Second Child Death for Convicted Faith-Healing Couple

[redheadbaker]

Thoughts? I'm having a hard time with this. The law shouldn't be able to "override" these people's faith, but should the child be subjected to the consequences, when they're not old enough to accept that faith themselves? 

Second Child Death for Convicted Faith-Healing Couple
Couple on probation after 2-year-old died, lose another child

A couple that was sentenced to probation after their 2-year-old died in 2009 from pneumonia have had another child die.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible, fundamentalist Christians who believe in the power of prayer ahead of modern medicine, recently had their 8-month-old son die, according to Philadelphia Police spokeswoman Jillian Russell.

It wasn’t clear when the child died, or the cause of death, but the death hasn't been ruled suspicious, Russell said.

The child was taken to a funeral home by an as yet unknown individual and the undertaker alerted police, Russell said.

An official cause of death is pending an autopsy, according to police.

In 2010, a jury convicted the Schaibles, who have seven other children, of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment in the death of their 2-year-old son Kent. The Schaibles were each sentenced to 10 years of probation -- they could have faced prison time.

As part of their sentence, the Schaibles were required to arrange medical examinations for each of their children, to immediately consult with a doctor when a child became sick and to follow the doctor’s treatment recommendations.

During their trial, the Schaibles' lawyers said the parents were targeted because their fundamentalist Christian beliefs espouse faith healing.

Pennsylvania law says parents have a legal duty to protect their children's health and safety, although the law does not specify if or when medical care must be sought.

Prosecutors said the Kent could have been saved with basic medical care -- probably even over-the-counter medication -- but the couple relied on prayer instead. Defense attorneys argued that their clients did not know how sick the child was, and their beliefs played no role in their decision.

When asked for comment outside his Rhawnhurst home Friday, Herbert Schaible, 44, told NBC10’s Chris Cato “we don’t want to talk.”

www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Faith-Healing-Parents-Schaibles-Child-Death-203782041.html

[ttt]

Horrible. I hope these people go to prison for the rest of their lives. I am appalled that they only got probation before.

[imojoebunny]

This is a hard one. I would hate to lose my child because I thought something was nothing, and then be charged on top of it. This happened to a friend in high school and her father was a doctor, he thought she just had a cold, went to bed and she was dead when they woke up the next morning. I have another friend whose 8 year old died essentially the same way. While I do not agree that parents should be allowed to ignore common medicine that could save their child's life, it opens up a can of worms to legally charge them. What about all the people who choose voluntarily not to vaccinate? Do we hold them accountable when their child dies of diseases that are easily preventable?

[ringstrue]

This is what gets me. If you gotta mandate that a parent has to take their kids to the doc when they are sick, and to follow their treatment plan, how are you so confident that these people have any damn sense about anything else?

[ttt]

Apr 20, 2013 12:43:06 GMT -5 imojoebunny said:

This is a hard one. I would hate to lose my child because I thought something was nothing, and then be charged on top of it. This happened to a friend in high school and her father was a doctor, he thought she just had a cold, went to bed and she was dead when they woke up the next morning. I have another friend whose 8 year old died essentially the same way. While I do not agree that parents should be allowed to ignore common medicine that could save their child's life, it opens up a can of worms to legally charge them. What about all the people who choose voluntarily not to vaccinate? Do we hold them accountable when their child dies of diseases that are easily preventable?

Fair enough for the first time, but a second time?? And when their baby died they just had someone drop him off at a funeral home???

[pamela]

Apr 20, 2013 13:00:59 GMT -5 ttt said:

Apr 20, 2013 12:43:06 GMT -5 imojoebunny said:

This is a hard one. I would hate to lose my child because I thought something was nothing, and then be charged on top of it. This happened to a friend in high school and her father was a doctor, he thought she just had a cold, went to bed and she was dead when they woke up the next morning. I have another friend whose 8 year old died essentially the same way. While I do not agree that parents should be allowed to ignore common medicine that could save their child's life, it opens up a can of worms to legally charge them. What about all the people who choose voluntarily not to vaccinate? Do we hold them accountable when their child dies of diseases that are easily preventable?

Fair enough for the first time, but a second time?? And when their baby died they just had someone drop him off at a funeral home???

That's the real sketchy part for me.

[lime]

I'm perfectly fine with children's health issues overriding religious beliefs.

[Jermys]

Apr 20, 2013 13:38:40 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. They endangered their child's life. Again. And the child DIED.

Why can't we declare this sort of religious belief as a mental illness? Because these people are absolutely out of their goddamn minds and need to have their kids taken away unless they can get treatment and start behaving like human beings.

Only if we declare ALL religious belief a mental illness.  This is no crazier than a talking bush or Zombie Jesus or transubstantiation.  If you regulate one, you have to regulate all of them.  If I were religious, I wouldn't want to venture down that primrose path...I would stick with child endangerment or something like that.

