Parents Tried In Teen's Death Rejected Medicine
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For the second time in seven months, Oregon authorities are pursuing homicide charges against members of a small religious sect. In both cases, the kids died of treatable conditions, while their parents used prayer, rather than medicine, on them.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Jurors in Oregon are set to decide the fate of parents accused of homicide in the death of their teenage son. He died of an illness that his parents never provided him medical treatment for. Instead, they prayed. It's the second faith- healing case in Oregon in seven months, and both cases involve deaths in the same family. Rob Manning, of Oregon Public Broadcasting, reports.
ROB MANNING: Sixteen-old Neil Beagley grew up in close-knit family. His mother, Marci, home-schooled him in the morning and afternoons, he'd spend with his dad at construction sites. In the spring of 2008, the family suffered a devastating blow when Neil's 15-month-old niece, Ava Worthington, died of complications from a blood infection. Neil's dad, Jeff Beagley, says Neil seemed physically ill from grief.
MONTAGNE: Yeah, he seemed to have a stomach ache and stuff, a lot, from all the stress, and he was upset all the time and trying to deal with her death.
MANNING: But the family's church - a small, insular group called the Followers of Christ, centered in suburban Portland - preaches prayer rather than medicine to treat illness. Neil Beagley's mother, Marci, says that's what Neil believed, too.
MONTAGNE: He said he wanted to put his faith in God.
MANNING: Ava's parents, in the first faith-healing case last July, made that argument convincingly, and their trial resulted in only one of them serving a light jail sentence. Last week, Jeff Beagley testified that his son, Neil, appeared to have a bad flu until the night he stopped breathing.
MONTAGNE: It didn't seem like he was that bad, that he would die or anything like that. So it was just a total shock to me. I think I just - I was just kind of sitting there, crying. I don't know what else I did.
MANNING: During questioning from prosecutor Steve Mygrant, Neil's mother, Marci Beagley, conceded that doctors were virtually foreign to her kids.
MONTAGNE: Have you ever taken any of your children to a doctor?
MONTAGNE: A dentist or oral surgeon, eye doctor.
MONTAGNE: How about a medical doctor that would treat illnesses?
MONTAGNE: No.
MANNING: Defense attorneys wanted jurors to focus on the teen's vague symptoms that, they argued, any reasonable parents might've missed. They said faith healing was not the point. Lead prosecutor Greg Horner told jurors not to ignore the faith issue, as defense attorneys wanted them to.
MONTAGNE: Of course they don't want you to think about faith healing, because it undercuts their whole position. And from the state's perspective, it explains what is otherwise inexplicable.
MANNING: For NPR News, I'm Rob Manning in Portland, Oregon.
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