Casualty of faith healing - Madeline Neumann

Fox News

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The aunt of a sick Wisconsin girl whose parents trusted in faith rather than medicine pleaded for authorities' help in a 911 call obtained by the Wausau Daily Herald.

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The girl, 11-year-old Madeline Neumann, died Sunday from a treatable form of diabetes.

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Emergency personnel responded to Neumann's home Sunday after receiving a 911 call from Neumann's aunt, Ariel Gomez. In the call, Gomez pleaded for help because Neumann's mother "believes in faith instead of doctors," the Wausau Daily Herald reports.

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"My sister in law is, her daughter's severely, severely sick and she believes her daughter is in a coma. And, she's very religious so she's refusing to take (Neumann) to the hospital, so I was hoping maybe somebody could go over there," Gomez said.

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Journal Sentinel

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Under Wisconsin statutes, parents can't be accused of abuse or neglect if the sole reason for the injury is that they relied on prayer, Fost said. But Robyn S. Shapiro, an attorney who is professor of bioethics and director of the Bioethics Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, said abuse or neglect can include "failure to appropriately respond or supply medical care to your kid."

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Basically, if the parents could prove that they really believed they could have healed the child with faith healing they would get off for free because of of the faith healing law in Wisconsin. The Daily Page

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The death early this week of a young Wisconsin girl from a treatable form of diabetes, whose parents prayed over her rather than seek medical help, could re-ignite a debate over a state law that essentially shields such activity from criminal prosecution.

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So says the Madison-based author of When Prayer Fails, a new book about parents who, for religious reasons, refuse to provide medical care for their children.

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"Maybe the statute will get tested out soon," muses Shawn Francis Peters, who teaches writing and U.S. history at the UW-Madison.

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Peters is referring to state statute 948.03(6), against failing to act to protect children from bodily harm. It contains an exemption for what it refers to as " Treatment through prayer." To wit: "A person is not guilty of an offense under this section solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method of healing . in lieu of medical or surgical treatment."

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The Wisconsin case concerned an 11-year-girl in Weston, in Marathon County. According to an Associated Press account, the girl withered away from diabetic ketoacidosis, suffering from such symptoms as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, and loss of appetite.

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"She just got sicker and sicker until she was dead," the local police chief, Dan Vergin, is quoted as saying.

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The girl’s parents, Dale and Leilana Neumann, who do not belong to any organized faith, purportedly prayed over her, believing even after her death that she would be resurrected. They chalked up her death to their own lack of faith, said Vergin.

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The case remains under investigation and will be reviewed for possible charges by the Marathon County district attorney.

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But the state’s law, which Peters mentions in his book, could make that difficult. Peters, in an interview, says the law likely found its way into the statute books through the efforts of Christian Scientists, as in other states with similar exemptions. But while some other states have rescinded these statutes, Wisconsin’s remains on the books.

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The statute drew some attention in 2003, when a two-year-old autistic child in Milwaukee was crushed to death during an attempted exorcism. The practitioner was convicted, albeit of a lesser offense than what some felt was appropriate. Afterwards, Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann urged state lawmakers to remove this exemption, lest it lead to what he called "mischief." Wisconsin’s do-little Legislature has not done so.

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In an email, Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard says he thinks there have been cases where doctors and hospitals, "concerned that asserted religious beliefs of parents might result in physical harm to an ailing child," have asked the courts to step in. But "no one can recall" a Dane County case where a faith-based refusal to seek treatment was presented as "potential criminal child neglect."

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Blanchard outlines the high threshold such a case would have to meet: "In the criminal child neglect area, we look for evidence of criminal thinking, not just inattention or momentary lapses in judgment. So, for example, if we had a baby death due to failure to thrive or treatable illness, and there was a claim that religious belief prevented the caretaker from seeking treatment, we would certainly ask police to be alert to any facts suggesting that religion was being used only as an after the fact excuse or ruse. That would of course be criminal thinking.

