ABC News: Homicide Charges for Parents Who Prayed as Daughter Died
A few weeks ago I blogged about the case of Dale and Leilani Neumann who prayed for their 11-year-old daughter Madeline rather than give her medical attention that she needed. Madeline died from diabetic ketoacidosis. According to Fox News she probably suffered from “nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness,” for a 30-day period before she died.
Well it looks like the Marathon County District attorney in this case is doing the right thing and has charged Madeline’s parents with second-degree reckless homicide. They face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
I think that it is important that they are convicted and hope that this case serves as an example to other parents that there is a legal and moral obligation to seek medical attention for a sick child.
More from the article on Madeline:
“Madeline, a straight-A student who was being home-schooled, was in good health until she started getting tired about two weeks before she died, her mother has said. When the situation got worse over Easter weekend, “we stayed fast in prayer then,” Leilani Neumann said. “We believed that she would recover.”
According to a search warrant request, the girl’s grandmother told investigators she had been ill for several days, was “very tired,” and wanted to be held by her mother. By March 22, Madeline couldn’t walk or talk, her grandmother said.
The grandmother said she told Leilani Neumann to take the girl to the doctor but the mother said her daughter “would be fine and God would heal her,” the court record said. “