An Oregon jury acquitted two Oregon parents, Carl and Raylene Worthington, on July 23 in the death of their 15-month-old daughter, Ava, who succumbed to pneumonia as the couple relied on prayer instead of seeking conventional medical help.
Shawn Francis Peters, a faith-healing expert at the University of Wisconsin and author of “When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law,” followed the case closely and talks about what the case means for future clashes between religious law and civil law.
Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What are the ramifications of the decision made in Oregon?
A: It remains to be seen what the implications will be, both in Oregon and nationally. It surprises me because Oregon had revamped its laws to make it easier to prosecute parents. This was going to be the first test of that revamped law, and the first test did not work. It demonstrates how unsettled these legal and ethical questions remain even though the courts have been grappling with them for over 100 years.
Q: Does this case provide greater protection to others who find themselves under investigation for treating illness with faith rather than medicine?
A: The arguments that the Worthingtons made are very typical in these types of cases. I don’t actually think that they did anything new.
I don’t know that it’s going to provide some sort of strategic blueprint for other defendants. The Worthingtons found a jury that was sympathetic to their claims and was open to considering their point of view.
Q: What does the verdict say about the public perception of faith-healing?
A: Americans aren’t necessarily hostile to the concept of faith healing. In fact, there is openness to its possibilities. The trial may have been less about faith-healing and more about the way we view the responsibilities of parents. There was a sense among jurors that the parents were doing what they thought was right. As a society, we have to give parents the latitude to do that.
Q: So religious law supersedes civil law?
A: It was more that the jury just did not see a clear intent to harm the child or an overwhelming evidence of negligence. The jury never really got beyond the sense that the parents did not try to hurt the child, but in fact, did what they thought was right. Juries typically struggle with that and then go the other way.
Q: Are there constitutional protections that protect parents who fail to provide medical treatment for their children?
A: There really aren’t outright protections for these kinds of practices. There is certainly a First Amendment right for the free exercise of religion. But, in the realm of child health, it’s pretty clear that the state interest is in helping the health and welfare of the child. That takes precedence over the parent’s right of the free practice of religion. Some state laws have exemptions for faith-healing practices.
Q: Does temporal punishment serve any justice to religious parents who abide only by the tenets of their faith?
A: Deterrence is really one part of the picture. As a society we do feel people should be punished for their misdeeds. We lose sight of the victims in these cases and we tend to forget that a child has died. I do feel these prosecutions, when they work out, do serve that purpose.
Q: In letting these parents off the hook, does that undermine any efforts to change the faith-healing mentality?
A: These aren’t hardened street thugs; the Worthingtons seem like very nice people. They just think they are following a higher law. I think the faith-healing community will be further encouraged to keep doing what they’ve been doing. Maybe this verdict demonstrates that we do have legal protections for engaging in this type of conduct. Law enforcement in Oregon is going to have to figure out a way to address the fallout of this verdict.
Q: Do you think this verdict will be a factor in the next trial where a Wisconsin man is charged in the death of his 11-year-old daughter when he prayed for her instead of seeking medical help?
A: In the Wisconsin case, the mother has already been found guilty and the father is now on trial. I don’t think the outcome of the Worthington case is going to have a direct bearing on the Wisconsin trial, but it does give a certain feeling of hope for the defendant.
By LINDSAY PERNA
c. 2009 Religion News Service
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted July 29, 2009 at 6:39 pm
It was a foolish jury that made a serious mistake and may, if it encourages any other parents to be careless of their children’s health too, cost several children their lives.
I shall hope, some of you may want to pray, that more people do not put their religion ahead of their children’s health.
posted July 29, 2009 at 6:49 pm
If the United States will allow religious beliefs by parents to let their children die with no help from doctors, will the religious beliefs of the man who killed Dr. Tiller be given the same sympathy? His sad cry of innocence is he did what did to keep Dr. Tiller from doing anymore abortions. If states and juries can’t come together on what is a crime and what isn’t a crime I expect my government to step in and make everyone’s mind up for all of us.
posted July 29, 2009 at 6:57 pm
I don’t care that “religious” folks have “rights”. IMO there is NO right, religious or secular, for parents to allow their child to die in front of their eyes without seeking medical care for them. They can pray their brains out as they CALL FOR MEDICAL CARE for the child. They are, IMO, guilty of child abuse when they count on some invisible thing to save the child.
posted July 30, 2009 at 12:44 am
I am entirely unmoved by the fact that these Bible-besotted nitwits thought they were doing the right thing. How would this same jury decide the case of atheist parents whose sick child died because they refused to obtain medical care–and who then tearfully explained that they just don’t believe in doctors and medicine?
I will not even blame the leaders of the Worthington’s church for filling their heads with vile, blasphemous nonsense. They are adults–and at some point, they decided to bury their own rationality under a garbage heap of fanatical religiosity. But rationality doesn’t go away easily, for it is an innate characteristic of our spiritual aliveness. Can anyone doubt that their stifled rationality was screaming at them to help their child as they watched her dying? And yet they refused to listen. Their act was therefore deliberate even if their intent was benign and their grief genuine.
This is not about freedom of religion–that is a smokescreen. It is about irresponsibility. Their irresponsibility in letting their child die is a crime in a a moral and legal sense (regardless of the verdict in this case); their irresponsibility in rejecting their own rationality is a crime in a spiritual sense.
posted July 30, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Jeff Sharlet in his book, “The Family”, goes back into the history of when funamentalism began in North Hampton, Mass in the 1730′s. Rev. Johathan Edwards preached in such a way that people killed themselves in various ways, incl. starving themselves to death, so they could feel the holy ecstacy of suffering and dying to be with God and Jesus. He was thought of as a radical by most, but others came into his holiness and died because of him. Unfortunately strains of F. still lives on and the people in Oregon probably have been so indoctrinated into this belief, that they would reject a rational feeling to help their own children, and feel that it would displease God and they would be sinning to do otherwise. That is why the U.S. has to protect these children from early deaths. As a Christian brought up in Lutheran Doctrine this is a crime. As an American who believes in my country and it’s laws, it is still a crime. It needs to be acknowledged and fixed.