Best interests of the child vs parental beliefs
 

Oregon has numerous religious sects, some in the cities and some in the boondocks.
For the most part, Oregon laws are protective, or a least neutral, toward such groups.

But over the years, we have heard of children dying or
suffering (needlessly ?) due to the religious beliefs of their parents.
Sometimes the State steps in to protect/treat such children, sometimes not.

Here is a case that is unusual in that both parents are sentenced to jail, and
prosecutors are saying openly it is to send a message to the churches.

The Oregonian
Steve Mayes, The Oregonian
October 31, 2011
Note: There is more to the article than I've shown below

Dale and Shannon Hickman receive 6-year sentence, harshest yet for faith-healing church

They should go to jail. I think the right decision was made.

Obviously they wont be upset about going to jail. If it happens, it's god's will right?

Ali, do you see any/many of these sorts of stories in Aus.land ?

Here in PDX, it seems like 1 or 2 a year, and not just infants.
This past summer it was a 16 yr old boy with an infection,
but I don't remember if the parents were brought to trial or not.
Maybe it's just more common in Oregon.

I think it is more common out there Lamp. I don't hear too much locally (this side of the country) :) There was one not that long ago somewhere over here though.

It looks like the medical opinion is that the child could have been saved if emergency services had been called. Looks like a clear cut case of negligence on the parent's part. I am happy to see justice served in this case. In my experience too many parents get off with a slap on the hand or no charges filed because either there is not enough evidence, no witnesses, or no one believes that a parent would hurt their child. Law enforcement and child protective services investigate but all too often the prosecutor may not feel the case is strong enough to win.

Lots of people get away with murder/manslaughter, it seems especially heinous when the creator of that life is the one responsible for it's loss.

It's not very common as far as I've noticed, but that's not to say it doesn't happen.

I think religion plays a much smaller roll in every day life over here, and extreme religious views even smaller.

There was a case here a few months back where a baby died. Her father was (IIRC) a homeopath and was treating her with homeopathy. The parents were jailed for neglect.

Once again, you need a permit to have a dog, but almost anyone can have a human. :right:

I think the sentence is overly harsh. Not in terms of the harm they've caused, but in terms of their levels of intent.

Whatever their belief, they lost their child. However much they may believe that to be God's will, it doesn't mean losing that child wouldn't have hurt as much as any parent would at the loss of a baby. Compounding that grief with a long prison sentence is I think overly harsh.

I'm not quite sure what the answer is in this sort of case. I think forcing them to take some kind of responsibility for what their actions, or inaction, have resulted in is a good thing. A prison sentence is a clear and easily understood expression of that responsibility. Maybe there should be a little reprogramming whilst they're in there, although that may be unconstitutional, i dunno.

But 6 years? This wasn't carelessness, or intentional cruelty. Their actions were fully founded in a strong and perfectly legal faith. One in which society deemed it acceptable that they be raised and educated, and whose right to set the moral standards of their world was constitutionally protected. As long as it is acceptable for church elders and others within a community to perpetrate the notion that good parenting involves total acceptance of God's will to the point of fatal neglect, then parents like these will fail to save their young ones when illness or injury strike.

Again, what the answer is, I don't know. But I feel a lot of sorrow for those parents.

If they're the sort of loonies who think if their child dies because it was gods will rather than the fact that modern medicine possibly if not probably could have saved the child, but they decided not to call a doctor, then again I say, it's gods will that they go to jail.

Why should they get any special consideration just because they thought they were doing the right thing? I might think it's the right thing to not stop my car from hitting someone's kid in the street because gods will put them in harms way so he must want to call them home.

Nope, sorry. No sympathy from me.

The OP agrees with you. Their sentence is because they claim they saw nothing wrong, and they might have got off lighter if they had claimed they were trusting in God to heal him. Or am I reading that wrong?

I think that's right, monster. They weren't saying, "He was sick, but we had faith God would heal him," they were saying, "He was completely fine, and God randomly took him because that's what God does."

Ahhh. I misread the OP.

In that case the sentence seems fair.

Dana,

Try simply leaving their faith out of the question. What if the child was sick, but the parents did or didn't do xyz and as a result of those actions or inactions, the child died, which is exactly what happened here. In this case, it was inaction. What if the parents didn't provide enough food for the child? I see your hungry, but oh well. Or shelter? You're not cold, you're just faking. That's simple neglect. Gross, fatal neglect, and the child died as a result of that neglect. What then? Jail?

yes jail.

I never argued that they shouldn't be in jail. I was just thinking it seemed a harsh sentence. That said, I had misread the article, and apparently they just plain neglected the kid.

There was a recent case here where a mother force-fed her child.
To death.

Apparently it is an acceptable practice in Ghana (where the mother grew up) where fat babies are healthy babies.
But she had already been warned about the practice by child services, and carried on.

