UDPATE, April 28, 2008: Parents in diabetes case charged
The parents of an 11-year-old girl who died of complications from untreated diabetes last month have both been charged with second-degree reckless homicide, according to Marathon County District Attorney Jill Falstad.
...In a statement released at a 1 p.m. news conference, Falstad said the parents' actions meet the standard of the charges.
"Second-degree reckless homicide has two elements," Falstad said. "The first element is that the defendant caused the death of another. The second element is that the defendant caused the death by criminally reckless conduct.
"In this case, that conduct was the failure to seek medical intervention. The failure to seek medical intervention created unreasonable and substantial risk of death or great bodily harm to Kara and the Neumanns were aware of the risk."
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I'll start with the bottom line: Eleven-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann did not have to die. She would not have died if she had received proper medical care.
Kara's parents are responsible for her death.
I'm sure that they are grieving the loss of their beloved daughter and my heart goes out to them, but they need to be held accountable for what they DIDN'T do.
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Children don't often die like this in the United States.
But on Sunday in the Town of Weston, near Wausau, 11-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann died of diabetic ketoacidosis, a treatable though serious condition of type 1 diabetes in which acid builds up in the blood.
Neumann's parents said they didn't know she had diabetes. They didn't take her to a doctor. They prayed for healing.
The common course of medical treatment for the disease involves injections of insulin and intravenous fluids, said Omar Ali, assistant professor of pediatric endocrinology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa.
"A fatal outcome would be unusual these days in the United States," Ali said.
The death of the girl has shocked the community and raised profound moral and legal questions over when medicine should trump faith, especially when the life of a child is at stake.
There is no indication authorities knew of the girl's dire medical condition before her death. Local police are investigating the case and have said they could forward their results to the Marathon County district attorney's office. The Marathon County Department of Social Services has also launched an investigation.
Authorities said Wednesday that the Neumanns' three other children - ages 13, 14 and 17 - were being interviewed by Social Services and law enforcement and were being checked by a physician.
"The reaction is sadness, and I think a little bit (of) amazement," said Dean Zuleger, administrator for the Village of Weston. "I haven't seen a lot of what I would see to be knee-jerk judgment. There is a general sense of grief and sadness. Because I know the family a bit there is a great deal of concern for their well-being."
Zuleger said the girl's parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, are well-known in the community. They moved there from California two years ago and run a popular coffee shop.
...[Everest Metro Police Chief Dan] Vergin said the death of the girl brings up difficult issues.
"At what point do religious beliefs take over for medical help? And the flip of the coin is at what point are the parents responsible for the health and welfare of their children," he said. "These people truly believed their prayer and faith would heal their daughter. They have no question about that."
Police and courts have grappled with such issues for decades.
Norman Fost, professor of bioethics and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, said the First Amendment to the Constitution gives citizens the right to practice religion.
"A Jehovah's Witness can refuse life-saving blood transfusion based on their religious belief," he said. "They're protected. But they can't refuse it for their child . . . the First Amendment extends to their own behavior but not their children's."
Under Wisconsin statutes, parents can't be accused of abuse or neglect if the sole reason for the injury is that they relied on prayer, Fost said. But Robyn S. Shapiro, an attorney who is professor of bioethics and director of the Bioethics Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, said abuse or neglect can include "failure to appropriately respond or supply medical care to your kid."
According to the Associated Press:
[Kara] had probably been ill for about a month, suffering symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness, the chief said Wednesday, noting that he expects to complete the investigation by Friday and forward the results to the district attorney.
The girl's mother, Leilani Neumann, said the family believes in the Bible and that healing comes from God, but she said they do not belong to an organized religion or faith, are not fanatics and have nothing against doctors.
She insisted her youngest child, a wiry girl known to wear her straight brown hair in a ponytail, was in good health until recently.
"We just noticed a tiredness within the past two weeks," she said Wednesday. "And then just the day before and that day (she died), it suddenly just went to a more serious situation. We stayed fast in prayer then. We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that to us, it looked like she was recovering."
The mother admits that Kara's condition became a "more serious situation."
At that point, the parents should have sought medical care for their daughter.
Read an AP interview with Kara's parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann.
If the family has "nothing against doctors," then why wouldn't they get their little girl to a doctor when the situation became "serious"?
I believe that one should have the right to worship according to the dictates of one's conscience, but there should be limits.
One such limit is when the practice of religious beliefs impacts the LIFE of a child.
I believe that the parents displayed a degree of neglect that is morally wrong.
In my view, it should be criminal.
An 11-year-old child is dependent and in need of protection.
Kara's parents failed to provide adequate care for her.
The moment the parents noticed that the situation had become "serious," it wasn't time for them to stop praying.
It was time to intensify their prayers, and get their Kara to a doctor.
