Idiots, Inc.
26 March 2008 by Bob
Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help
WESTON, Wis. — An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday. Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said Madeline Neumann died Sunday. “She got sicker and sicker until she was dead,” he said. Vergin said an autopsy determined the girl died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body, and she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness. The girl’s parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, attributed the death to “apparently they didn’t have enough faith,” the police chief said. They believed the key to healing “was it was better to keep praying. Call more people to help pray,” he said. [...] The girl has three siblings, ranging in age from 13 to 16, the police chief said. “They are still in the home,” he said. “There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see.”
Ummm, I think you might have to look again, Chief. Maybe this time look just a little bit harder, Genius.
Or should I say, “Moron?” Or maybe “Idiot?” I’m not exactly sure who’s more stupid, Chief. The idiots who killed her, or the complete fucking numbnuts who claims that there’s “no abuse.”
You got a college degree, Chief? Or did you jump into Cop School right after high school? If you actually do have a degree (which I doubt), you might want to go back and see if the “school” is still around. They might have been one of those Plaza Schools I used to see in Flori-duh. (You know, the ones right next to the grocery stores.)
Or did you get your degree through the mail? That sometimes happens.
26 March 2008, on 3:16 pm
I sort of have to agree. It isn’t abuse. It’s neglect. I think they have different legal definitions (of course I’m not a lawyer, so my opinion on this is limited to pure speculation.)
And it’s a weird world where medicine and religion collide. There was that case not so long ago pitting a family that didn’t want to get their daughter chemo against child protective services claiming that denying the child medical treatment was a form of neglect.
These cases seem to drag on and on until the child dies.
26 March 2008, on 4:10 pm
I called it something else: Murder. And like I said, “How’s this for a reason to remove them: THEY JUST KILLED THEIR OTHER DAUGHTER!”
26 March 2008, on 4:54 pm
I was gathering from the story that he wasn’t talking about specific legal definitions, although I could certainly be wrong and that could have indeed been the case. My feel from the interview was that he was talking about the general meanings of those terms, at least insofar as those terms are supposed to apply to whether or not kids are taken from their homes in any particular case.
But, in any case, I think in the end the legal discussion on the distinction just isn’t relevant.
I think it’s relatively clear that kids are taken from homes in both cases, and it seems to be a red herring to focus the discussion on some legal distinction between “abuse” and “neglect.” If that were the case, then what actually happened to the girl really isn’t all that relevant to the post.
26 March 2008, on 8:51 pm
Yeah, I was being tongue-in-cheek with the whole legal definition thing. Clearly anything that brings harm to people unable to fend for themselves is bad.
In the future I will refrain from dry humor. My apologies.
26 March 2008, on 9:18 pm
This story reminds me ya’ll might appreciate an update on this horrific Texas story…y’know, Gawd told this brain donor to come to Galveston to found a ministry, and evidently the “devil made him do it” also–but first the devil told him to lie about it and blame it on a spilt hot beverage until the ER docs called bullshit on that noise..
-JJR
============================
25 years for microwave father
By Scott E. Williams
The Daily News
Published March 26, 2008
GALVESTON — A jury has sentenced a man who burned his infant daughter in a microwave oven to 25 years in prison.
Joshua Royce Mauldin must serve at least 10 years of that before he can be considered for parole. He also was assessed a $10,000 fine.
That was the decision Wednesday from a jury in the 212th State District Court in a case that has garnered national news coverage. The same jury found Mauldin guilty Wednesday of injury to a child.
Mauldin, 20, faced anything from probation to life in prison.
He has been in custody since May 15 when he told Galveston police detective Holly Johnson he had become “agitated” while alone in a Seawall Boulevard motel room with his 2-month-old daughter, Ana.
Mauldin told police he threw and hit the baby before putting her first into the room’s safe, then into the refrigerator and, finally, into the microwave oven. The child survived the attack but was badly burned. Ana received skin grafts on her left forearm, and doctors amputated much of her left ear, where some of the worst burns had been inflicted.