The poor girl died from pneumonia - triggered by the food in her lungs, not uncommon in these cases.

Mum gets sentenced next month.
Could be up to 14 years.
Unlikely to be as her actions, although misguided, were motivated by concern for the child's wellbeing.

What can you do?
On the one hand people bleat about freedom and Mother Knows Best.
On the other hand social services are to blame if a child slips through the net.
And of course it's the little children who suffer either way.

Then there's the case of Adolf Hitler, Honszlynn, and Aryan Nation Campbell (Actually the girl's name is JoyceLynn, Aryan Nation is her middle name). This is the case that broke over a Birthday Cake ... ShopRite dimed them out to the NJ Department of Youth and Family Services, and refused to put Adolf's name on the cake.

There was no neglect. There was no abuse.

The children were taken out of the home because of their names ... the children were removed from the home because of alleged abuse and incompetent parenting ... well, the investigations have shown the charges to be unfounded and where are the kids? Still in foster care.

Okay, so the parents are idiots. But other than having crazy beliefs, they're apparently not bad parents.

Now, I think the kids names are stupider than stupid can be, but as far as such things go, it's no stupider than a lot of the homemade names folks are coming up with these days.

My daughter knows a girl named Azalea?!?!?
How about Keith Krimson Kaut whom I went to HS with.

Yep - the lines are blurred.

I'm still trying to figure out Jaden/Jaydan/Jai-Da'an/Jaedun/etc/adnauseum. Especially when neither (presumed) parent's name involves either a "J" or a "Dan."

Azalea is a flowering shrub. People have been naming girls after flowers forever. Why should azalea be unacceptable?

Because I don't like it and I said, so that's why.

Could lead to some funny situations.

For example, in French, the vernacular name of the White stonecrop is "trique-madame".

Which roughly translates as "fuck woman".

And Hebe is apparently an offensive nickname for Jews in America. But it's also a beautiful flowering shrub, and the name has been used occasionally since the early 1900s in England, and is apparently popular in Japan. (It originates from Greek Mythology -Hebe is the daughter of Zeus and hera and cupbearer to the gods -the goddess of youth, Juventas in Roman terms)

Srsly, there would be no names if we overthink it. Babies are still being named John, Willie, Dave and Dick. My niece just got named Orla. I so hope beest is wrong about what her nick-name will be when she gets to high school.

that said, I'm not into names with punctuation. Although, now I think it through, it's kind of a fun "fuck you" to grammar nazis. Spend years being told you're putting apostrophe's (;)) in the wrong place... once it's on the birth cert it's the right place even if it follows no grammatical logic.

She'll be eaten by a semi-literate dingo.

I'm in a bit of a mood today, and the OP is pissing me off. Why should someone get to fill some poor child's head with vicious, harmful bull$#'! that will leave it with years of trauma? If you did that to someone else's kid you'd be thrown in prison.

A lot of religions are harmful and spiteful, and only perpetuate themselves by obliging their adherents to breed and brainwash their children into the religion. Sod that. Raise the kids with an open view and allow them to choose when they are adults. Somehow.

I know it is socially very dangerous to say what people can and cannot teach their children, but I think we need to make some kind of limits.

If the bible were brought before censors nowadays it would be rated MA(V) 18+. And yet we let people shove this down the throats of children.

The Old Testament is pornographic and Revelations was written by a psycho on crack. Children should be strongly discouraged from going anywhere near it. I wish the Rapture would hurry up and arrive so we could be rid of the Republican party. Children excepted, of course. :eyebrow:

I just snorted so loud it woke my dog up.

:notworthy

Rumspringa RULES!

Actually, revelations is an example of a popular genre of writing called Apocalyptic literature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_literature

Which came first, the pornography or the Apocalyptic literature ? ;)

Funny, I get a lot of flack from people who ask me what religious beliefs I've instilled in my children and I respond with...tolerance, diversity and a conscience.

Does a name have to have a connection to the parent's name?
I might be missing something here.

Somewhere I know, is a child called Breeze.
She has a sister called Strom (deliberately misspelt by me in case of internet searches).
Seems mean to make one more powerful than the other. Although Strom is the least stormy child you could ever meet.

I've never really understood calling children by the same names everyone else has, or giving a child your own name, yet I know it's more common than not. On the other hand I wouldn't want to give a child a name that needs an explanation every time, or has to be repeated over and over and then spelled out EVERY TIME. Can you tell I had some issues with this before I reverted to my childhood nickname? And no, Monster, I don't count your children in with the bizarre names, only with the uncommon ones.

Mine would have been Felix and Oscar and Ruby and Rose
Although if I had met their father he might have wanted a say...
Not serious, just that those are names I really like.