[Deleted]

Fuck these people.

[Deleted]

I hope someone will update when the autopsy results come in.

[ringstrue]

If the parents are practicing a religion that specifically denies getting medical attention, that's gotta be differentiated from people who normally seek medical care, have a history of it, etc., are making educated guesses and just guessed wrong, kwim?

[emisi]

I have no problem with these people being prosecuted. Then again, I would have no problem with anti-vaxxers being prosecuted if their kid dies of a preventable disease.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using proboards

[aprilsails]

This is most likely a prosecutable case under a child endangerment charge. I honestly don't believe religion is a viable defense in a case such as this. It is surprising nonetheless that they have lost 2 out of 7 children in this day and age. Even my grandparents, who lived very rough childhoods, had better survivorship rates in their families, and that was almost no access to medical care.

[kmpls]

I find the whole dropping the kid off at the funeral home extremely sketchy and this people are likely going to rot in hell.

But it could be 1st child dies of pneumonia which they thought was bad cold and 2nd dies of SIDS.

Probably not but giving them benefit of the doubt - until autopsy comes out.

[overture]

Apr 20, 2013 13:33:42 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

ETA:  Also there's no legal can of worms here.  SCOTUS has already resolved this issue finding that parents do not have a 1st Amendment right to fail to provide ordinary medical care to their children because children have their own Constitutional rights which would be obliterated if there were laws that excepted them from essentially child abuse protection.  It's some Jehovah's Witness case, I think.  

The quote I remember from a class was "people are free to make martyrs of themselves, but they are not free to make martyrs of their children."

ETA: I looked it up, and the case I was thinking of was actually about child labor, not medical care.  I wonder if it was used subsequently in any cases related to medicine.

[ttt]

Apr 20, 2013 20:18:20 GMT -5 kmpls said:

I find the whole dropping the kid off at the funeral home extremely sketchy and this people are likely going to rot in hell.

But it could be 1st child dies of pneumonia which they thought was bad cold and 2nd dies of SIDS.

Probably not but giving them benefit of the doubt - until autopsy comes out.

Whether they thought it was a bad cold or not is irrelevant. Because even if they *knew* it was pneumonia, they wouldn't have taken him to a doctor anyway. They said this - that they don't believe in medicine, and that prayer is enough. None of their 7 children had *ever* been to a doctor.

www.philly.com/philly/news/20130420_Couple_under_investigation_for_second_child_death.html

[cattledogkisses]

Refusing to provide your kid with adequate medical care (at least the bare bones) is child abuse, IMO.

[debatethis]

Apr 20, 2013 20:28:04 GMT -5 ttt said:

Apr 20, 2013 20:18:20 GMT -5 kmpls said:

I find the whole dropping the kid off at the funeral home extremely sketchy and this people are likely going to rot in hell.

But it could be 1st child dies of pneumonia which they thought was bad cold and 2nd dies of SIDS.

Probably not but giving them benefit of the doubt - until autopsy comes out.

Whether they thought it was a bad cold or not is irrelevant. Because even if they *knew* it was pneumonia, they wouldn't have taken him to a doctor anyway. They said this - that they don't believe in medicine, and that prayer is enough. None of their 7 children had *ever* been to a doctor.

www.philly.com/philly/news/20130420_Couple_under_investigation_for_second_child_death.html

All of those kids need to be removed. That is neglect, plain and simple.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2013 13:03:02 GMT -5 NewOrleans said:

Apr 20, 2013 12:43:06 GMT -5 imojoebunny said:

 What about all the people who choose voluntarily not to vaccinate? Do we hold them accountable when their child dies of diseases that are easily preventable?

yes, please.

Agree. When it comes to children, parents need to obtain standard treatment and prevention. I don't care what they believe. At age 18, people can get or not get care as they see fit as long as they following standards to prevent infections from spreading (e.g. vaccines for adults may still be required.)

[aurora]

I'm a little uncomfortable with saying parents are liable if they haven't done everything possible to prevent illness in their children. For example, is a parent liable if the child is obese? If they neglected to wash their veggies adequately just once and the child got salmonella? There are just too many things that could go wrong.

There are also potential issues where there isn't a clear cut answer and you could get two different opinions from two different doctors. Parents shouldn't be liable just for following what turns out to be the wrong doc's advice.

Prosecuting parents who flat-out refuse to obtain any medical help at all for a mortally ill child? That I'm perfectly fine with.

[ttt]

Apr 21, 2013 16:56:24 GMT -5 aurora said:

I'm a little uncomfortable with saying parents are liable if they haven't done everything possible to prevent illness in their children. For example, is a parent liable if the child is obese? If they neglected to wash their veggies adequately just once and the child got salmonella? There are just too many things that could go wrong.

