RELIGION, _TIME_ Magazine
Faith Or Healing?
Why the law can't do a thing about the infant-mortality
rate of an Oregon sect[sic]
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
The two small graves lie in the southeastern section of
the old cemetery, near a stand of pine. They are
surrounded by the resting places of other infants, many of
whom never received first names: here is a placard
denoting Baby Girl White, and another for Baby Boy Morris.
Only a few life spans are commemorated, and many of these
are shockingly short: weeks, days and even hours. Russ
Briggs comes here often; he cannot stay away. "Those two,
right there, those are my boys," he says, his voice
cracking. "I could have saved them, but I let them die."
Briggs doesn't know for sure what killed his sons, but he
believes that "if there had been an incubator, or modern
medicine, I know they would have made it." So might many
of the children surrounding them. Recently the Portland
exurb of Oregon City has been shaken by what appears to be
an ongoing horror in its midst. In June, Oregon state
medical examiner Larry Lewman stated suspicions about the
cemetery's owners, the 1,200-member Followers of Christ
church. Over 10 years, he alleges, the faith-healing
congregation's avoidance of doctors and hospitals may have
cost the lives of 25 children, some under excruciating
circumstances. A series by the Oregonian newspaper
announced that of 78 minors buried in the graveyard over
35 years, 21 "probably would have lived with medical
intervention, often as simple as antibiotics." If so, the
cemetery may represent one of the largest concentrations
of faith-healing-related fatalities in decades.
It also represents a legal conundrum. Terry Gustafson,
district attorney for the Oregon City area, says of a
recent death, "If you or I had committed the same crime
against our own child, we would be looking at 25 years in
the penitentiary." Yet Gustafson refuses to prosecute,
calling it futile. Reason: an Oregon statute that exempts
faith-healing parents from manslaughter charges. In
protesting that law, Gustafson finds herself in
high-powered company: the Academy of American Pediatrics,
the American Medical Association and the National District
Attorneys Association all oppose similar immunities in six
states and lesser exemptions countrywide.
The problematic laws have defenders. The First Church of
Christ, Scientist, the largest U.S. religious body
favoring spiritual healing over medical attention, has
long argued for them. Christian Science spokesman Gary
Jones describes as "terrible" the prospect that public
rage at the Oregon deaths might "stop the inquiry into
more effective means of treatment" by spiritual means.
Champions of repeal, of course, feel otherwise. A report
in the April issue of the professional journal Pediatrics
documented 140 child deaths "from religion-motivated
medical neglect" between 1975 and 1995, attributed to 23
religious denominations in 34 states. Its co-author, Texas
critical-care pediatrician Seth Asser, believes there are
hundreds of similar, unreported fatalities. "Kids die from
accidental deployment of air bags, and you get hearings in
Congress," says Asser. "But this goes on, and dozens die,
and people think there's no problem because the deaths
happen one at a time. Yet the kids who die suffer
horribly. This is Jonestown in slow motion."
The Followers of Christ Church seems to have originated in
Kansas in the early 1900s. Its breakaway Oregon City
branch was led by Walter White, an authoritarian,
apocalypse-preaching pastor known as the Apostle, who died
in 1969. After finishing their schooling, church members
try to avoid socializing with the outsiders, but several
own local businesses. "These are law-abiding people with a
good work ethic," says a prosecutor's investigator. "The
only way they really differ is in their faith healing."
It is a mortal difference. Like many fellow Pentecostals,
the Followers believe the Bible prescribes prayer and the
laying on of hands to cure physical ills. Unlike most,
however, Followers reportedly refuse medical
treatment--for themselves or for their children. Emergency
workers recall face-offs with church members who tried to
persuade them not to take injured fellow worshippers to
the hospital; the Oregonian found a state legislator's
complaint about Followers children arriving at school with
home-set bone breaks. After Lewman took the medical
examiner's job in 1986, he encountered far worse and began
recording what he calls "painful, torturous deaths that
sometimes lasted days, if not weeks."
