Parents found guilty in Oregon City faith-healing trial

2:58 p.m. A Clackamas County jury found Jeffrey and Marci Beagley guilty today of criminally negligent homicide for failing to seek medical care for their 16-year-old son Neil Beagley.

Instead of taking their son to a doctor when he became ill, the Beagleys treated him with faith healing – prayer, anointing with oil and laying on of hands.

The Beagleys could face a maximum of 10 years in prison. Because the two have no prior convictions, the normal sentencing range under state sentencing guidelines would be 16 to 18 months in prison.

Neil Beagley died on June 17, 2008, of an undiagnosed and untreated urinary tract blockage.

During a two-week trial, defense attorneys argued that prior to his death, Neil suffered from non-specific symptoms that were consistent with a bad flu or a cold, and a reasonable parent easily could not have sought medical attention.

Prosecutors countered that the parents knew Neil was gravely ill, and that their reliance on faith-healing largely precluded them from taking Neil to the hospital. The Beagleys and other relatives performed faith-healing practices in the hours leading up to his death.

The Beagleys are the first Oregon parents convicted of homicide in the faith-healing death of a child since the state legislature eliminated spiritual treatment as a defense in such cases in 1999. Legislators cracked down on faith healing due in large part to a history of child deaths associated with the Beagleys' Oregon City congregation, the Followers of Christ church.

In July 2009, the Beagleys' son-in-law, Carl Brent Worthington, was found guilty on a lesser charge – criminal mistreatment – for failing to provide medical care to his 15-month-old daughter, Ava Worthington. Raylene Worthington, the child's mother, was acquitted on all charges.

Ava Worthington died about four months before Neil Beagley, also after marathon faith-healing sessions.

Faith-healing and Oregon law 1995: Lobbied by the Christian Science Church, legislators introduce a religious defense to Oregon's homicide statutes, protecting parents who try to heal their children solely with prayer and faith-healing rituals. Parents who can prove to a judge or jury that faith governed their actions become immune from criminal liability, just as others could assert a claim of self-defense or extreme emotional disturbance.

1997: Again at the behest of Christian Scientists, Oregon legislators add religious shields to the state's first- and second-degree manslaughter statutes.

1998: Citing legal immunities for faith healers, Clackamas County District Attorney Terry Gustafson declines to prosecute Followers of Christ church members whose 11-year-old boy, Bo Phillips, died from untreated diabetes. As their son suffered for days, the parents withheld medical treatment in favor of prayer. The boy's death sparks a statewide controversy and calls to strike religious exemptions from Oregon law.

1999: After months of debate, legislators restrict parents' legal defense for treating sick children only with prayer. The new law eliminates religious protections in cases of second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and first- and second-degree criminal mistreatment.

2001-2008: Police respond to the deaths of five children, including Ava Worthington and Neil Beagley, whose parents belong to Followers of Christ.

2009: Raylene and Carl Brent Worthington become the first Oregon parents prosecuted under the 1999 law, charged with manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in the death of their 15-month-old daughter. Raylene, the daughter of Jeffrey and Marci Beagley, is acquitted on all charges; Carl Worthington is convicted on the lesser charge.

2010: Jeffrey and Marci Beagley are tried for criminally negligent homicide in the death of their 16-year old son, Neil.

people kill their children, torture them, starve them, withhold medical care and let them die, lock them up in rooms and chain them in place, have sex with them,shall I go on. I want the government to take that role.

You want the government to take that role ? You mean the role of hurting them ?

Here's a case - the illustrious dept of youth and family services of new jersey could not account for all of the children that they had placed in foster homes. children were no longer at the foster homes when checked up on.

This is not about a police presence. Police are _outside_ our homes unless they have a search warrant. they patrol public areas but they do _not_ patrol inside peoples homes.

Some things that some people do to their children are truly an abomination.

However, it is not possible to prevent them by law enforcement "predicting" them and forcing their way into families, as we are then moving towards an out-of-control big-brother state.

Crimes by parents against their own children can only be filed under "sad but true".

But then again, every terrible thing is like that, right ? Traffic accidents, armed robberies, kidnappings. None can be prevented, only prosecuted once they happen.

Now, as far as prosecuting parents, the comments here are placing the rejection of conventional "modern" medicine in the same place as rape and starvation. The intent of the parents was not to hurt their children, but to protect them, as they see the conventional "modern" medicine as contrary to their religious beliefs. They are more concerned for the soul than the body, which is what Jesus words in the Bible command, to be more concerned for one's soul than one's physical body. Now most Christians subscribe to the Biblical interpretation that we should see a doctor, not _only_ wait for God to act, taking no action ourselves. Most would believe that God acts through people, and may act through the doctor to save one's life. But though many would disagree with this particular congregation's interpretation, if we go back to the First Amendment to the Constitution, that's the crux of religious freedom, that the government we citizens created and gave over certain powers to should not have the power to choose one particular Biblical interpretation over another and force the interpretation on all, that it should not have the power to force any citizen to abandon their interpretation of the Bible.

