NEWS FEATURE: Substituting prayer for medical care sparks concern in Oregon

c. 1998 Religion News Service OREGON CITY, Ore. _ Eleven-year-old Bo Phillips had been dead about three hours when Detective Jeff Green arrived to investigate. It was 6 p.m. Feb. 23. About 100 people were at the house praying and offering support and condolences to family members. Green, a Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy, found the […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

OREGON CITY, Ore. _ Eleven-year-old Bo Phillips had been dead about three hours when Detective Jeff Green arrived to investigate. It was 6 p.m. Feb. 23. About 100 people were at the house praying and offering support and condolences to family members.

Green, a Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy, found the child in his parents’ bed underneath two sheets and two blankets. He was wearing a T-shirt, an adult diaper and one sock.


An autopsy revealed the boy died of complications from diabetes after suffering painful symptoms for seven days and lapsing into a coma, said Dr. Larry Lewman, state medical examiner. The boy was 15 to 20 pounds underweight when he died.

“God’s will be done,” the boy’s father told Green.

“This was easily treatable,” Lewman said. “It’s a simple, everyday thing.”

Instead of taking their son to a doctor, however, Bo’s parents prayed for him.

They are members of the Followers of Christ Church, an Oregon City congregation whose members believe prayer is a substitute for conventional medical treatment. Lewman said his records show as many as 25 children in the congregation have died in the past two decades because their parents offered them only prayer, not medical care.

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They include Valarie Shaw, a 5-month-old Oregon City girl who died New Year’s Day of a congenital defect that blocked a kidney, causing a massive infection. The girl had been sickly since birth, Lewman said, and succumbed several hours after becoming very ill. A trip to the hospital likely would have saved her, Lewman said.

Holland Cunningham, 6, died last July from a hernia in his small intestine, Lewman said. For more than 30 hours he was in serious pain and was vomiting. The problem could have been corrected with surgery, Lewman said.

Four other church members _ two infants and two mothers _ died during childbirth in the past year and a half. The births were assisted by untrained midwives who sometimes made fatal mistakes, Lewman said.

In one of those cases, Janae McDowell, 36, died in her Oregon City home Aug. 30, 1996, after her delivery went sour. McDowell was in labor for more than two days and died 72 hours after her water broke. The baby died before it was delivered. Both might have survived if doctors had been involved, Lewman said.

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In a brief statement recently, the church’s president defended his congregation.

“God’s will be done,” Dale Morris told a local television station. “I don’t expect you to understand. A lot of people won’t understand.”


Oregon and other states have laws allowing certain church members the right to withhold medical treatment. Rita Swan, a former Christian Scientist who in 1983 founded the Sioux City, Iowa-based group Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty, described Oregon as one of the “worst” states in the country for such laws.

Oregon’s laws governing murder by abuse, manslaughter, criminal mistreatment and criminal nonsupport all include clauses that grant immunity to parents whose children die _ if the parents believe that God will heal.

“If you or I did this to our child, we would be prosecuted,” said Green, who specializes in crimes against children. “These children don’t get a choice of being taken to a doctor or an emergency room or having 9-1-1 called for them.”

Clackamas County District Attorney Terry Gustafson said the immunity laws prevent her from prosecuting Bo Phillips’ parents in state court, even though she said the boy’s death fits the description of murder by abuse. She said she will forward the Phillips case to the U.S. attorney’s office for prosecution under federal civil rights laws.

Gustafson thinks the law is wrong because it pits freedom of religion against the state’s duty to protect children, and it allows special protections for some religious groups but not to the general public.

She said it violates the children’s civil rights.

“They’re still children with inalienable rights under the U.S. Constitution,” Gustafson said. “I feel that as a prosecutor, I can’t allow this to go on in my county.”


Four state courts have ruled religious immunity laws unconstitutional on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. The amendment offers all citizens equal opportunity under the laws.

Thirty-one states have religious exemptions to crimes against children, and 41 have such exemptions to child abuse or neglect charges in their juvenile codes, Swan said.

Swan founded the children’s rights group after her 16-month-old son died of meningitis. The boy was treated only with prayer. She has since been a leader in educating legislators and prosecutors.

Swan and Dr. Seth Asser, a Texas pediatrician, co-authored a study in the April issue of the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Among other things, it says that of 172 child deaths between 1975 and 1995 that were studied, 140 of the children would have had a 90 percent chance of survival with basic medical care; 18 more would have had a 50 percent chance of survival; and all but three of the remainder would likely have benefited from a doctor’s care.

In 1982, prosecutors in some states challenged religious immunity laws that were put in place beginning in 1974 to meet a requirement for federal financing of child abuse-prevention programs. Since 1982, there have been convictions in 37 cases, according to documents from Swan’s group.

By 1983, states no longer were required by the federal government to include religious exemptions in their statutes, Swan said. Since 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court has twice refused to review convictions involving religious-based medical neglect of children.


DEA END LARABEE

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