yesterday, and it is a resounding defeat for the prayer-healers:
The decision marks the first time a Wisconsin court has addressed criminal culpability in a prayer treatment case where a child died. The court ruled 6-1 that the state's immunity provisions for prayer-treatment parents protect them from child abuse charges but nothing else, opening the door to a host of other counts.
Excellent.
We could focus on how insane it is that the child-abuse exemption for faith healers exists in most states' laws, but that's a discussion for another day. The Wisconsin court neatly did an end run around the exemption: while implicitly affirming that statute, the justices still said that manslaughter or homicide charges may be laid on parents who let their kids die due to religion-inspired negligence.
Now, if we could please have proper sentences to go along with that (maybe serial child killers Catherine and Herbert Schaible, despite their cloying piety, will actually go to jail for many years)...

Common sense, finally.

[Solitary]

It's about time! They should get the Darwin Award too.  :roll:   Solitary

[DunkleSeele]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/04/ok-jesus-loved-the-little-children-now-stop-sacrificing-them-to-him/

[A]n 11-year-old girl named Madeline Kara Neumann [photo], known as Kara to family and friends... died of undiagnosed diabetes on Easter Sunday in March 2008 at her home in Weston, a central Wisconsin village about 140 miles north of Madison.
Kara, who had been growing weak for several weeks leading up to her death, eventually became too sick to speak, eat, drink or walk. Her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, don't belong to any organized religion or church but identify themselves as Pentecostal Christians and believe visiting a doctor is akin to worshipping an idol. ...
Dale Neumann testified that the possibility of death never entered their minds. After the girl died, Leilani Neumann told police God would raise Kara from the dead.

For some reason, that didn't happen.
So the parents' defense, in court, was that they had no idea how sick their daughter was. Of course, that smacks of circular reasoning: a proper diagnosis typically requires a medical examination and a physician's expert interpretation. If you deliberately forego those things, you're going to stay in the dark.
Not surprisingly, the jury wasn't moved, and in 2009 the couple was found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide. They faced up to 25 years behind bars.
But guess what? The judge took pity on them, and gave them a sentence that I highly doubt would be available to non-theists. Not only did he order them to serve only six months; each parent would have to go to prison just one month each year. One spouse went every March, the other every September.
If I were in their shoes, I'd be thanking the Lord Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and all the lucky stars in the galaxy for such leniency. But the Neumanns were (get this) miffed. Their lawyers argued up to the state Supreme Court that the couple is owed religious immunity from criminal culpability in Kara's death.
And they got nowhere.
The court announced its ruling yesterday, and it is a resounding defeat for the prayer-healers:
The decision marks the first time a Wisconsin court has addressed criminal culpability in a prayer treatment case where a child died. The court ruled 6-1 that the state's immunity provisions for prayer-treatment parents protect them from child abuse charges but nothing else, opening the door to a host of other counts.
Excellent.
We could focus on how insane it is that the child-abuse exemption for faith healers exists in most states' laws, but that's a discussion for another day. The Wisconsin court neatly did an end run around the exemption: while implicitly affirming that statute, the justices still said that manslaughter or homicide charges may be laid on parents who let their kids die due to religion-inspired negligence.
Now, if we could please have proper sentences to go along with that (maybe serial child killers Catherine and Herbert Schaible, despite their cloying piety, will actually go to jail for many years)...

Common sense, finally.

Too little, too late. Only six months jail? One month a year? They must be kidding...

We could focus on how insane it is that the child-abuse exemption for faith healers exists in most states' laws, but that's a discussion for another day.

Erm, no... it's a discussion for the here and now. How many cases of child abuse do we still need before these fuckers are given what they deserve?

And then, in another thread, there are people arguing that "procreation is a right". I would laugh if it wasn't such a tragedy. Neuter them. Take the children away from these bastards before it's too late, give those kids a proper environment and education. What? Is it "fascist thinking"? Yeah, cry me a fucking big river.

[Solitary]

Why is it that if its for religious reasons it is automatically not as bad as it is for many other social interactions? How many Priests and Bible-Class pedophiles have been convicted and sent to prison like a man on the street would be? I had a man that was a pedophile park his car in front of my house. I asked my son who it was. He told me he was a man in charge of his church's group of children.

I asked him what he wanted, he told me he was looking for Laura, my son's girlfriend at the time (13-14 years old). I snuck out of the house and got his license plate number on his Corvette which he let little girls and boys drive while he fondled them. I called the police and made sure he was convicted. He was a known convicted pedophile that the police were trying to find for years.    Solitary

[Mister Agenda]

It's too bad the higher court couldn't increase the sentence while they were at it.

[stromboli]

It isn't what it should be, but its a start. This needs to be kept in the public eye and elevated every time a child or anyone dies because of belief in faith healing.

[Colanth]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/04/ok-jesus-loved-the-little-children-now-stop-sacrificing-them-to-him/

We could focus on how insane it is that the child-abuse exemption for faith healers exists in most states' laws

I don't see anything wrong in eliminating them too.

Oh, that would open parents to a charge of child abuse just for bringing a child to church.  But then, I don't see any problem with that either.

[Jason78]

The life of an 11 year old girl is cheap in Wisconsin.

That's an unbelievably lenient sentence for what is essentially torture of a child and a long slow murder.  If I were the judge sitting on that case, I'd have crucified them.

[DunkleSeele]

The life of an 11 year old girl is cheap in Wisconsin.

That's an unbelievably lenient sentence for what is essentially torture of a child and a long slow murder.  If I were the judge sitting on that case, I'd have crucified them.

No, no, you're wrong! They're pious good Christians! Who are we mere mortals to judge their faith?

[Colanth]

The life of an 11 year old girl is cheap in Wisconsin.

That's an unbelievably lenient sentence for what is essentially torture of a child and a long slow murder.  If I were the judge sitting on that case, I'd have crucified them.

Crucifixion is over too quickly for those two.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

The rub is you can't legislate stupid. You can't legislate insane and like it or not a huge amount of people will feel sorry for them as well.
Look at the people 'home schooling' without teaching jack shit except bullshit and the public is behind allowing horrendously bad schooling simply because the state often fails just as badly.

[Unbeliever]

Yeah, I heard about this. I couldn't believe that so many people calling in to the radio program thought the parents (due to "parental rights") were fully justified and should not have been convicted!

[Colanth]

If religion weren't involved, or if we treated religion properly (as the mental illness it is), they would have been charged with reckless indifference manslaughter.  And convicted in about 2 minutes, since no religious defense would have been considered admissible, so they'd have no defense.  (The underlying element would have been failure to seek a medical opinion when the girl clearly had a medical problem.)

In a sane society the case never would have gotten as far as a court.  Any 3rd year law student would have told the parents that they were going to be convicted, so they should save everyone the trouble and plead guilty.  This case is the ham sandwich for which any half-competent ADA can get an indictment.