RSS
Home
Faith healing parents get minimal jail time for their daughter's death
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Kara Neumann was an 11-year-old girl who died when her parents neglected to medically treat her diabetes and instead prayed for God to heal her. The Neumanns could have received up to 25 years in prison for killing their daughter; however, they were sentenced to one month a year for 6 years. The judge said that he wanted them to “think about Kara and what God wants you to learn from this.”
Zachary Bos, organizer of the Boston Atheists, said in response:
I want to view this as a Parthian victory of reason over superstition, but this judge's comment sets me straight. The conflict here was not between modernity and religion but between a religious couple that failed to do what their religious neighbors all do: dilute their faith with enough practical technology so as to avoid the unfortunate and inevitable fallout that occurs when one places one's fate in the hands of nonexistent beings. ‘Think about what God wants you to learn from this’ -- not, ‘Your child died because you were playing make-believe.’”
The Judge also stated that the Neumanns were “very good people, raising their family, who made a bad decision, a reckless decision.” Such words attempt to ignore the severity of what happened. An 11-year-old girl is dead from a treatable disease because her parents refused medical treatment. This is not reckless. Leaving a bucket of water where your toddler can accidentally drown in is reckless. Denying medical care is murder, regardless of what delusion prompted it.
The Neumanns have created a website in which they posted a reaction to their sentence. In a blog post they stated:
The judge also realizes that jail time will not reform us, because he has witnessed our faith runs very deep. God has written His Word upon our hearts and we can not disobey what is written there. We are always thinking about Kara, we walk by her room everyday, which is kept open. God has been our comfort and the healer of our broken hearts, so now we walk in JOY knowing Kara is in a most glorious place called Heaven. She is with Jesus.”
There is so much to say about this statement that is almost impossible to put into words. The admission that they do not believe they did anything wrong, the delusion that they are right in their action, and the ignorance that their perception of Kara being in heaven justifies the right to deny medical treatment and allows her to die a painful death due to diabetes. Before she died she could not walk, eat, drink, or talk. When she collapsed on the floor, emergency services were not called until after she stopped breathing.
Religious freedom does not give you the right to kill your child. If you support this cause, please support the work of Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting children from abuse based on cultural and religious practices.
Related Articles:
Faith healing parents are cleared of manslaughter charges
Atheists oppose insurance provisions for faith healing
Related Articles:
Comments