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"If on the other hand the religious belief appeared genuine and there were no other signs of abuse or neglect, it might be difficult for us to say a case had merit as a criminal child neglect prosecution."

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In other words, if you kill or maim your kids because you truly believe they need prayer more than medical attention, there’s not much authorities around here can or will do about it.

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"The way the statute is worded, I think he’s right," says Peters. "The statute says if you treat a child by religious means, you’re not going to be prosecuted." He adds, somewhat superfluously, that he thinks the statute should be written differently: "I think my book sort of illustrates the perils of that."

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Peters has written three books, all about the dangerous intersection of Religion and Law. The first two dealt with the refusal of Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute the flag or serve in the military (Judging Jehovah's Witnesses, 2000), and the refusal of the Amish to educate their kids past grade school (The Yoder Case, 2003).

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When Prayer Fails, published by Oxford University Press, is a compelling and often shocking book. There is the anecdote of the little girl who died from a tumor in her eye that enlarged to the size of her head; investigators found blood smears in her home from where she had apparently dragged her tiny body along walls. There are cases of children who died from choking on food or ailments that could have been easily treated with a shot of insulin or dose of antibiotics. Some true believers have even refused treatment from communicable diseases, putting others at risk.

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Why the hell are christians allowed to abuse their children like this? I mean, am I missing something really obvious here? If you can prove that you really believe god would heal your kid, you can get away with child negligent and manslaughter? How the hell is this different than the honor killing laws in the middle east?This poor little girl literally got prayed to death. I swear, if christian organizations begin to offer prayer services for her, my head will explode from the irony. Edited by True Believer, : No reason given.

This girl's life could have been saved by a single insulin shot. It seems to me like you're more interested in your religion than this girl's welfare. Free country for christian parents to abuse their children like this?

What religious freedom? The religious freedom to murder your children in the name of god? I can't believe what I'm seeing. What the hell are you talking about? These people had an entire month to get their daughter the help she needed. Mistake? What the hell are you talking about? It's you christians that have used the law to sanctify child abuse. Nobody is suggesting we ban prayer. Read those fucking articles again, randman. There's a law in place that says parents can maim or murder their children without being prosecuted by the law if they can prove they truly had faith. You're arguing a strawman. Again, what the hell are you talking about? Nobody is suggesting we ban prayers. Read the fucking articles. Basically, christians are shielded from the law regarding child abuse simply because of their faith. Oh, really? Do you support honor killing also? How about female circumcision? What about selling your children into slavery?You are proving my point for years now that it's always the christians that support legalized child abuse.Edited by True Believer, : No reason given.

I don't deny it. Do you or do you not deny that this girl simply needed an insulin shot or two? You are dancing around this quite a lot.Nobody has ever claimed that medical science is perfect. It's you christians that claim faith healing that's perfect. At least they gave the child a fighting chance. That's better than watching their child die a slow and painful death that took a month.If it was my child and I was a christian, I would have tried everything to save my child, and that includes both prayer and medical science. Um, no.Randman, shut up for a second and think about it. The current law states that you can maim or murder your child in the name of faith and the law can't do anything to you. The same cannot be said of atheistic views. Basically, you're advocating we allow christian parents to do whatever the hell they want with their children even if it means costing their children their lives.All I'm saying is this law is out of place in a modern society. If people can watch their children die slowly and painfully over the course of a month, they don't deserve to be parents.But then of course you don't really care for these children do you? All you care about is pleasing your god so you could go to heaven. Look, you're making a strawman argument. Until someone can repeatedly prove that miracles work or faith healing works, why the hell are you putting faith healing on the same grounds as medical science?There are 20-40 million people in this country without health care. Please, do us all a favor and stop seeing doctors. Since you don't believe in medical science anyway. You should really step back and let other, more deserving people in line. But shielding abusive parents from prosecution because they're christian? If I decide that my kid doesn't need a doctor and then she dies, I will face the full force of the law. But christians get a free ticket because of the faith healing statute.This is not an issue of freedom of religion. This is an issue of child abuse in the name of religion. And refusing your kid medical help and let her die a very slow and painful death over a whole month not an act of aggression? What the hell happened to your superior christian morals?

