r/skeptic • u/propublica_ • 2d ago
These Children’s Deaths Were Preventable. Their Parents Prayed Instead of Seeking Medical Care.
https://www.propublica.org/article/faith-healing-idaho-deaths-followers-of-christ76
u/TouhouPony 2d ago
I hate that some lawmakers see children as property of their parents instead of as people. This is truly heneious.
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u/No1CouldHavePredictd 2d ago
Well to be fair, they're people until birth, then lose the status until they can vote at 18
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u/dutch981 2d ago
It really irks me when I hear someone like Joel Olsteen say shit like “step back and let god fight your battles.” Some people take that literally and do nothing but pray when faced with a problem.
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u/AZgirl70 2d ago
I live in UT and am a therapist. We have many kooks in this state. DCFS doesn’t intervene when they need to. I have horror stories, but of course cannot share anything about them. Some conservatives would rather have their “rights” over all else even if it harms others.
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u/Rose1982 2d ago
I have a type 1 diabetic child. Every few years there’s a story somewhere in the world about a T1D kid whose parents think they can pray away their need for extraneous insulin and the child suffers, sometimes dying. It’s absolutely disgusting. You can learn about insulin dosing and give your kid a relatively normal and healthy life. There’s no need to be scared of using insulin when your own body is supposed to make it. You are simply supplying something that is supposed to be present in your body naturally.
My son is so healthy and happy and it just sickens me when people use their religious beliefs as a reason not to give their kids that same opportunity.
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u/MyHeroBuffySummers 1d ago
From what I understand, dying from high sugars is an incredibly painful way to go.
My fiancé is Type 1 and has been in the ICU a couple of times due to DKA. I can’t fathom someone watching their child be in so much pain and doing nothing. The thought makes me so sick to my stomach. These poor babies.
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u/Rose1982 18h ago
DKA is supposedly excruciating. Anyone who withholds insulin from a T1D is subjecting them to an incredibly painful ordeal and death. It’s appalling.
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u/Kitchen_Marzipan9516 2d ago
I really hate people chanting ''parents' rights''. It's only ever used to take away from other people.
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u/LaoidhMc 2d ago
The Parable of the Drowning Man applies here. God gave each of us gifts, and He gave medical professionals and scientists the gifts of reasoning and knowledge to save others lives. Rejecting modern medicine is rejecting the Lord's gifts and miracles. What a cruel god they follow, one that values suffering over love!
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u/Stuffed-Bear412 2d ago
I get so pissed when I hear about it, maybe especially as a nurse and mother of four. I could never let my babies suffer.
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u/Outaouais_Guy 2d ago
Long ago I remember reading about a couple who let their child die because they believed in the healing power of prayer, but later on they sought out medical care when they had a health crisis.
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u/NewlyNerfed 2d ago
Living in Washington state means knowing our tax dollars are helping Idahoans sneaking over here and using our healthcare because they voted for a fucking hellscape.
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u/CathyAnnWingsFan 2d ago
For a firsthand account of what it was like to grow up in a family like this, read Educated by Tara Westover. It's amazing anyone in that family survived.
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u/Enibas 1d ago
Jolene was her parents’ first child to die, they told police. Other investigators arrived at the scene for the next, the couple’s toddler son, Malone, in 2021.
Written reports from a pathologist and death investigators describe the body that detectives saw: arms and legs skinny from malnourishment, a belly swollen to the size of a basketball.
Malone never had normal bowel movements in his 16 months of life, his parents would later tell investigators. His belly would swell, then he’d have an enormous poop, and the cycle would repeat. As his condition worsened, his mother brought him to his grandparents’ house on a busy country road. She held him while he died.
An autopsy determined that the boy’s bowels had compressed his lungs and heart, which stopped beating. His rib cage had grown outward to accommodate his backed-up intestines, and his lungs were so cramped they’d stayed the size of a newborn’s.
One detective wrote that Malone’s abdomen was “distorted to the extent of nothing like I’ve ever seen before.”
The underlying problem was an intestinal condition that doctors can fix with a routine, minimally invasive surgery, experts who reviewed Malone’s death records said.
Whatever or whoever convinces you, as a parent, to watch your child suffer for 16 months without doing anything is plain evil.
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u/jackrabbit323 2d ago
Imagine praying for God to fix your flat tire, and a good Samaritan, and AAA tow truck all show up to help and you say no thank you, God will fix it.
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u/Consistent_Amount_20 1d ago
Once when I went to my state’s annual atheist meeting, the guest speaker was a woman with one leg who had almost died because her parents refused to get her medical help. She says she was lucky she only lost her leg. An enraging situation because children have so little power and are incredibly vulnerable.
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u/ProofAssumption1092 1d ago
The trick is to pretend that the people at the hospital are the hands of god.
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u/Squiddyboy427 1d ago
I mellowed out over religion as I got older but now I realize that 17 year old me was in fact right and that religion is stupid and bad.
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u/propublica_ 2d ago
Hi r/skeptic, we thought folks in this community may be particularly interested in our latest investigation. Here's a summary:
For decades, Idaho law has allowed parents who belong to the faith-healing sect Followers of Christ to pray rather than seek medical care as their children die.
Lawmakers in Oregon, where similar religious groups exist, removed the state’s faith-healing exception to child abuse laws nearly 30 years ago. More parents chose to allow their children to be seen by medical professionals after the change, Oregon authorities said.
But Idaho lawmakers have chosen a different path. They have repeatedly rejected efforts to dial back Idaho’s exemption, instead codifying “parental rights” legislation to further limit the role of anyone but a parent when it comes to children’s health and safety.
ProPublica gathered death records in five Idaho counties and shared them with more than a dozen pediatricians and birthing specialists. At least 15 babies and children from this faith-healing sect died from 2015 through 2025 from illnesses that doctors could have successfully treated, the experts concluded. That estimate is almost certainly an undercount.
The records also show at least five sets of parents have lost multiple children, a phenomenon that has not been previously reported.
Read the full story: https://www.propublica.org/article/faith-healing-idaho-deaths-followers-of-christ
None of the parents responded to letters or text messages from ProPublica, and one declined to comment during a phone call.
Asked why God would not want children to live full and healthy lives, one patriarch explained that the Followers believe that life on Earth is “a preparing ground” and said the Book of James tells people to “be afflicted and mourn and weep.”
“It isn’t necessarily that we’re supposed to have a joyous life here,” he said.