The child is now in foster care.
Mauldin pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Arguing before the same jury that found his client guilty Tuesday morning, defense attorney Sam Cammack III asked the eight-woman, four-man panel to consider probation for Mauldin.
“Justice without mercy is just plain cruelty,” Cammack said, echoing words originally penned by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
However, prosecutor Xochitl Vandiver said Joshua Mauldin deserved just as much mercy as he had shown his infant daughter — none.
Cammack also said that Ana’s youth would keep her from remembering the attack, but Vandiver said the child’s scars would last a lifetime.
“She will always have a reminder,” Vandiver told jurors Tuesday afternoon. “She will always, for the rest of her life, be reminded of this, just by looking in the mirror. On her wedding day, when she holds up her left hand for her husband to place her wedding ring, she’ll be reminded of what her father did to her.”
At the time of the attack on May 10, Mauldin and family had just reached Galveston after driving from Arkansas, where Mauldin had lived most of his life. Mauldin had claimed God called him to Galveston to enter Christian ministry.
The insanity plea required the defense to show Mauldin, more likely than not, was so afflicted he did not know what he was doing was wrong. It was a burden that prosecutor Kayla Allen told jurors on Monday that Mauldin’s team did not meet…
http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=b98e41961dc4d744
27 March 2008, on 12:19 am
If religion wasn’t involved these parents would be charged with neglect. People can get away with anything as long as their beliefs are sincere? WTF?! This really angers me. That child’s death was so avoidable. And it was abuse if the child was suffering, which she most certainly was. And the parents did absolutely nothing about it except to say some magical chants.
And then after she is dead the parents say “Only our faith in God is giving us strength at this time” Again,WTF?! They pray, hear nothing,find out their daughter’s death was avoidable, and they still cling to their sky daddy beliefs. Idiots isn’t a strong enough description. Asshats isn’t even descriptive enough for these fuckers.
27 March 2008, on 1:19 am
“There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see.”
This is not abuse like fellatio is not sexual relations.
While I do feel that intentions should be taken into account in cases like this, the family should never be let off the hook and in this particular situation, when, for all intense purposes these people tortured their daughter, then allowed her to die a very unnecessary death, legal action has to be taken to bring these folks to justice and save the girls’ siblings.
Yes, taken out of the context of religious asshattery, there is no way these monsters would have gotten away with this. I don’t know why we as a society allow people get away with this non-sense. If you want to believe your merciful gob is going to heal your kids’ easily medically remedied disease, fine. If your religious belief tells you that you should ONLY trust in your gob, at the expense of real intervention, well, you know the law–it’s pretty straight forward. If your kid dies, you’re charged with criminal neglect and man-slaughter, simple as that.
Instead, friends will feel sorry for these parents, and pray for them–not that they stop being brutal idiots, but that gob gets them through this difficult time.
Ugh–aren’t these the folks that rail against moral relativity?
Diabetes has a genetic link. How long before these folks kill another kid?
27 March 2008, on 9:19 am
The old Hammurabi Code, the eye for an eye type justice was tailor made for situations such as these. You drag James Byrd from your pickup with chains, we do the same for you. You pray the fiddle while your child burns with a treatable medical condition…
…we dose you up with, say, Ebola- that we fortuna, I say, fortunately, keep around for just such an emergency. Then, in shiny white Hazmat suits, we surround your sickbed- as you hemorrhage and shit yourself, and scream, “PRAY HARDER, BOY, PRAY HARDER!” in the accent of a southern sheriff circa 1962.
Teh stupid, it kills.
27 March 2008, on 9:28 am
And ironically, these same fuckers are probably pro-lifers who protest the aborting of a zygote.
27 March 2008, on 10:26 am
…and by their logic, their Gawd slowly “killed” their kid, and they still pray to him for strength. The stoopid is so thick, it’s burning my eyes.
