Court upholds homicide convictions of parents who chose prayers for dying daughter over medical care
Source: MADISON.COM
A mother and father who prayed instead of seeking medical help as their daughter died in front of them were properly convicted of homicide, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
Eleven-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann died of undiagnosed diabetes on Easter Sunday in March 2008 at her parents' home in the central Wisconsin village of Weston. Prosecutors said her parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, ignored obvious symptoms of severe illness as their daughter became too weak to speak, eat, drink or walk, choosing to pray rather than take her to a doctor. After the girl died, Leilani Neumann told police God would raise the child from the dead.
Doctors testified that the child, known as Kara, would have had a good chance of survival if she had received medical care, including insulin and fluids, before she stopped breathing.
Marathon County prosecutors charged the couple with second-degree reckless homicide. Separate juries convicted them in 2009. They each faced up to 25 years in prison, but a judge instead ordered them to each serve a month in jail every year for six years, with one parent serving every March and the other every September.
The couple's attorneys argued that Wisconsin law protects people from being charged with child abuse if they provide spiritual treatment for a child in lieu of medical assistance. They contended the law protects parents from criminal liability through the point of creating a substantial risk of death, making it difficult to know when a situation has become so serious that parents who stay with prayer healing become criminally liable. State attorneys countered that parents are immune from child abuse charges but not homicide counts. Once they realize a child could die, their immunity ends, they argued.
Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/court-upholds-homicide-convictions-of-parents-who-chose-prayers-for/article_4cbf5b7b-f3a1-510d-864f-f969c0103c72.html
These "parents" need to be locked in jail with the key thrown away!!!
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bigworld
(1,813 posts)That seems frightfully lenient to me. Can judges do that?!
eggplant
(4,135 posts)It allows them to remain productive members of society (as much as they might be), avoids the taxpayers having to foot the bill to keep them locked up, and reminds them, year after year, of what they did.
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)They obviously can't function in it properly, they allowed their own daughter so suffer in pain, these people are not safe to have around others, and certainly shouldn't have an opportunity to reproduce. A 6 month sentence stretched over 6 years? For fucking murder, are you kidding me?
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)gcomeau
(5,764 posts)"State attorneys countered that parents are immune from child abuse charges but not homicide counts. "
Oh, you're doing this because you're religious? Abuse away! Stand by while illness ravages them and pain afflicts them. As long as they don't die everything is ok in the name of religion!
It's the 21st fucking century and ignorant superstition still rules the land.
dbackjon
(6,578 posts)allows locking kids in cars when it is 110 degrees out...because God will keep them cool if they are good?
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)...of course they could just start a religion that said so and then their religion really would say that. I mean why not? Worked for Hubbard.
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)What next? Exemptions from homicide charges because your religion preaches human sacrifice?
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)
Flashmann
(2,140 posts)
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
Andy823
(11,555 posts)The JW's ban on blood transfusions really makes no sense. They can take all of the components of blood separately in varies drugs and such, but if you put all those components together as a transfusion they say it's against God's word, which you will not find in the Bible at all.
The only law in the Bible to abstain from blood had to do with eating it. Many JW's have died over the years due to this "non biblical" law that the governing body came up with, including many children. Like other radical religious groups, the JW's leadership controls the followers and they do what they are told no matter how wrong it is and no matter that they can not actually find a passage in the Bible that supports them.
8 track mind
(1,638 posts)All aboard the Mary Baker Eddy pray the sickness away express! It's rather amazing how a woman can slip and fall on an icy sidewalk in Boston and start a religion. Apparently Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) had a field day with her. Do a google search on deaths caused by this cult. It just simply defies logic.
8 track mind
(1,638 posts)a general overview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science
tales of suffering:
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/xsci/suffer.htm
names and faces of the dead:
http://whatstheharm.net/christianscience.html
all of this really just scratches the surface. I once attempted to read Mary Baker Eddy's drivel "Science and Health with keys to the scriptures" It is a confusing and convoluted mess of a book that would be best used for emergency toilet paper. They also have a habit of buying up cheap airtime on local radio stations with "callers" (someone reading from a script while running their voice through an audio filter to make it sound like its on a phone line) pretending to proclaim recent miraculous healings.
