Faith Healing On Trial
Mother Testifying
OREGON CITY, Ore. (RNS) Prosecutors in the trial of two parents accused of neglecting their infant daughter’s illness rested their case Monday (July 6) after calling the last of three pediatricians who offered opinions about the medical conditions that caused the girl’s death.
The doctors, and the deputy medical examiner who conducted 15-month-old Ava Worthington’s autopsy, generally agreed that the girl suffered from malnutrition, breathing difficulties and a weakened immune system.
Ava had a cyst that blocked her trachea and esophagus and she failed to grow or gain weight.
Although she started out a large newborn, her height and weight did not progress normally. When she died on March 2, 2008, her development was consistent with a four-month-old.
The girl’s parents, Carl and Raylene Worthington, who believe in faith healing rather than secular medicine, are charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminal mistreatment for failing to seek medical care for their daughter.
Their attorneys will rely on a local pediatrician and an expert witness, Dr. Janice Ophoven, to counter the medical testimony. Ophoven, a pediatric forensic pathologist from Minnesota, regularly testifies in cases involving a child’s abuse or death.
The Worthingtons said they did not use doctors and would not have sought medical care for the girl. Instead, they relied on spiritual treatment including prayer, the laying on of hands and anointing with oil.
Several members of the Worthington’s Oregon City church, the Followers of Christ, are also expected to testify. Defense attorneys said that those who saw Ava during the last few days of her life believe she was getting better and that in the hours before she died, she was active, playful and happy.
Dr. Dan Leonhardt testified Monday that Ava started life as a large and sturdy baby but when she died 15 months later her weight and height were so far off the growth chart that “there isn’t even a line for it.”
Comments
By admin on July 15th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
this is an interesting story, and I am curious to see how it turns out.
By admin on July 24th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
The couple was acquitted.
“OREGON CITY, Ore. – The jury forewoman in the trial of an Oregon couple acquitted of manslaughter in their daughter’s pneumonia death says she felt the pair were ”loving people” who didn’t mean to harm the 15-month-old girl.
The jury knew Carl Brent Worthington and his pregnant wife, Raylene, ”had no intentions of ever harming their child,” Santos told reporters on Thursday outside the Clackamas County Courthouse. ”If anything, the evidence showed the opposite.”
But the jury did convict Carl Worthington of criminal mistreatment, a misdemeanor, for not taking his daughter, Ava, to see a doctor. He faces a maximum of a year in jail when he is sentenced on July 31.
Raylene Worthington was acquitted Thursday of the same misdemeanor charge after six days of jury deliberations that resulted in a deadlock at one point. Santos said she and others felt Carl Worthington was more accountable for the decisions about the child’s care.”