27 March 2008, on 12:30 pm
Even if one looks at this from a reasonable theist perspective, one could say “God gave us brains and intelligence so we can treat diseases and sickness.”
It’s like that old joke about the old man who won’t leave his house even though the river is flooding. Two boats and a helicopter stop by, and each time the man says “I have faith that god will save me.” A little later he dies from drowning and when he goes to heaven he asks god “Why didn’t you save me?” And God replies, “What are you talking about, I sent you two boats and a helicopter?”
27 March 2008, on 12:36 pm
Just looked this up on Mapquest.
Not surprisingly, this town is in the middle of the “Bible Belt” of Wisconsin. That is, anywhere away from the state borders, Madison, Milwaukee, and Eau Claire, is essentially “God Country”.
Only way this couple’d lose their kids is if they were to die in an accident.
27 March 2008, on 12:39 pm
I met an xian the other day who used to have random seizures throughout high school. His parents refused to take him to the doctor, but instead went from church to church, to be faith healed and prayed over. The seizures have stopped and he hasn’t had one in years, but he still has, never gone to the doctor!!! I’m waiting for him to flop over and die one day…
27 March 2008, on 1:09 pm
“The mother believes the girl could still be resurrected”? WTF?!?
This is absolutely child abuse. It is also premeditated, cold-blooded murder.
But in my darker moments I’d call it something else: natural selection. Refusing to use what modern technology has to offer to save lives is basically showing that you are unfit for the environment in which you live. I feel bad for the girl, and worried for the other kids in the house, but I can’t help but feel, on some mean and petty level, that there is at least one person who won’t grow up and perpetuate this idiocy to another generation.
Of course, it would be better if the other daughters discovered the outside world and renounced their parents’ evil stupidity, but if they’re determined to die from some completely treatable illness like their sister, let’s just hope it happens before they get knocked up.
27 March 2008, on 1:20 pm
This idiot calls this an “accident” on the part of the parents. I call it stupidity and ignorance. They had to have seen how their daughter was suffering. Normal parental instincts are to get whatever help you can to help your child survive.
27 March 2008, on 1:46 pm
No doctor should ever treat either of those parents-ever! They should be forced to just pray away all their own illnesses and injuries.
No abuse my foot! Neglect AND abuse! Take away those other kids before history is repeated. Maybe the 16 and 13 year olds will start thinking about what happened and question it. Maybe those CA relatives will intervene. I hope.
27 March 2008, on 3:16 pm
This shit always reminds me of the prayer stuff on the “God is Imaginary” Site…ala…”Try Praying”:
http://godisimaginary.com/i1.htm
I say we start telling these fuckhead Xtians…of All variations [or ANY believers whatsoever]…to decide to use one designated Sunday (or Friday, Saturday) to pray for the SAME thing; in Jeebus’ name, of course. [Or Allah,...FSM?
]
Say…f’rnstance….for ALL CANCER to disappear…for the whole human race…and nothing less will be acceptable!
Of course…they’ve NEVER tried that; or even come close to suggesting such an idea. I suspect it may have accidentally crossed a few delusional minds; but would quickly be dismissed…
WHY? Cause they know it’ll NEVER…EVER…WORK!
I contend further, that they SORTA ‘know’ from all the other terrible things in their futile sheeple lives, like natural disasters etc., that their gob is such an infinitely bizarre and arrogant, asinine jerk, that he likes all the misery and suffering in his “Grand Design”.
IMO, Religions are the worst thing man ever…LITERALLY…dreamed up; which infected the human consciousness aeons ago, causing the untold, endless poisoness mischief and racial/tribal warring, yada, yada.
And here we all are in 2008, watching the universally unnoticed “Power of Myth” continue playing out at the highest levels of power seeking chicanery.
It’s sad, after all is said and done, to contemplate stories like this Post’s subject…and rather uncomfortably frustrating, knowing how powerless we all are to effect any ‘waking up’ of these brainwashed, sheeple morons.