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Audio of 911 calls
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) -- The frantic 911 call to the Marathon County Sheriff's Department from the home of an 11-year-old Weston girl who died from untreated diabetes was made by friends of the girl's parents, authorities said Thursday.
The callers hadn't previously been identified.
Randall and Althea Wormgoor each spoke to a dispatcher as chaos and cries could be heard in the background at Dale and Leilani Neumann's home in rural Weston on Sunday afternoon, said Capt. Scott Sleeter of the Everest Metro Police Department in Weston.
Madeline Neumann died Sunday from an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes as her parents prayed for her to get better. Her mother, Leilani Neumann, said she never expected her daughter, whom she called Kara, to die.
The family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God, Leilani Neumann said.
The sheriff's department released tape recordings Thursday of two calls related to the girl's medical condition.
One was from an aunt in California on the department's non-emergency line, Lt. Jason Plaza said. She reported the girl was in a coma and needed medical help because the family "believes in faith instead of doctors."
The four-minute 911 call from the Neumann's friends came in at 2:38 p.m. Sunday, after police and an ambulance had been dispatched to the home, police said.
In the 911 call, Randall Wormgoor told the dispatcher that the "girl is not breathing" before he handed the phone to Althea Wormgoor, who got details from the dispatcher about performing CPR.
The 911 call from the Neumann residence is heart-wrenching-- the panic and fear and chaos.
It's so sad that they finally did choose to seek help, too late.
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More.
18 comments:
Sad, the family member and friends were trying to help but they were just a little too late.
The dispatcher on the first call was a complete idiot and should be fired. "durr keep it simple I'm a little slow"
I'd like to know how much time went by between the concerned sister-in-law calling and the death.
You gotta wonder how the parents will rationalize what happened. You have people who get diabetes and are treated all the time and are healthy, and you have someone who relies on prayer and dies. It's going to require some mental acrobatics to keep the faith after that one.
The dispatcher on the first call wasn't an idiot. He can't be expected to have background knowledge of what the sister-in-law was babbling about.
Responsibility for Kara's death lies with her parents. She had a treatable condition that her parents left untreated.
You seem to be bashing the power of prayer and faith. Kara's death does not prove prayer is worthless. It proves that parents must get their children medical care.
Prayer and medicine are not mutually exclusive.
Leilani and Dale Neumann really murdered their child. Had they properly cared for her she would not be dead. They should be prosecuted for murder or at least sent to an insane asylum and not be permitted to see their other children without bars between them.
If the Neumanns were atheists and ardent social and biological Darwinists, who believed their daughter was defective, and thought the "laws of nature" would decide whether she’d live or die, would we still be debating this issue? I think not - they'd be in jail this moment facing charges of child abuse and negligent homicide - and rightly so. But, substitute "God" and "prayer" and suddenly they deserve special consideration. The Bible allows parents to put their children to death for striking them (Exodus 21:15). Should we allow that too? Are children nothing but the property of their parents, to be abused, neglected and even killed in the name of some arbitrary religious interpretation? We don't live in a theocracy (at least not yet) and I feel truly sorry for this us when “God” becomes an extenuation, let alone an excuse for murder. We revile the faith based atrocities of our enemies in the Middle East, but somehow Christians killing their own child in the name of "their" God is a different matter - why? These people need to be prosecuted and their biblical license to kill revoked for good. All religion is subjective and must never supercede the law.
AL G. Wisconsin
AL, you're clearly exploiting Kara's death to bash Christians and religion in general.
It's an illogical leap for you to condemn religion because the Neumanns didn't seek medical care for their child.
I've written pretty extensively on the legal and ethical issues raised by these kinds of cases. For better or worse, my book WHEN PRAYER FAILS: FAITH HEALING, CHILDREN, AND THE LAW (Oxford, 2007) is really the first comprehensive treatment of the topic. And, since I'm based at UW-Madison, I've commented on the Neumann case specifically in a number of different forums (including CNN).
I won't drone on here, but if you're interested in learning more, you might check out my "Religious Convictions" blog at:
http://lawandfaith.blogspot.com/
Sounds interesting.
To "anonymous" in the first post:
Several news reports have indicated that folks from the first call were on the way when the 911 call from the house came in.
Apparently, an ambulance was not sent from the first call. Instead, officers or someone else was sent to check on the child.
As far as the first call, it didn't help that the aunt had to call back three times before she had the address and information that the 911 operators needed.
It's not the aunt's fault or the 911 operators.
Responsibility for Kara's death lies with her parents. End of story.
Note: The following comment was posted by "Godless."
Because the individual included the home address and phone number of the Neumann family, I edited that out.
I'm not comfortable with providing such specifics on my site to assist others in that sort of "entertainment pleasure" (aka harassment).
