Parents in faith-healing case never considered calling a doctor
by Steve Mayes, The Oregonian
OREGON CITY -- Carl and Raylene Worthington told detectives that they never considered calling a doctor, even as their 15-month-old daughter deteriorated and died.
"I don't believe in them," Carl Worthington said of doctors. "I believe in faith healing."
Raylene Worthington said that her religious beliefs do not encompass medical care and that she would not have done anything different for her - daughter, who died at home of pneumonia, a blood infection and other complications.
In Clackamas County Circuit Court on Wednesday, prosecutors played videotaped police interviews with the Worthingtons, who are accused of criminal mistreatment and manslaughter for failing to provide medical care for their daughter. Ava Worthington died March 2, 2008, after her parents and other members of the Followers of Christ tried to treat her with faith healing.
Ava's father, who goes by Brent, his middle name, described what happened:
Ava came down with what appeared to be a cold or the flu on a Tuesday. By Saturday, her breathing became labored and the family turned to its traditional faith-healing rituals, praying, fasting, anointing the body with oil, administering diluted wine and laying on of hands.
By Sunday, Brent Worthington said he thought there was "a possibility" his daughter was so sick she could die. Then, after a final session of laying on of hands at about 5 p.m., "she perked up," he said. She grabbed her bottle and "took some food."
"She was peaceful; she was rested," Worthington said.
Two hours later Ava was dead.
Full story here . . .
4 comments:
I have a friend with cancer who is mad at the medical profession for telling her she has cancer. She has been treating this illness with "alternative" methods. She will take whatever crap any nice snake oil salesman who seems "nice" over the drugs (poison to her) her doctors prescribe. It took a hospitalization for pulmonary emboli to shake her up enough to actually treat the cancer that will soon kill her. I now want to kill her as I drive her to her radiation treatment and listen to her bitch about all the doctors she has to deal with.
Another wholesome loving Christian family.
Nothing gets my blood boiling as much as when I read stories like this. If they really believe all that's in the book of fables, shame on them. Twisted, irrational, yokels.
The little girl is dead and the parents STILL believe in faith-healing? How insane is that?
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