A central Wisconsin man accused of killing his 11-year-old daughter by praying instead of seeking medical care was found guilty Saturday of second-degree reckless homicide.
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I hope he and his convicted wife both get the maximum sentence.
When a friend of mine died this way
( http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/10/adding-insult-to-injury-or-adding-abuse.html ), his parents were utterly devastated. They were doing what they thought was best. I cannot share the hope that this girl’s parents take the whole blame for this (although that certainly would be a start); the larger church deserves blame, if not the entire institution of religion.
Cuttlefish – why not? I don’t see much action from interfaith congresses on taking your kid to a doctor when they get sick. Plenty of individual religions and sects are actively anti-medicine: JW vs blood transfusions, Scientologists vs psychiatry & antiseizure & antidepression meds, the Vatican vs birth control & stem cell research, Orthodox Judaism’s unwillingness to keep herpetic mohels from sucking bleeding baby penises, Christian Scientists vs the germ theory of disease – the list really does go on and on and on.
I absolutely do not want to make political hay from one family’s tragedy. My question is when we see ambivalence at best and rank denialism at worst from the spectrum of religion, and we know that religion values faith far higher than evidence, is it not appropriate to call out religion in general as a literally destructive and life-threatening institution?
Sure, there are plenty of religious people and sects that do no harm, but on aggregate, religious belief (traditional or not) is hazardous to a believer’s health. And all that might be acceptible if it only affected consenting adults, not those who have no choice in the matter and rely on the good judgment of their parents for their well-being.
That is what sickens me, that we’ve bred a culture that tolerates this bad behavior and more often than not shields these bad actors from prosecution because their malice or neglect stemmed from sincerely-held-but-utterly-unfounded beliefs.
Frankly I’m stunned at the verdict; I won’t be surprised if it gets overturned on appeal solely on the basis of misplaced sympathy for the living.
I would wish another court case like this never occur, but only because I don’t want kids to die needlessly from parental neglect. But as long as deluded parents continue to maim and kill their kids and there are churches that encourage them to do so, we need vigorous prosecution.
Cuttlefish – I misread – I think we’re on the same page. The parents are primarily culpable, but their particular church has to take responsibility for encouraging them to neglect their child. Further, other church members, other churches, the media, etc. have a responsibilty to bring this practice of encouraged neglect to light and to show the behavior for what it is – neglect.
It is unfortunate that the family must be punished this way in hopes that others do not do such stupid things, but it should be absolutely criminal for churches to give people the impression that prayer works. You can’t hate the parents for being so ignorant, but it is so tragic that they killed the kid (and worse still she would have suffered terribly with ketoacidosis etc).
I do not agree, Cuttelfish and MadScientist. It’s 2009. These people should know better. Using religion as an excuse for neglect is unacceptable. They deserve just as much blame as the church. Period.