Apparently, all of you christians do since you advocate such a law that shield christian parents from responsibility of child abuse.Oh, by the way, I've been pro-life for a while now. I somehow get the impression that you're not pro-life at all. Being pro-life is more than just having a loud mouth about it. It means you care for the kids from the bottom of your heart. Apparently, you seem to care for christian dogma more than the kids.

Religious freedom to sit by and watch your kid die a very slow and painful death that took a course of a whole month? Do you have any idea the kind of suffering and pain a person of type one diabetes goes through if she isn't medically treated? This sounds more to me like a sadistic act of torture than freedom of religion.But then again, you don't really care for these children do you?

This case hit a particular nerve in me. For one of my senior projects in college, I decided to do an extensive research into the history of child abuse in this country and society's reaction to them. During my research, I ran across many cases of child abuse that seemed more like cases of torture in the dark ages than what we would expect in a modern society.There was one case where a teenager got pregnant out of wedlock so her parents decided to put the newly born baby into the barn and only allowed the mother to feed him a few times a day and no other contact. It wasn't until the child was 5 that authority was alerted to this and took the child away. Since the child had absolutely no human contact for the first 5 years of his life, he had no idea how to react to certain stimuli that would seem very basic for the rest of us. This was a particular interest to many sociologists and psychologists because this child didn't even know how to react to pain. He didn't cry or yell out.I have a friend whose parents adopted a kid from China a few years back. While they were packing up in the hotel getting ready to leave China with the kid, the mother accidently closed and locked the suitcase with the kid's finger stuck in there. He didn't cry out in pain or anything. He just stood there. When they finally realized this, they opened up the suitcase and brought him to a doctor. The kid's finger was freakin' broken! and he didn't react to the pain at all.Neglect can have very real negative impact on kids' lives.There was particularly another case where a couple decided to raise their son in a box in the basement for some religious reason. The kid was finally rescued by authority when he was around 9 or so. In therapy, his psychologist found that he was actually quite a pleasant kid for someone who went through that many years of neglect. That is he was a pleasant kid until he was finally told that other kids weren't raised in a box like he was. He stopped talking after that.Most of the cases I ran into were in the name of religious freedom, like randman suggested. Most of them didn't involve some aggressive beatings or sexual abuse like most people think. The kids were simply neglected.We as a society have reacted to these cases by having social workers keeping their eyes open for abuse cases. But we can only go so far because apparently religious people are still sanctified by the law to maim or kill their kids for religious reasons. The so-called moral right have done little to help these kids.Yes, randman was right when he said 99% of the people out there wouldn't do this. But using percentage in this case is almost like using a lie. This is like saying 99% of the people in Europe weren't sent to death camps by the nazis so what they did must be ok. I don't care if only 1 child a year dies from neglect, that's 1 child a year the moral right could have saved if they didn't have this ego thing going. But no, in the name of religious freedom religious people are allowed to maim and kill their children and are protected by the law to do so.These children are helpless. They need our protection, not our neglect.I just find it downright comedic that this evil liberal atheist is emotionally disturbed by these acts of sadistic torture of helpless little children in the wealthiest country in the world while the moral right christians have nothing to say and continue to support a law that protects these unfit parents and allow them to continue to torture their children like this.A single insulin shot would have saved this child. I mean, if these parents didn't want her, just give her to me. I'll be happy to take her in and treat her as my flesh and blood. They didn't have to kill her like that.

@%$ &*% #@%! %$#%! !@$#%! &^*$% @#$!

