Faith healers avoid jail after allowing son to die
Offline http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205306/Russel-Brandi-Bellew-Faith-healer-parents-avoid-jail-Austin-Sprout-16-dies.html
Faith healer parents avoid jail after son, 16, dies in horrible pain after they tried to 'pray away' his burst appendix
Two parents have avoided jail after admitting they let their son, 16, die in horrible agony because they chose to 'pray away' his burst appendix and refused to take him to the hospital.
Russel and Brandi Bellew, age 39 and 36, of Creswell, Oregon, pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide on Tuesday and were sentenced to five years probation after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors.
The couple, who had seven children before Austin Sprout's death, are members of the General Assembly and the Church of the First Born in nearby Pleasant Hill, which shuns modern medicine and teaches parishioners that faith healing and prayer will cure disease
(These people should be in jail. I wonder if the courts would have shown any leniency had it not been because of "religious reasons" ? What amazes me is that the social worker states that she believes the other six children are "safe" in that home. WHAT ? Hopefully, the courts that removed these children will feel otherwise. Can you imagine dying of a burst appendix in excruciating agony while your parents just stand by and let it happen ?)
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
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1: Only if they knew he was dying. By all appearences they didn't, or at the least did not understand the ramifications of the circumstances. I don't see a statement by either of them anywhere that implies defiance against the system, which would be an indicator of willful ignorance opposed to simple ignorance.
Giving them probation, from what I can see, is for the remaining childrens benefit, not the parents. Considering the many people I've known who've grown up in foster care and had horror stories, I do not see a better option here.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Interesting conclusion to being pro-life. It's all in yahweh's hands. Get science out of it.
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
Don't know - putting them with more potential victims smacks of relocating a paedophile priest to a new parish where no one knows him.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
We don't even allow "I didn't know" as a defense against breaking relatively inconsequential laws like traffic ones, why would we allow parents to get away with gross ignorance about basic shit regarding how to care for children? If you're too big a deluded retard to take your kid to a doctor when he's seriously ill, you really should be labeled too fucking stupid to have and/or have anything to do with kids ever again.
I mean goddamnit, if knowing when to take your kid to a doctor isn't the bare fucking minimum standard we can expect from civilized parents then wtf is? Fuck these people and everyone making excuses for them, throw them in a cage with tigers and tell em to pray their asses outta that one.
"We don't even allow "I didn't know" as a defense against breaking relatively inconsequential laws like traffic ones, why would we allow parents to get away with gross ignorance about basic shit regarding how to care for children?"
I despise catch 22's, and despise the idea that ignorance of something isn't an excuse. It demonstrably IS an excuse. Not in every scenario claimed, but in enough of them.
The government of Canada agrees, at least to an extent. When a new law is implemented, police are directed to not enforce it for the first year or so, but to instead educate and warn the public of the new law. Only then can it be enforced.
If you don't teach the laws, you can hardly be surprised when people don't obey, and it is the height of oppression to punish someone for doing something you never told them was wrong in the first place.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I thought I read they were assigned a supervisor? I doubt the average parent would enjoy such interference.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I hope this isn't a case that will fall through the cracks due to a severely overworked and depleted probation and child protection network.
After all, the supervisor can't be with them 24/7.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
The only way that I can see the ignorance card being played is if their parents never took them to doctors if they had severe conditions.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
If they've been indoctrinated then they could very well have believed they were doing the right thing right up till they got arrested.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
And this is why I like the "guilty but mentally ill" verdict instead of "not guilty due to mental disease or defect" (I know that this isn't the case here).
However, I still think that they got probation because someone was convinced that the religious indoctrination that caused the problem would keep them from doing it again - that's stupid.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Do you have any evidence that the couples religion played any role whatsoever in the decision of the prosecutor to offer a plea deal? If you could demonstrate to me that the couples religion caused them to be treated differently in any way I would agree with you, but from what I have read everything seems to indicate that the deal was made because the prosecutor believed it was the best result for the remaining children and probably a determination that a trial was not the best use of the governments resources. You will note that the arguments offered by the defensive counsel revolved around the interests of the children, not the couples religious freedom.
Such plea deals are not uncommon in the US for a variety of crimes and I doubt they are uncommon in the UK either.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
No hard evidence as I was not in the room when the deal was made though this statement:
"It is unclear whether they (the children) will be returned to their parents, though a case worker said she believes they are 'safe' in the home."
gives me a reason to believe so.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin