Faith-healing parents charged in baby’s death

15-month-old girl died from untreated infection, authorities say

OREGON CITY, Ore. - A couple whose church preaches against medical care are facing criminal charges after their young daughter died of an infection that authorities said went untreated.

Carl and Raylene Worthington were indicted Friday on charges of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in the death of their 15-month-old daughter Ava. They belong to the Followers of Christ Church, whose members have a history of treating gravely ill children only with prayer.

Ava died March 2 of bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection. The state medical examiner’s office has said she could have been treated with antibiotics.

Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner, said the child’s breathing was further hampered by a benign cyst on her neck that had never been medically addressed, The Oregonian reported.

Laws passed in the 1990s struck down legal shields for faith-healing parents after the deaths of several children whose parents were members of the fundamentalist church.

 

 You know, this sort of story really pisses me off. WHERE THE HELL IS THE OUTRAGE FROM CHRISTIANS? Why aren’t they demanding for their church to do something about a very serious and rampant problem with their pedophile priests? Fucking subservient douchebags.

Man: Girl, 4, provoked me

WOODSTOCK – A retired Canadian pastor likely on track to leave a McHenry County courtroom Friday with probation for sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl instead found himself behind bars after he told a judge that the girl acted sexually provocative toward him.

“I tried to avoid the encounters. On a couple of times, I thought I was being sexually harassed,” Kenneth R. Cooke, 73, told a judge. “I think there is psychological evidence today that children, even in their younger years, could become interested in sex.”

After listening to Cooke’s statements, Judge Joseph Condon sentenced him to three years in prison. Condon said the sentence was based partly on Cooke’s attitude.

“That just boggles my mind,” Condon said to Cooke. “You are willing to say whatever is convenient to you and what is most likely to release the pressure of these proceedings against you.”

Cooke pleaded guilty in November to aggravated criminal sexual abuse for abusing the girl in a Lake in the Hills home in 2003 while visiting from Canada.

“She will never be the same, naive, innocent child she was before the crime,” the girl’s mother said in court.

“She feels guilty and the sense of being a bad person because she has done things that she knows are wrong modeled after Mr. Cooke.”

Before Cooke ever appeared in a U.S. courtroom to answer to the charges, he fought his extradition from Canada for years, prosecutors said.

 Good thing he’s a religious man, otherwise I might have thought he was an immoral man.

Alaska’s `Papa Pilgrim’ gets 14 years

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A man who called himself “Papa Pilgrim” and took his family far from civilization to raise them according to his interpretation of the Bible was sentenced to 14 years in prison for sexually assaulting a daughter.

A judge imposed the sentence Tuesday after Robert Hale’s wife and many of their 15 children delivered statements that included intense stories of physical and mental abuse. Judge Donald Hopwood called it “one of the worst cases of domestic violence I’ve seen.”

Hale and his family came to prominence during a feud with the National Park Service after family members used a bulldozer without permission to clear a road in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.

Land rights advocates rallied to their cause, and stories featured their plight as a case of big government versus simple folks loving music, fearing God and living off the land.