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Read this if you're sickened by these idiot parents:
A website (helptheneumanns.com) was created for people to donate to their legal defense fund. I find it interesting that these cowards neglected to include a phone number or email address. Seems to me that they didn't want to hear any
negative feedback. All they provided was a PayPal link and an office mailing address so they could collect the loot. But I have provided for your
entertainment pleasure their home address and phone number. Let them know what you think of their neglect.
To think that an 11-year-old child living in a middle class family in America can be allowed to die from what is now such a simple disease is absolutely ridiculous. I whole-heartedly support them being prosecuted for murder, and I agree with the Anonymous poster who said they should be sent to an insane asylum and forbidden from seeing their kids outside of there.
Our Constitution defends a person's right to religious beliefs and our laws extend that to a right to do make your own choices for your own life. However, that rights stops when it applies to another person. Refusing medical treatment for Kara when she said she felt sick is akin to the parents forcing their beliefs and religious practices on their daughter. The fact that she died from those actions simply makes this case even more cut and dry.
Do you know why the law treats minors differently? Do you know what the requirement is to treat a minor as an adult? It is the ability to think rationally and make sound decisions of one's own accord. A child as young as Kara, no matter what she says about her faith, can not be considered to believe anything for herself. Children are impressionable, especially by their parents, and especially when it comes to religion. The only rational assumption that can be made about Kara is that she wanted to live.
The parents should be sent to an insane asylum for believing a 2000-year-old, medically inaccurate, unproven and biased text to be a basis for medical treatment. A person can believe in whatever they like - personally I believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster - but when their religious beliefs lead to the death of another human being, that person is no better than the religious extremists our nation is currently pursuing in the Middle East.
As the axiom goes "your freedom of expression ends at the tip of my nose." The parents can believe whatever they choose, but when their beliefs infringe on another human being's right to life, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
I have MET the Neumanns and their children several times. I perceived them to be a nice family. Normal, sane, intelligent and nice. I liked them, and still kind of do. When their daughter died this bizarre and totally needless death, when all this news broke, I felt shock and disbelief. Disbelief: "It can't be them". I have met them since the death of their daughter, and still cannot reconcile the reality of what happened, with them as the people I believed them to be. I have such difficulty accepting that these nice, likable people are one and the same the neglectful, delusional parents who made international headlines for ignoring their daughter to death. Yet this really isn't an uncommon enough kind of incident.
There are many, many otherwise sane and normal people who somehow get very deeply sucked into cults and religious sects. Somehow these people really lose their minds. They somehow end up surrendering most of their rationality and all of their free will to the obedience of the cult. They think bizarre thoughts and do bizarre things. I recently watched something about a young mother whose toddler was starved to death because the strange cult she was in believed that "all healing comes from God" and that if her child died he would "come back to life" if her faith were strong enough. I believe something similar happened with Neumann family. Their sect is probably not harmless and has probably established itself quite well in this area.
There are plenty of stories where a family is doing something illegal and their neighbors and friends know nothing about it. The fact that you knew them and "they were nice" says nothing. It just means that they knew what they were doing was not approved and they actively and intentionally hid it from you and anyone else who knew them. This is the same reason child abuse cases don't get discovered until they have been going on for a long time - a family's ability to keep quiet about what they are doing and to appear 'normal' is uncanny.
I will contend that at some point the Neumann's recognized the craziness of their religion and justified it with that wonderful, all-encompassing cop-out - "faith." They did not get sucked into it as you are suggesting, and their religion was not a cult in the usual sense of the term. It was simply a religion that followed the Bible very strictly.
I have no proof to back the following statement up, I am merely suggesting it for consideration: In the time of Jesus Christ, medicine and doctors were very crude - there wasn't much knowledge about the human body, and most treatments that worked only did so from sheer luck. In that time period, it was very common for people to die from treatment from a doctor. But realize too, they would have died without treatment as well. So is it possible that the Bible tells people not to go to the doctor simply because doctor's couldn't do the things they do today? Is it possible that the Bible was simply saying that, if you have a disease that is going to kill you, going to a doctor will just kill you faster, whereas if you stay at home, getting rest while praying, you have a slightly better chance of getting well again? This seems plausible to me.
So it seems to me that Anonymous (the one directly below my first comment) thinks it is the religion to be blamed for the Neumann's actions, not the Neumann's, because the Neumann's are "a nice family." So tell me, is there a point at which someone is given responsibility for their actions? Or will there always be an excuse?
This is the kind of thinking that has filled America with lazy, demanding people. We demand the world on a silver platter and refuse to believe that anything is our fault. Global warming - "it was happening before we got here" War on Terror - "they started it" Outsourcing - "those stupid commie Chinese, we deserve the jobs" Death at the hands of neglecting parents - "stupid religion!"
