Couple arrested for withholding medical care because of Christian beliefs

STORY: Couple arrested for withholding medical care because of Christian beliefs

“I can’t purport to know what’s going on in their heads, but I think they are probably convinced they were doing what God wanted,” says Shawn Peters.

Faith-healing parents whose children have died are typically “very sincere” in their beliefs, Peters tells Chat212 Parenting, making for a “complex psychological, religious, legal, and sociological issue.”

The couple — members of the Church of the First Born, an offshoot of Mormonism that believes in faith healing — said they thought Syble had had the flu rather than the easily preventable diabetic ketoacidosis that killed her. They treated her with prayer instead of taking her to a doctor and were arrested for withholding “necessary and adequate” medical care. The couple will be sentenced in December.

Their late daughter is now one of 400-plus children who have died (officially on record, at least) since 1975 as a result of parents withholding medical care because of religious beliefs. That’s according to Rita Swan, who has been tracking the data along with her husband Douglas since the 1977 death of their infant son — a casualty of their own Christian Science–based faith-healing beliefs, which, she tells chat212 Parenting, taught “denying and ignoring symptoms,” as they were the “perfect mirror image of God.” After nearly two weeks of praying over their 16-month old, the couple’s faith wavered and they brought him to the hospital, where a doctor explained that he had spinal meningitis. But it was too late to save him.

“We just left the church and never went back,” says Swan, 71, who went on to have and raise two daughters (now 36 and 45) and found the non-profit Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty (CHILD) in 1983. Its mission, she says, is “to stop child abuse or neglect related to religion or quackery.” Through it, she and her husband have successfully fought to have the religious-exemption laws to child abuse and neglect repealed in many states — laws that were enacted because of a 1974 federal requirement (since rescinded) put in place due to lobbying from the Christian Science church. “I always want to be doing more to prevent these tragedies,” Swan says. “I wish I could have done more [for my own son].”