the stupid burns

[rivendellrose]

Turns out that killing your kid by not getting them treatment for a simple thing like juvenile diabetes is only worth 6 months in prison if you do it for religious reasons.

Because apparently criminal neglect is a-okay if you do it because you thought God would fix it.

Comments

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

"My client sees spiritual treatment as the proper medicine and I suspect the people who want harsher punishment see Western medicine as the proper medicine, I guess therein lies the difference," [their lawyer] told the BBC World Service.

No, fucko. The "difference" is that of spiritual "treatment" and Western medicine, one would have easily treated the child's illness and the other resulted in her death by negligence.

The "difference" is that, using one of those treatment methods, your clients killed their daughter.

I suspect the short jail sentence is due to a couple factors: making sure their remaining children still have parents, and the likely fact that no prison term could possibly punish them as much as having to live our their lives knowing that their daughter would be alive were it not for their negligence. Not saying I agree with it, but I can see where the reasoning comes from.

(Also, I think you mean "by not getting" in your link...)

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I suspect that the judge felt that keeping the family together (albeit, monitored), would be better than breaking them apart.

I don't agree with it, though.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I suspect the short jail sentence is due to a couple factors: making sure their remaining children still have parents, and the likely fact that no prison term could possibly punish them as much as having to live our their lives knowing that their daughter would be alive were it not for their negligence.

See, I could see that except for the teensy little fact that they don't seem from the article to see that what they did was wrong. They don't have any remorse! I feel guiltier when I accidentally kill a freaking houseplant or when one of my goldfish dies than these people seem to be over their 11 year-old daughter. Disgusting.

(Yeah, thanks - I noticed and fixed it just before I got your reply!)

If a person "genuinely believes" that poisoning their kid will send them to heaven, does this mean that by court precedent it's okay, then? Because it sure as hell looks like it might to me.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Also, I tend to think the bar for taking children away from their parents ought to be pretty high, due to some issues acquaintances of mine have had with overzealous CPS departments sicced on them by religiously intolerant neighbors. Given the probationary requirements, I'm inclined to think the remaining children will be relatively safe.

That said, the consequences of getting that one wrong are pretty severe. I just don't know...

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

It's tough to find the line there, I agree, but surely murdering a child through neglect would have to count. The foster care system has a lot of problems even in the best of states, but... for goodness' sake, that's got to be better than letting these people kill another kid because, oops, we thought God would fix it.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

As Jen said, having dealt with the foster care system (as a fostering family) We have seen the case workers not come when they are supposed to and not do the things they were supposed to do, The state hosnestly does not hold up it's end of the bargain some of the time, so are these kids actually going to get the monitoring that they are legally supposed to? That is my concern with leaving them there.
I do agree with you that CPS can be overzealous, but it can also be neglident at times.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

Oops negigent...it really just depends on who your caseworker is. Luck of the draw in some cases, sadly.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

Negligent....facepalm.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

As a professional angry person, my first thought would be to twist that lawyer's arm up behind his back and break it, and then passionately pray that some god would fix it for him.