UpDATE: Parents indicted after faith-healing death of girl

c. 2008 Religion News Service OREGON CITY, Ore. _ Until the faith-healing death of little Ava Worthington on March 2, members of the Followers of Christ Church appear to have lost just one child to sickness since 1999, when state lawmkers banned parents from treating gravely ill children solely with prayer. Tyler Duane Shaw of […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

OREGON CITY, Ore. _ Until the faith-healing death of little Ava Worthington on March 2, members of the Followers of Christ Church appear to have lost just one child to sickness since 1999, when state lawmkers banned parents from treating gravely ill children solely with prayer.

Tyler Duane Shaw of Oregon City died in 2003, three days short of his second birthday, of sudden complications from a throat infection.


“His death was not considered to be anything but a natural death that had no indications of abuse or neglect,” said Dr. Clifford Nelson, deputy state medical examiner.

Church members declined to discuss religious beliefs and practices. But child abuse detectives, medical examiners and many other local officials said they have seen signs of positive change in the church since the late 1990s, when several Followers of Christ children died from medically treatable conditions.

Since the new laws took effect in 1999, said child abuse Detective Jeff Green of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, “We haven’t seen any cases of significant medical neglect … until now.”

Fifteen-month-old Ava Worthington died at home of bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection that could have been treated with antibiotics, according to the state medical examiner’s office.

On Friday (March 28), a grand jury indicted her parents, Carl Brent and Raylene Worthington, on charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminal mistreatment.

Ava’s death brought back memories of Followers of Christ children who suffered and died before Oregon removed religious exemptions from state child abuse and homicide laws.

Tyler Shaw’s sister, 51/2-month-old Valarie Lynn Shaw, was one of three Followers of Christ children who died in 1997 and 1998 after parents tried to heal them with prayer. The deaths, all from medically treatable conditions, sparked a firestorm among state legislators, who promptly struck down legal shields for faith-healing parents.


Before the law changed, church members who got in traffic accidents would take injured children home, rather than to the hospital, leaving police frustrated but powerless to intervene, Green said.

In the two years after the law passed, detectives responded to two cases of sick or injured Followers of Christ children, Green said. One child had Crohn’s disease and the other had a broken arm, which church members had tried to set themselves. In both cases, parents complied when police insisted that they take their children to licensed physicians.

Green said until Ava’s death, he hadn’t heard of any cases over the past nine years in which a Followers of Christ child might have died because of medical neglect.

Ava’s parents also lost a baby boy in August 2001, but the death investigation was closed after family members told police the child was stillborn. Several other Followers of Christ children have also been stillborn or died during home births in recent years, but none of the investigated deaths resulted in criminal charges.

“They either had gotten the point, or there hadn’t been anything serious enough to rise to this level of involvement,” Green said.

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The Clackamas County district attorney’s office formally reached out to Followers of Christ leaders at least twice in the past decade to make sure they understood legal requirements for pediatric medical care.


The leaders pledged to post a memo in their church, explaining to the Followers of Christ what the law required.

“They were polite,” said Greg Horner, chief deputy district attorney. “They were receptive. They understood.”

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The Oregon City church, which is not associated with a mainstream denomination, traces its origins to the faith-healing Pentecostal movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s. After several splits over religious doctrine, Walter T. White, the charismatic nephew of one of the early founders, brought a splinter group to Oregon in the 1930s.

White died in 1969, and the last of his ordained elders died in 1986, but church members continue to meet Thursdays and Sundays in a beige one-story building marked only by a hand-lettered sign. Church members declined to speak publicly about their church, and a reporter who visited the church Thursday was turned away.

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For decades, the close-knit and private Followers of Christ have shunned members who strayed from the flock. According to Valarie Shaw’s 60-year-old great uncle, Darrell Shaw, that’s what they did after he left the church some 25 years ago.

Darrell Shaw left the church long before his niece died of a massive infection, and when legislators sent a strong message to faith-healing parents in 1999, he said it was a relief.


“I thought they would probably take their kids to the doctor. They don’t believe in breaking the law,” he said. “I figured, at least the kids will be safe now.”

(Jessica Bruder writes for The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.)

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A version of this story is also being transmitted by Newhouse News Service

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