Andy823
(11,555 posts)There are a lot of religions that make outrageous claims they say come from the Bible, and have been able to get people to follow them. Seems like the views on health care in the Christian Science sect is pretty outlandish also. I know there are some groups in my area, they don't call themselves the same thing, but sound very much the same as far as praying away illness. I know one 17 year old boy died of a ruptured appendix and his parents refused to take him for medical help, they simply called in one of their "healers" to help him. It was very sad to see such a young person die over a belief that praying works better than medical attention.
JW's pretty much only have the blood issue that causes deaths, but many of them are into all kinds of "alternative" medical beliefs that are far from the normal. One women in the group around her actually thought she had the "healing hands" gift talked about in the bible, even though their religious leaders say those gifts are no longer given to people. She diagnosed people, treated then with some kind of acupressure she learned from some quack who taught her all the "secrets" in just one week for a price of course. It's simply insane that people are gullible enough to believe these things and actually allow some nut to work on them or give them natural medicine they get online and then sell it to their "friends" for a huge profit.
This is one of the huge problems I have with religious groups. The fact that many do not think for themselves they let others do it for them, even if it may cause their death, or the death of a loved one.
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)and beliefs if it endangers the child's life, this is as it should be. Otherwise, for legal adults, consent rules apply.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)Degree more than kind, but it's a huge, huge degree.
(That said, artificial blood is becoming a thing. Pretty amazing, actually, and doesn't conflict with beliefs of those with transfusion taboos.)
thelordofhell
(4,569 posts)
mike_c
(36,893 posts)And these two got six months in jail spread over six years, presumably at the local lockup? Wow.
Amimnoch
(4,558 posts)They are too stupid, and dangerous to be allowed to procreate further.
wryter2000
(47,940 posts)I say "he" because the sorts of "churches" that encourage this sort of criminal idiocy are usually patriarchal.
perdita9
(1,320 posts)Or sexual abuse. Kudos to the court system for this ruling.
Orrex
(66,648 posts)Jessy169
(602 posts)Because, fundamentally, they ARE mentally ill. The same goes for the snake charmers, the miracle healers, the fucking lunatic hoards of fundamentalist end-of-times Christians in this country who are dragging us all down the sewer with their votes. This kind of religious insanity IS a mental disease, passed on from generation to generation in many cases. It is illness, pure and simple.
on point
(2,506 posts)Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)
warrant46
(2,205 posts)Surprising that Church didn't ordain her as a Prophet
graegoyle
(532 posts)
mysuzuki2
(3,580 posts)But I don't believe a parent has a right to withhold life-saving medical treatment from a child. I'm glad they have been convicted.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)Sounds like the parents weren't too up on taking their child to the doctor for routine checkups.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)It's usually follow on to something else that causes the destruction of the pancreatic cells that produce insulin. It's not something that you pick up on in an annual checkup, unless that checkup happens to coincide with its onset.
Over a period of a couple weeks she would have suddenly started losing significant weight no matter how much she ate, and would have been constantly hungry. Her cells were starving because insulin is needed to transport glucose through the cell wall. The 3 key symptoms are polyphagia (heavy eating, but with weight loss), polydypsia (constant thirst) and polyuria (frequent urination).
At the end, she would have gone into DKA, (diabetic ketoacidosis) and appeared to be gasping for air. With metabolic acidosis (acidic blood caused by metabolic disorder) your body tries unsuccessfully to restore proper blood pH by blowing off CO2 through respiration.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Any parent knows about dehydration. For some reason these folks seem to think their children are disposable experiments or are too incompetent to raise a child. This was not an accident, since they simply figured death meant nothing, that the child would be magically brought back to them.
It rivals scientology for sending souls through the ether to be reincarnated. Any belief system that doesn't harm others, gets a pass most of the time. But I don't even believe this was religion was the cause of this.
Just plain carelessness. I don't wanna hear about their alleged grief as they thought the death was okay because of their own eternal mathematics. When a child is born, it is no longer much about the parents. It is another human being and not a possession.
This was beyond sick.
Ohio Joe
(21,896 posts)What the fuck kind of stupid law is that shit? Fucking crazy people get immunity from child abuse because they think talking to imaginary beings is better then a doctor?
Just. Plain. Stupid.