Indeed, if one follows the money trail, it leads invariably back to "big medicine", not to the protection of children. Does one force oneself into the homes of ones siblings, telling them how to raise one's nieces and nephews ? Only if one thinks it's worth the fight. With the worst cases of torture, that's the first question I ask and never get a good answer for - where was the rest of the family ? So what gives us the right to intervene with other people's children that we are not even related to ? "Big medicine" and the left-wingers have us thinking that medical care must be forced on everyone. Big medicine sees a customer forced to pay them out of paycheck deductions, no collection problem, customer can not avoid paying them. The left wing sees it as a nice thing to get people used to, that is, submitting to government knows best. Forget your religion, forget your silly freedom, you need your medicine, now come here and open wide.

This forced medicine question also comes up with the elderly, not just children; it happens frequently amongst the Amish in middle age when they get a disease like cancer.

People always like to jump to the defense of children, not so much for the elderly, the elderly having much the same need of care and feeding, but not being so cute and fun.

If a law is passed where people have no right to deny medical care, then everyone (you and I included) will be forced to submit to this same law. You would be physically forced to accept whatever medication your doctor prescribed for you. Do you want that force applied to you ? What if you could not communicate very well, were in pain and just wanted to be allowed to die ? What if you wanted every possible effort taken so you could live ? Perhaps you just wanted to hear the available choices and then decide.

As far as deranged people who torture, starve, etc., their own children, there is no logical defense that their criminal acts were done to protect their child, so none of the above rights and freedoms discussions apply, it's just a criminal act, plain and simple. But even then, we need to remember basic common sense and basic law: no crimes can be prevented, only prosecuted, and a warrant should be needed for law enforcement to forcibly enter a home. In order to obtain a warrant from a judge, there has to be someone providing some good evidence that a crime has already happened, not that a crime may happen in the future. To even begin to prevent such heinous acts, police would practically have to have free rein to enter homes at will and half the population would have to be police. Of course, this is ludicrous, and no one wants to live in such a situation. "Protection" is impossible, as any decent government does not prosecute it's citizens for crimes yet to be committed.

Straw men ? Paranoia ?

Sorry, government intervention in families is not a Conservative viewpoint.

I just did a quick web search for this to illustrate my point (I hope you’ll take a look yourself):

government intervening in families

and found 760,000 results.

here’s a link that was found:

http://www.familyrightsassociation.com/bin/excessive_government_intervention.htm

I know nothing of the site, I just perused it for 20 seconds and saw that had some relevant information.

I think every Conservative could agree that parental rights versus government intrusion in families is a primary issue for us, and when in doubt, we favor keeping government out. Libertarians are with us on that, as well, so an overwhelming majority of Americans feel this way.

But when confronted with a news story like this one, it’s easy to chant “law and order” and let’s get those bad parents who hurt their kids. But how did America arrive in it’s present moral mess: for the past 100 years we have seen more and more authority taken away from parents. And it only leads to more out-of-control kids who of course get away with as much as they can.

The past hundred years or so of “improvements” have resulted in the moral bankruptcy we see today. I hope you read up a little so you can begin to think about the direction the left-wing is taking us and why.

“I’m from the government, and I’m here to help?” - is that our solution ? I thought Conservatives had pretty much agreed that more government was NOT the solution.

According to census.gov there were 56 million students in K-12 schools in 2007, 11% of which went to PRIVATE schools.

1.5 million were HOMESCHOOLED, compared to 850,000 in 1999, according to homeschoolers. And public school proponents absolutely hate homeschooling, because the quality of education blows away public.

Ask some of those non-public school parents why they don’t have their kids in the public school. Why would make that effort ?

I had read a few years ago about the number of false accusations levied against parents; what must that be like ? Police taking mommy and / or daddy away - falsely accused by a willful child. Want problems ? Just get the government involved with your family. Please do some web searching on this. I’ve heard of many families being very very seriously hurt, broken up, etc., by various government agencies, never have I ever heard a happy ending. Never. And those who were in a truly bad situation - are they really helped by government agencies ? If you dig into those stories of what the courts, etc., actually accomplished in the children’s lives and how their adult lives went - that’s the dirty little secret no government agency wants you to know. They simply take messed up kids and make messed up adults, which we don’t need to pay billions in taxes for, we could have just left them alone.

I’m sure you’ll find that Conservatives overwhelmingly support family authority and family responsibility staying within the family and a growing number of people who are abandoning the obsolete ideas of government control over their children.

History is littered with governments that forcibly took children from parents and forced medical procedures on their own citizens. Hey, even current events is littered with that, right ?

Let’s think before we get our pitchforks and go over to those weird neighbors and go save their kids.

Oh, certainly not !