If we were being honest with ourselves, it would be a little more like this: Global Warming - "we've certainly sped up this natural cycle" War on Terror - "we just don't like their religion, or the way they look/act" Outsourcing - "our schools don't teach our children the skills they need to be competitive in the world and our workers demand more compensation than their asian counterparts" Death at the hands of neglecting parents - "those parents need to receive punishment for their actions under the law"
I don't care how crazy or cult-like their religion is, at some point the Neumann's made a conscious choice to follow it and are now paying the consequences - in the death of their daughter and hopefully, the punishment of the law.
[So it seems to me that Anonymous (the one directly below my first comment) thinks it is the religion to be blamed for the Neumann's actions, not the Neumann's, because the Neumann's are "a nice family."]
Kyle:
No, I did not say this. I do not believe this either. I was just trying to express my sense of the case, having met the people involved - and perceiving them to not be innately evil. Also, I contend that their religion IS a cult or at least very powerful and cult-like, and that explains alot about why otherwise intelligent and good people like them did something like this -unbelieveably and tragically bizarre. Bringing up a possible explanation of something does not EXCUSE it or try to demonstrate the people involved to be less wrong. The similarities between the Neumann's case and the cult-mom's situation that led to the death of her toddler, that I mentioned above, are just too strikingly similar. Just because there are religion/cult-like elements to this situation does not mean that the Neumanns as adults and parents are not responsible, or less responsible, for the death of their daughter. But it is a possible EXPLANATION of why this happened to her. Also...the present helptheneumanns site backs up my sense that there is something cult-like to this, if it is not acceptable for me to say outright that their religion is a cult. When the site first went up I visited it because I wanted to read the original transcripts of the 911 calls that were published on the site. I just revisited, and all that is gone now, replaced by other things. It seems to me that the Neumanns' legal situation has become part of a larger agenda that powerful religious interests have a stake in. And lastly, someone attempted to post the Neumanns' address and phone number here. I thank the moderator for removing that portion of the post; thankyou for thinking of the Neumanns' other children who still live in the area and have enough to deal with right now.
I am a mother of a child who was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at the age of 6. My son had to take 3 to 4 shots of insulin a day to control his disease and passed away at age 32.
I think it is very clear cut that the parents of Madeline Kara Neumann should be prosecuted. Madeline was dying and her parent’s job was to take care of her, not ignore the fact she had a deadly, yet treatable, hereditary disease. They watched her die a very long, painful death, seeing she was getting worse by the hour. In my opinion they tortured their child by not getting her the medical help she needed and not giving her the insulin that would have spared her life for years to come.
It was not Madeline’s fault her pancreas stopped functioning, and it was not a God's will that she suffer. What kind of a God do these monsters believe in? How can we as citizens, just stand by and not insist the law protect this child and or any child from parents or guardians that would murder, in the name of a God? These parents murdered Madeline by not doing anything to help her. They knew she had diabetes and they knew she needed insulin because her body was no longer producing enough to keep her alive and well. I've see our child in that state while we were rushing him to the hospital for care and anyone would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see the horrible change in their child as they began to waste away in front of their eyes. Shame on Madeline’s parents, and shame on anyone who is trying to justify her death. The Neumanns while only praying, willingly withheld treatment, making her suffer for days. They might as well have crucified her; it would have been more humane and not taken so long for her to die.
I feel so much anger that after years of this kind of child abuse we still lack solid laws to prevent religious abuse and murder of children. Children still have no rights, what else could be more important than making sure that this abuse, in the name of a God, stops. Doesn't the Christian Bible say “an eye for an eye”? Madeline’s parents should certainly be put on trail for murder and punished accordingly.
Mother from Maine, Heart Broken for Madeline
I also suffer from Type 1 diabetes and have been in Diabetic Ketoacidosis(DKA) many time in my life. I feel so sad for this poor guy, she must have suffered a horrible painful death. DKA is just so painful and terrible. I am also a very devout Christian, who is very spiritual. I believe that if one is sick, it is a major sin against God to deny your child or refuse healthcare that could save one's life.
I personally do not agree with declining to provide medical help for Madeline, however, it was NOT against the law. How many children today are diabetic due to poor diet? Should parents be charged with some form of negligence for feeding their kids too much junk? Vaccinations are OPTIONAL, so if a parent declines a certain vaccination and down the road the child contracts that disease and it proves fatal, are the parents charged with negligent homicide? This is an outrage. Why is this family being singled out while a multitude of other parents don’t use sunscreen (which could cause fatal cancer later), feed their children fast food loaded with grease (which can cause heart issues with fatal outcomes), and on and on. Where do we draw the line? Do we pass laws governing children and medical care? If so, then we can visit the issue at hand. Until then we have NO legal leg to stand on and I do not believe that this family needs to be preyed upon as they have been. This is a serious case with a monumental effect on our future legal system. We should tread very carefully.
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