Finally, after three Followers children died what he
considered needless deaths in a seven-month span, Lewman
began aiding the Oregonian investigation. He says one
shocking case was that of Alex Dale Morris, a
four-year-old who complained of fever in February 1989.
Fellow Followers laid hands on Alex, anointed him with oil
and prayed over him for 46 days. On Day 44, a police
officer acting on a tip paid a call but left after the boy
himself claimed good health. Alex died two days later; his
autopsy revealed an infection had filled one entire side
of his chest with pus. Basic antibiotics, says Lewman,
could have saved him.
The death Gustafson considered prosecuting was of Bo
Phillips, 11, last February. Bo suffered a diabetic crisis
and was treated with liquids, prayer and anointings.
County sheriff's detective Jeff Green recalls arriving at
the Phillips house to find 200 or more church members.
Bo's body "was lying in bed, covered with a sheet. His
eyes were sunk into his head, and his face was completely
yellow. The suffering that boy must have endured..." Bo's
parents, says Green, were devastated, but "I kept asking
the father why he let the boy die, and the answer boiled
down to what he told me flat out: 'It was my choice.'"
At first glance, the Phillipses seemed prosecutable.
Child-neglect laws in nearly every state make parents who
fail to obtain medical treatment for their seriously ill
children liable. However, a 1974 federal child-care
program made funding contingent on the states' exempting
faith-healing parents. That requirement no longer exists,
but 41 states retain exemptions from local civil-abuse and
-neglect laws. In Oregon, Arkansas, Delaware, Iowa, Ohio
and West Virginia there are also exemptions from criminal
homicide or manslaughter charges. Says Gustafson: "I've
spent nights trying to figure out a way to bring the
message to this church that you can't kill your kids on
the basis of religious beliefs. But the law is clearly on
their side." For their part, the Followers have mostly
kept silent about the news stories as well as Lewman's and
Gustafson's activities. A church-board member told TIME,
"I know what the D.A. here is trying to do, but it's our
business, and we just don't want to talk about it. Just
don't believe everything you read."
The Oregon deaths make even some of the exemptions'
predictable champions a bit queasy. Jones, of Christian
Science, says he personally believes "taking care of a
child is a sacred responsibility. If one form of treatment
is not working, parents have an obligation to investigate
other alternatives," including doctors or hospitals. He
maintains, however, that even Oregon-style exemptions (he
prefers "accommodations") are "a door to religious
freedom." Steven McFarland, head of the Center for Law and
Religious Freedom, a conservative Christian group, demurs.
"The First Amendment protects religious belief absolutely,
but not religious practice. Child welfare is a classic
example," he says. "If irreparable harm to a child is
about to occur, the state's duty to protect the child
trumps. Those folks in Oregon should know that the cost of
their belief can be criminal prosecution if they allow a
child to die."
More common than a blanket defense of exemptions is a
query: Isn't there a way to discourage
faith-healing-related deaths that is less harsh and more
proactive than throwing well-meaning, bereaved parents in
jail after the tragic fact? In 1994 Minnesota passed a law
requiring parents to alert authorities if their medical
boycott endangered their children, leaving it to the state
to intervene if necessary. The results are inconclusive: a
check on the state's biggest county shows that no one has
self-reported. And Michael McConnell, a lawyer who has
defended faith-healing parents in neglect cases, is
worried that exemption-repeal advocates have no patience
for more such experiments. Anger, he suggests, has made
them "so contemptuous of the parent that they are likely
to overlook solutions that would work much better."
Perhaps, but Russ Briggs feels no contempt. Briggs watched
first one and then another son die during childbirth
unattended by doctors or trained nurses; he left the
Followers in 1981, after deciding to seek medical help for
a back injury. Briggs supports the Oregon exemption-repeal
drive, but despite being shunned by his former community,
he bears no discernible rancor. "They're still believing
in a faith, so there's no blame for them," he says. "Their
children died, and they allowed it to happen because of a
belief that they still have. That takes away the blame.
It's only when you no longer have that belief that all the
sudden it comes to you: How could I ever have done that?"
--Reported by Dan Kray /Oregon City
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AUGUST 31, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 9
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