We’re two people with some very strong opinions, and I see in my zeal I’ve forgotten to agree on a not-so-subtle point !

I certainly do not feel that government has _no_ role, that’s lunacy, that’s up there with NAMBLA.

Of course, if through legal law enforcement activity crimes are found out, they of course need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Of course, we should not even ever be releasing some of these people for the very sickest of crimes when they do get convicted - how often are there repeat offender problems.

Law and order is absolutely necessary, but I think it’s pretty obvious that the “government control of children industry”, i.e., child services, teachers, counselors, etc., is far and away mostly made up of left-wingers, and also it is a bureaucracy with statistical goals, etc., so it does a miserable job. Another troubling part of this is that homosexuals are now allowed to adopt. I wonder how many convicted sex offenders are foster parents ? Bottom line, this is a big, big mess.

But as far as basic police work and prosecution where there is a real case that is actually proven, of course we all want justice. I just think there is no sense to the current policies, no common sense, and I think its very important to protect families from frivolous prosecution. I’ve heard of cases of out-and-out lies, and the law has to be designed to cause zero harm to families where there is no abuse, because, sine they did nothing wrong, they should suffer no consequences. Isn’t that what libs say about the death penalty ? Execute none for fear of executing someone who is innocent ? Well, it should be the same level of truth applied consistently, punishment should be severe where there is incontrovertible evidence, caught on tape, admission, etc. String’em up !

Not to mention that the elderly fall into the same defenseless classification and suffer much abuse, but mainstream libdom ignores it. Is the rape of a child or and old defenseless lady worse, right ? It just doesn’t seem as popular to be “for” that issue.

Both your comments are enlightening, and from a recent experience I don’t doubt that at least sometimes there is exaggeration or even coercion by medical professionals for one reason, money. I took an elderly neighbor to the emergency room because she had been dizzy for some days and then fainted. I am not a medical person, was this a stroke, a heart attack, or just maybe she wasn’t eating right? But to be safe, I called 911. An ambulance came with 3 paramedics and tons of equipment which they hooked up to her, all seemed very professional. In a manner of minutes they seemed to determine it was NOT a heart attack or stroke, but due to the fainting she should go to ER. In the ambulance more things were done, such as certain hook-ups to fluids and monitors. I followed to the hospital and the diagnosis was simple dehydration. Of course the paramedics did the right thing to turn her over to the ER. But the ER nurse started pointing out all sorts of things to me that were completely unnecessary, many different tubes and things they used in the ambulance. I asked why on earth would they do it, as a safety precaution? He said, no, they already knew it was not necessary for her, but this way the bill will be about $1000 more!

You start off by saying, “The incident you refer to is disgraceful and if that is the norm it is outrageous.” but then you say, “Our paramedics were loathe to have a person sign a release if they truly believed they needed medical care but the base stations doctor was not required for the patient to sign the release.” Which leads me to believe that you have witnessed some events vaguely similar to what I described. In our town the powers overseeing our EMS program felt that we were letting to many patients sign AMAs (Against Medical Advice) forms, so the protocol was changed years ago that requires us to call a a doctor for any AMA. We can have them sign a ROR (Release of Responsibility) without a doctor's permission.

The system is designed to be paint by the numbers so that it limits the City's liability. We have fairly strict guidelines which different people still interpret in different ways. Some paramedics want to transport everyone who meets their very liberal interpretation of the protocol and some want to “turf” (get everyone to sign an ROR and get back to the station for dinner). Most of us like to treat everyone the way that we would want to be treated ourselves. Unfortunately there are also those who think that they know the best for everyone whether it is a strict interpretation of our policies and procedures or not and who will use every trick in the book to impose their will on others.

But I can tell you that this business can be very tricky. Recently we had a situation where a person had taken too much of her prescription meds and was acting incoherent. The persons spouse said that under no circumstances was the person to be transported because the last time this had happened it cost them $8000 and they didn't have medical insurance and they were in a very bad financial situation. We all felt very sorry for the couple, but in the field there was no way to determine that this was not a life threatening situation. Until we got her in the back of the rescue unit and gave her medication we could not rule out that the patient was not having a stroke. After the call I told the paramedic that I admired the way he handled the situation very much because he did not try to manipulate the spouse in any way, but he stuck to his guns in what was actually the best interest of the patient. The spouse was still very upset but agreed to meet us at the hospital.

The situation I described in the previous post was not referring to a particular motor vehicle accident. But it was very similar to previous situations that I have witnessed. I have literally seen a fender bender turned into a Mass Casualty Incident where multiple people were transported none of whom were seriously injured. I work with mostly people who act in a professional way and can take a little criticism. I am not shy about sharing my observations. I have a big problem with people who exaggerate and lie, but it is a very common occurrence. I have been doing this for a long time and I have seen many other departments in action also. People tend to filter and interpret their experiences and most seem to think a “little white lie” is OK if they know it is in the patient’s best interest.

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