Freedomain Radio

The exact number of church members who gathered for 15-month-old Ava Worthington’s death is not known, but witnesses at the time said at least 100 cars and trucks occupied every available parking space on the street. Had even one of the drivers or passengers called an ambulance, Ava would almost certainly be alive today.

On March 2, 2008, the assembled vehicles tipped off the Worthington’s neighbors on Crestview Drive in Oregon City, Oregon that something was going on. They had no way of knowing that members of the Followers of Christ Church were gathering to pray for and anoint a baby, and then let her die from what doctors describe as an easily treatable infection.

When deputy medical examiner Jeffrey Mayer arrived that evening, he described the house as “standing room only” and “packed,” with people lining the hallway to the master bedroom, where the baby’s body lay on her parents’ bed. Church members filed out of the bedroom as he approached to declare the baby dead as required by Oregon law.

This week, Ava’s parents Carl and Raylene Worthington went on trial for the second-degree manslaughter death of their daughter. Details of the death are becoming known to the public as the trial unfolds.

In court Wednesday, prosecutors played a video of a police interview with Carl the night his daughter died. He said Ava first became ill on Saturday, March 1st. The family asked to the church for prayer, but that night, the baby’s breathing became labored. She apparently became no better Sunday, but the parents’ response was simply to lay hands on her and pray.

A cyst on Ava’s neck grew until it extended from her ear to her collarbone. The medical examiners have said they believe the growth was a response to the raging bacterial infection, and that it probably interfered with her breathing, which the Worthington’s observed Saturday night.

Asked why he did not call a doctor, Carl Withington responded, "I don't believe in them."

At 7:00 p.m. Sunday night, Ava died.

Talking with detectives later that evening, Carl Worthington had the presence of mind to observe their inexperience with the Followers of Christ. “I suppose you've never seen anything like this," he commented.

Even with my faith, I hate people like this probably as much or more than everyone else here.   The tools to save the child were available and yet they choose not to use them.  It's not very forgiving but I hope these parents get to spend a long time in small cells thinking about what they've done.

This was always one of my biggest complaints about Mother Teresa's group.   They often let people die from treatable issues because they felt it was better the people were with Jesus than alive with their families. 

These crimes need to be exposed for the evil that they are.  By atheists, agnostics and especially by those of faith.

Just saw this article on MSNBC:

NASHVILLE, Tennessee - Most U.S. states have child abuse laws allowing some religious exemptions for parents who shun medicine for their sick children, but a few recent cases highlight thorny legal issues for parents following less-recognized faiths.

Existing laws have gradually accounted for more well-known and established faiths, such as Pentecostalism, Christian Science and Jehovah's Witnesses.

But recent cases in the news have judges and child care advocates dealing with parents who claim adherence to lesser-known faiths, such as the Minnesota family following an Internet-based group's American Indian beliefs, and an independent church in the western state of Oregon that has been investigated in the past for the deaths of members' sick children

...

The manslaughter trial of an Oregon couple who claim they were following their religious beliefs in the 2008 pneumonia death of their 1-year-old daughter began Monday. Carl and Raylene Worthington are members of Followers of Christ Church, which has been investigated for past child deaths.

In Tennessee, Jacqueline Crank and her minister Ariel Sherman face child neglect charges in the death of her 15-year-old daughter Jessica, who died in 2002 with a basketball-sized tumor on her shoulder. Prosecutors say based on Sherman's advice, the girl's mother relied on prayer instead of medicine.

...

Many of the exemption laws were enacted in the 1970s. Rita Swan, director of the Sioux City, Iowa-based advocacy group Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty, which lobbies states to repeal such laws, said that since 1975, there have been at least 274 known cases of U.S. children who have died after medical care was withheld on religious grounds.