Currently, 32 states, including Idaho, provide a religious defense to felony or misdemeanor crimes specifically against children, including neglect, endangerment and abuse, according to state statutes compiled by Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD), a national advocacy group. There are 38 states that provide religious exemptions in their civil codes on child abuse and neglect, which can prevent Child Protective Services from investigating and monitoring cases of religion-based medical neglect and discourage reporting.
Of the states that still provide a religious defense to felonies against children, Idaho remains in a league of its own. It is one of only six states that provide a religious exemption to manslaughter, negligent homicide or capital murder (the others being Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia). But of those six, it is the only state where children are known to have died at the hands of faith-healing parents in the last 20 years. Rita Swan, CHILD’s co-founder, describes Idaho as “the worst in the country,” and she attributes the state’s high number of deaths to its overreaching religious exemption laws, which were enacted in 1972.
Swan and other child advocates argue that Idaho’s laws, and those like them, are in direct contradiction with the Supreme Court’s 1944 decision in Prince v. Massachusetts, which ruled that parental authority cannot jeopardize a child’s welfare, even in cases of religious expression. “The right to practice religion freely,” the court concluded, “does not include liberty to expose…[a] child…to ill health or death.”
“Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves,” the decision continued. “But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children.”
Even though over the years numerous children in Idaho have died from medically treatable diseases or injuries, there is currently no plan to change this religious exemption.
Oregon also used to have a similar law in place, but then things changed:
Outside of Oregon and Idaho, there have been 20 documented faith-healing fatalities of minors since 2008 in 10 different states, including Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania, according to CHILD. But the death count among Followers of Christ puts Idaho well out in front as the deadliest state in the country. That distinction actually once belonged to Oregon, until a highly publicized child death in 1998 ultimately prompted prosecutors and lawmakers to act.
Oregon, like Idaho, had a religious defense to manslaughter on the books when 11-year-old Bo Phillips died from untreated diabetes that year. His family, who were members of the Followers of Christ, prayed over him and anointed his body with oil instead of taking him to a doctor. It was the first time authorities felt they had a clear case of abuse in a faith-healing child death. But the district attorney for the county, Terry Gustafson, declined to prosecute the boy’s parents because of ambiguities in the state law.
Gustafson’s decision triggered public outcry across the state. The Oregonian newspaper in Portland, the state’s largest paper, launched an investigative series on faith-healing deaths, which found that of the 78 children buried in one Followers cemetery in Oregon City since 1955, 21 had died from treatable illnesses. Shortly after, ABC’s 20/20 and Diane Sawyer brought national attention to the state’s faith-healing controversy with a prime-time segment on the Followers. By 1999, legislators had eliminated religious protections in cases of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment.
Clearly what needs to happen in Idaho is the same kind of media scrutiny that took place in Oregon. However it would be incredibly sad if another child had to die in order to trigger that response.
Sometimes people ask me why I find religion so threatening. Honestly sometimes I just don't know where to begin.
Could it be that it is used as an excuse to hate those who supposedly the Bible deems worthy of hate?
Could it be how religion is used to oppress women?
Could it be how religion has negatively impacted our views of human sexuality?
Could it be that it is used to undermine our teaching of science?
Or perhaps it could simply be that it allows terrible people, to do terrible things, and defend their actions by using God as the scapegoat.
Cognitive dissonance: "right to life" religious arguments against abortion, but "right to die" religious arguments for hurting or killing a child by neglect.
ReplyDeleteChildren, as well as women, are the property of the patriarchy.
"Followers of Christ" is just another name for a dangerous cult.
Putting "Christ" in the name does not diminish the fact that it's as far from Christ's teachings as can be.
A laying on of hands also brought us Queen Esther Redux.
ReplyDeleteI still say the devil was prayed in, not out.
Well said Gryphen.
ReplyDeleteAllowing a child to live in pain and misery from disease, while medical solutions are available is unforgivable.
These people who believe in faith healing over medical science might as well be living in the 12th century when sin was seen as the cause of sickness, and burning at the stake was the punishment for "witchcraft"
Of course the Rick Santorum/Jerry Prevo/Pat Robertson crowd don't want to talk about faith healing as it relates to children's death, because those lunatics in Idaho are their fellow believers.
I'm not sure which is worse: an honor killing of a daughter by a Muslim father, or letting your son die from diabetes that could have been treated.
Religion is the worst curse ever dreamed up by humans, and it's taken root in 'Murica like the bubonic plague.
Grateful that I live in Massachusetts, which has plenty of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and what have you, where we are only one of six states that allows no religious exemptions, period. Practice your religion, but allow doctors to heal your children when they're sick. To do otherwise is blatant child abuse.
ReplyDeleteI guess the Palins' neglect of Trig cannot be prosecuted in Alaska. Denying a child for his first six years eye care, occupational therapy, physical therapy, regular attention from his "parents" is a made-for-TV movie, but, instead, is the up-to-the-minute life of the child of a "celebrity" and her "celebrity" husband. Shameful.
Although the Palins' treatment of Trig isn't because of a religious exemption, but because of pure and simple neglect of their son's physical and emotional needs.
DeleteIt seems that zealots of any religious stripe will use their "beliefs" as an excuse to do whatever they damn well please. The little voices echoing in the void between their ears assure them that they'll be "forgiven".
ReplyDeleteI really think once the child is fucking KILLED, it should simply be called "murder of a child" and not "faith healing fatality".
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that I live in one of the scary states. Yikes.
ReplyDeleteAs a parent, I just cannot fathom allowing your child to die when he or she could be easily helped.
ReplyDeleteHow do you live with yourself after killing your child?
You are an intellectual midget that believes in imaginary beings and is also overly-fecund and just keep making more babies 'cause god says so.
DeleteThat's how they roll.
I'm not into "churches", but if folks want to go of their own volition, that's fine with me. Just leave the kids grow up and make their own decisions. When I was in grade school, this couple used laying of hands and prayer to "cure" their child's lymph node cancer. Well, despite the intensity and frequency of hand laying and praying, the boy passed away, and it was a long, tedious, painful affair. I was old enough to comprehend how wrong this was by any measure and old enough to realize they collected much much much more than a funeral should cost.
ReplyDeleteThe next summer, they added an addition and central air to their house and were "blessed" to have another child. We moved a few years later, but last count was four blessings, and it's always crossed my mind how many of them survived.
The parents couldn't look people in the eye, so they must feel some level of guilt or at least embarrassment.
I don't know what's worse, the actual crime, or the exploitation of that crime to make money?