Some of it is due to stress. My life has been a lot more busy lately. Also, I've been going for a career change, which means I've had to put my application to adopt on hold, something I've been looking forward for years now. Have I mentioned this topic hit a nerve in me? It may surprise you to know, but some of us actually care enough for the kids out there that we'd rather not have our own biological kids so we could adopt all the way. As soon as my new career is set and our lives completely settled, we will take in at least 5 kids. Hell, if riverrat can breed out 5 kids, I don't see any reason why I can't adopt at least 5 kids.Anyway, that's probably the primary source of my frustration. I can't describe to you how much my spouse and I care for the children out there. It just ticks me off to see parents using religion as an excuse to their inhumane treatment of the most helpless members of our society. Like I said, I swear my head will explode if people begin to offer prayers for this girl's soul. She was literally prayed to death, for god's sake.

Don't get me wrong. I fully understand that some of them are genuine. That said, people ought not to use children as guinea pigs for alternative meds, miracle cures, or any of that bullshit. We know that modern medicine works. We know that modern medical science is an ever improving field whereas miracle cures and all that crap have shown virtually no progress whatsoever. I simply don't understand why you are arguing to allow these people to continue to use their children as guinea pigs for bullshit beliefs.I'm sure suicide bombers in the middle east genuinely believe in their faith and cause. That doesn't excuse them from murdering innocent people. Your entire argument seems to rest completely on their belief in their bullshit faith healing crap therefore they ought to be allowed to put their children through slow and painful deaths. I'm sorry, H, but this argument is bullshit. At this point, I don't really care how much philosophical mumble jumble you throw at me, this argument of yours is bullshit. Here is something that has been bothering me from the beginning of this conversation. You have repeatedly accused us of using these children as a tool to take away religious freedom, or at least you've been implying it. Let me just tell you right now. I am not using these children as an excuse to vent my frustration on religion. I genuinely care for these children. Thousands of children are being maimed and killed by their parents' neglect, and all you seem to be worried about is trying to protect people's "right" to torture their children. Let me make this clear once and for all. I am not in favor of banning religion. I am not in favor of banning prayers. Hell, even though I consider teaching your kids religion a form of child abuse, I am not in favor of taking that away.What I am in favor of, however, is getting rid of this stupid law that protects negligent and torturous parents simply because they are religious.If say I have a 5 year old son and one day he collapses. For whatever reason, I believe that just letting him lie there will somehow make him better. He dies a day later. For whatever reason, I truly believe that just letting his body lie there will bring him back to life. You can be sure that I will be prosecuted for half a dozen charges including manslaughter and child negligence.But wait. If, on the other hand, I claim that jesus told me to not do anything to get my kid better, I get a free ticket out of jail? Do you not see the ridiculousness of this law?Nobody is suggesting we infringe on people's freedom of religion. What we want is to see these irresponsible parents brought to justice. You can have all the faith you want. But making your kids go through very slow and painful death is just too far.Do you have any idea the kind of suffering people with type one diabetes go through without medical treatment?PS You kinda remind me of christians' attempts at rationalizing genocide. I don't know why, but it just popped into my mind. May be it's because in both cases you can use philosophical mumble jumble to justify clear acts of evil. Unlike you, however, I can't talk or write that way. Edited by True Believer, : No reason given.

I'm sorry, may be I'm just a moron. But are you suggesting that this girl's condition was untreatable? Because a few insulin shots would have saved her life. You make it sound like she was damned to death either way. Why are you making this more complicated than it is? Her parents denied her simple treatment which resulted in her death, period. The rest is just philosophical mumble jumble (as I have been pointing out for a while now) that presupposes one slippery slope after another.The reason I compared your argument in this thread to christians' attempts at justifying genocides in the bible is both you and them make the issue way more complicated than it is. In fact, I'd rank you right up there with riverrat in terms of la-la-land reasoning, no offense. Yes, I'm sure this all makes sense to you. But try to see this from our point of view.You are making this way more complicated than it is. Nobody is suggesting we allow the government to replace the parents. That said, there are limits to what the parents can do to their children. We did away with allowing parents to sell their children into harsh labor to repay their debts. We did away with allowing parents to beat their children for their own pleasure. We did away with lots and lots of things for the benefits of the children. Yes, there have been mistakes. No system is perfect. You seem to think parents get a free ticket to torture, maim, and kill their children simply because jesus says so.