One of my pet dislikes is Anglicised Gaelic names.
Orla. No. They should have the courage of their convictions and have it spelled Orlaith. Yes that breaks my rules above, but if you want a Gaelic name you should be willing to stick up for it. I never promised to be consistent.

I know this is not my childs name, but my street name is Karen St, every time I have to tell someone over the phone they say, can you spell that for me? Like it can't possibly be just plain old Karen. The girls name, from the old days. Just plain old Karen.

It's mystifying. lol

I think I've said before that Mum & I both use the call-sign alphabet when giving out initials.

I've had letters addressed to Charlie and Mum to Sierra. And before she joined the Ambulance Service (way back when, where she learned it and we had to test her), letters to Sugar.

A friend of mine lived on Slave Hill.
No, really.
I think it was named after a local landowner.
He would say, "Slave. As in bondage."

It's a lot easier now they just ask for postcodes and door numbers.
But even then you can really puzzle call centre staff. I always start with the actual postcode, then repeat it with Hotel, Papa [etc] - "Sorry, which hotel?"

Charlie Kilo Oscar signing out.

Sundae mentioned my new neice's name! :lol: Do we think she might get nick-named Oral at all? :eek: Did we tell the proud parents of our fears :bolt:

I knew a boy called Robert.
He was called Sniffer.

I knew of a girl called Sultana.
Everyone called her.... Sultana.
And didn't make any jokes about it either because she was a real bruiser.

The name doesn't automatically denote the nickname.
Fingers crossed for little Orlaith though ;)

I don't have a problem with anglicising names. We've always done it. Names travel and are changed. If they didn't change, our history would be one of Guillaumes and Jeans, instead of Williams and Johns.

That's funny... when you alluded to her potential negative nicknames, I immediately assumed Beest was thinking "whore-la."

I just thought, Orlly?

Yeah, I thought you should preemptively teach her to arch an eye brow.
Orly?

yarly, Orly was my first thought. beest just has a filthy mind.

Here in the U.S. there is a trend (that we could probably do without) of blending the parents names to name the child. I suppose it's an additional confirmation of paternity, other than just giving the baby the father's last name.

Of course, people do turn around and do other stupid shit.

I went to high school with a girl with a rather distinctive first name (misspelling of an insect) and a last name with romantic associations. She called her out-of-wedlock (a bigger deal then than it is now) child "Romeo."

crazynurse's daughter clearly had some sort of brain damage during delivery and named her child "Draven."

Yes, she named her kid after the dead guy in The Crow. Not Eric, which would have been perfectly acceptable, but Draven.

I do not get this. I do not.

could have been worse -D'raven.....

Don't. Just stop right there.

My family have been, in general, mercifully unimaginative in our naming patterns. Probably the most unusual would be Fleur, my cousin's lass. But most are fairly solid, traditional names. Sam, Joshua, Stacie, Calumn, Paul. Closer to home are Sophie and Amelia. My own generation was similar: Danielle, Martin, Stephen, Paul, Neil, David, Shirley, Karen & Gary (twins :P) ...I'll stop there, not gonna name them all :p)

I like unusual names, but not the ones that sound 'made-up'. Sometimes I hear the names people have come up with for kids and think...that's the sort of name I'd have dreamed up for a cookie roleplay character in an online world.

I like Fleur! The inventive spellings thing can be a problem when teaching kids to read. Singing the Wilabee Walabee beginning sounds song to a kid with a bunch of silent consonants in front of his name can confuse.

Our 3rd daughter's name, Rachael, took a long time arriving.

My wife and I agreed on her name and it went on her birth certificate.
But then, for reasons completely un-remembered now,
the entire family started calling her Shelly.

On Shelly's 18th birthday she vigorously announced
that from then on she would be called by her real name.
She actually ignored anyone using her "nickname" until they changed over.
Her Mom and Dad probably had the hardest time making the switch.

I know, I know.
I'm usually laissez faire about changes in spelling and language.
I scoff at articles in the hate Mail about how Americans are ruining our language and how British schools are promoting illiteracy. Change and evolve.

It's a personal grain of sand in my usually tolerant mollusc of a world view.
Probably because I grew up in an envirnment with a strong Irish influence. So when I hear Siobhan pronounced See-ob-han it makes me twitch a bit.
And of course, my bloody parents... argh, that's an old story.

Chill out I say to myself now.
Shush.

Anyway, I haven't got the name-badge for my uniform at work yet.
Today, the colleague on the till next to me could not remember my name. She kept calling me Ruby.
That was far less annoying than having my name pronounced wrong, and I've told her if she wants to call me that she can.

Cross fingerers I'll get it by next week. And some extra evening shifts. Although that's nothing to do with names and all to do with £££

ETA I love the name Guillaume.
We have a troubled boy at school with the English version of the name.
I call him that in my head because I think it softens his behaviour.

Doesn't mean I don't put him in time out or send him the the Headmaster of course...