There are also potential issues where there isn't a clear cut answer and you could get two different opinions from two different doctors. Parents shouldn't be liable just for following what turns out to be the wrong doc's advice.

Prosecuting parents who flat-out refuse to obtain any medical help at all for a mortally ill child? That I'm perfectly fine with.

Haven't done everything possible, no. Haven't done *anything* possible, yes.

[sushi]

A child should not be a victim of religion, and thankfully courts have made that clear. If you beat a demon out of a child, you can still be considered abusive. If you deny access to standard of care, a child can still receive chemo or blood. And if your child dies because you prayed instead of going to hospital? Yes, you are a murderer.

If I wasn't on my phone I would give links to all those scenarios and more. Here's one that possibly references a few of them. If you're not familiar with hemangioma, trigger warning before googling for a picture of this girl. abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=13687650&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fclient%3Dchrome-mobile%26sourceid%3Dchrome-mobile%26ie%3DUTF-8%26q%3Dhemangioma%2Bchild%2Breligious%2Bparent%2Babuse

[sushi]

Also, as much as I'm a pro vaccine person and hope all non medical exemptions would go away,I do see refusal to prevent as different than refusal to treat. The former is misguided and wrong and puts people in danger. The latter is just evil.

[aurora]

Apr 21, 2013 16:57:40 GMT -5 ttt said:

Apr 21, 2013 16:56:24 GMT -5 aurora said:

I'm a little uncomfortable with saying parents are liable if they haven't done everything possible to prevent illness in their children. For example, is a parent liable if the child is obese? If they neglected to wash their veggies adequately just once and the child got salmonella? There are just too many things that could go wrong.

There are also potential issues where there isn't a clear cut answer and you could get two different opinions from two different doctors. Parents shouldn't be liable just for following what turns out to be the wrong doc's advice.

Prosecuting parents who flat-out refuse to obtain any medical help at all for a mortally ill child? That I'm perfectly fine with.

Haven't done everything possible, no. Haven't done *anything* possible, yes.

You said it much better than I did!

[msmerymac]

I can't even count how many times I might have died without medical intervention. I've had pneumonia, for one. In a way, it seems miraculous anyone lived to be an adult before the 20th century. 

My great-grandfather was one of 9 children and 2 died in childhood. IN THE 1890s!

[ttt]

Apr 21, 2013 17:18:34 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

I can't even count how many times I might have died without medical intervention. I've had pneumonia, for one. In a way, it seems miraculous anyone lived to be an adult before the 20th century. 

My great-grandfather was one of 9 children and 2 died in childhood. IN THE 1890s!

Heck, my dad lost a sibling to a now-vaccine-preventable disease and that was in the 1950s. Medicine has come a long way in a short period of time.

[cattledogkisses]

Our grandparents' generation, the people who remember the horrible diseases that we vax for now, must look at anti-vaxers like they have absolutely lost their minds. My gram had polio, and was lucky enough to survive but suffers lasting effects from it to this day. That alone is enough to scare me.

[ttt]

Apr 21, 2013 18:21:47 GMT -5 cattledogkisses said:

Our grandparents' generation, the people who remember the horrible diseases that we vax for now, must look at anti-vaxers like they have absolutely lost their minds. My gram had polio, and was lucky enough to survive but suffers lasting effects from it to this day. That alone is enough to scare me.

My grandfather (not the side that lost the child) is totally anti-modern medicine. He thinks doctors don't know what they're talking about, that prescription drugs are all a scam, etc. But even he thinks it's crazy not to vaccinate. Actually I think he said that vaccines were the last good thing that the medical field ever produced ( but I guess you're entitled to have some wacky ideas when you get old). He remembers the polio epidemic and he was even active in the March of Dimes fundraising when it was going towards a cure for polio.

[emisi]

Apr 21, 2013 18:21:47 GMT -5 cattledogkisses said:

Our grandparents' generation, the people who remember the horrible diseases that we vax for now, must look at anti-vaxers like they have absolutely lost their minds. My gram had polio, and was lucky enough to survive but suffers lasting effects from it to this day. That alone is enough to scare me.

My uncle was crippled by polio, which made me side-eye the hell out of my cousin when I thought she was anti-vax. Thankfully, it turns out she was just delaying some.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using proboards

[Deleted]

As part of their sentence, the Schaibles were required to arrange medical examinations for each of their children, to immediately consult with a doctor when a child became sick and to follow the doctor’s treatment recommendations.

This is what jumped out at me while reading this post (I didn't open the link) If it turns out they didn't comply with this directive, then let. them. fry. It takes a shitload of arrogance to continue to think their way is better after the death of their first child has proven otherwise.