Holmes, I'm curious about something. Suppose you are on a deserted island with a couple and their little 8 yr old son and about a dozen other people. The couple's religion forbids them from eating coconut, and it just happens that there's nothing but coconut on the island. So, not only do they refuse to eat to survive but they also force their little son to not eat to survive. Some members in the group start saying that perhaps the group as a whole should remove this child from the parents and feed him. As always, there are a few that argue that it's the parents' decision because they know what's best for their son.I'm curious as to which group you'd go with. Would you be with the group that wants to save this child from starvation or would you be with the group that wants to watch the kid slowly starve to death?

It really doesn't matter what you wanted or not. For whatever reason you decided not to override the parents' sovereignty over the kid, the outcome will be to watch the kid slowly starve to death. But then suppose the parents are really fat and therefore they can survive a very long time without food. What if the child has been brainwashed into not demanding any food? You know, an analogy is meant to be analogous to the situation we're talking about. Your attempt at nitpicking the analogy is somewhat annoying. Well, suppose you don't know what the kid wanted. Again, the reason we have an analogy is to see the situation being discussed in a simpler term. You seem to not be able to see past the minute details of the analogy.Remember that Madeline never had a chance to tell the outside world what she wanted. Nor did we ever had a chance to find out what she really wanted. Are you trying to tell me that faith healing is better than modern medicine?Ok, let's take your analogy at hand. Suppose in the group there are doctors and nurses, all telling me that what I believe is dead wrong and that cutting the child would lead to her death. Suppose I'm just a carpenter by profession.Seriously, H, if you're going to present an analogy in a better light, at least do it right. Suppose among the people on the island there are people of the same religion as the other family telling them their interpretation of the religion is wrong and doctors and nurses telling me my interpretation of my child's illness is wrong.You seem to be advocating that everyone's opinion on everything have equal/same weight as everyone else's opinion. I'm sorry, but this is philosophical mumble jumble at its worst.Tell me, when was the last time you were sick and needed a doctor? Did you just go out into the street and consult the opinion of the nearest person to you or did you actually go to a doctor? When was the last time you had a question about an academic topic like physics or chemistry? Did you seek out someone you knew would at least know the answer to your question or did you just pull a random person off the street?There are the kinds of opinions that should be treated equally no matter who has them, like which flavor of ice scream is the best. But there are also the kinds of opinions that ought not and should not be treated equally based on who gave them, like what is the best treatment for a type one diabetes.Oh sure, you can resort to creationist tactic by pointing out that even among doctors there are disagreements on how to go about treating the person. I seriously hope you won't take this route.

I wasn't going to respond to this post, but... Ok, let me get this straight. Are you saying that by allowing the government to step in and try to give this girl the best medical care our society can provide we effectively open up the slippery slope to us allowing the government to kidnap, maim, torture, and kill our children?Holmes, wow, just wow.

Whatdoyouknow, there is a god after all.I know this sounds weird, but I've been emotionally disturbed for the past couple months because of this case. I haven't been able to get my mind off Madeline. It's one thing for one person to have to go through pain and misery because of an untreatable illness. It's another to have to suffer the pain and misery of a completely treatable illness just because some people are so delusional as to think god will heal them. It's disturbing that something like this is allowed to happen right in our own backyard in the 21st century.Not too long ago, hitting your wife and children wasn't considered "abuse". You were just setting them straight. It's a crime nowadays. I can only hope that in the not-too-distant future force faith healing will be seen as a crime as well.

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I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.