I guess the best we can do is to keep pointing out the stupidity on Sites like GifS.
My thanks to Bob and all the marvelous Mods for their diligence and…
“Hard Work”
[cue Chimpy voice sample clip?]
27 March 2008, on 4:42 pm
Horrible, horrible stuff…
I know there’s a bunch of legality to deal with in this issue, but shouldn’t the old “your rights end where mine begin” apply? In other words, shouldn’t the parents’ freedom of religion and right to rear their children any way they want end at the point the kids’ health and lives are endangered?
I also know that children and minors don’t have full rights as adults, but isn’t the US a co-signer on the UN’s bill of rights for children or something? Surely what these parents did (or rather, didn’t do) violates that bill…
27 March 2008, on 6:59 pm
Here’s the story of a baby whose parents ARE being charged in her death. She would have gotten better if she had received antibiotics.
27 March 2008, on 7:33 pm
[...] Update: The image in this post just about sums up the purpose of prayer. [...]
28 March 2008, on 1:32 am
Posted a rather lengthy response (under the name “Phreemunny”) to Edward Asshats’ post on this subject on his blog. Interesting to see his response. Probably more rote apologetics.
Man he’s a tool.
28 March 2008, on 6:14 am
Fritzy, that was an EXCELLENT response to Mr Asshat. Yes, he is a tool, and the biggest one I have ever met in the blogosphere.
28 March 2008, on 6:30 am
This is absolutely total neglect. The news update today said “Her daughter — who hadn’t seen a doctor since she got some shots as a 3-year-old”
Not seeing a doctor for a physical for 8 years! That is truly neglect!
28 March 2008, on 10:17 am
This may be totally OT, but then again all this stuff is somehow related to the general danger that has always been present from religious delusions. And I guess this is as good a place as any to post this…
Here’s something to think about over the weekend…? [I'm sorta kidding!]
It’s another thing Acharya S has been helping to bring more attention to…if you haven’t ‘hoid’ about it already…
Geert Wilders’s “Fitna: The Movie”
A real eye opener RE the ongoing danger to all of us from the (other) totally fuckhead religious bullshit called Islam!
Yeah…we all know the Judeo-Xtian Abrahamic sky-Daddy ass kissing is total BS; but (ala George Carlin):
“When it comes to bullshit…BIG time, MAJOR LEAGUE bullshit…you have to stand in awe (and fear?)…of the all-time champion…”; Islam!
I’m more and more beginning to understand…whilst personally, I’ve always been against the Iraq War…why Chris Hitchens supports head on confrontation with the insane Islamic fascists.
Anyway…
I suggest Going here for a Review by Acharya S:
http://truthbeknown.com/fitnareview.html
And for those who might want to copy the complete “Fitna” preview to their computer:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7816189809465173535
“…and have a nice day?”
28 March 2008, on 5:41 pm
Excuse me, are these KKKristians who follow the Abrahamic tradition of sacrificing a baby or two to make Skyboss know that they revere him for his mercy and his wisdom. I don’t know about Moloch or Ba’al but this sort of infant sacrifice to a “caring and loving Clod” is pretty fucked up.
29 March 2008, on 12:19 pm
The latest news on this. The three kids have been place in custody of other relatives.
Praying parents’ other 3 kids removed
WAUSAU, Wis. - The three siblings of a girl who died of diabetes that went untreated as her parents prayed instead of taking her to a doctor have been removed from the home during an investigation, police said Friday.
29 March 2008, on 2:17 pm
Stardust;
Thanks for the accolades. Edward Asshats’ response to my post was even more snide, dismissive, canned, evasive and morally and logically elusive than even I had predicted.
Tool.
30 March 2008, on 12:16 am
Fritzy, “tool” is a too kind of word for him. Have you seen his latest hate post? He even hates other Christians who don’t live up to his “ideals”.
31 March 2008, on 10:52 pm
This shows just what a tool Ed is…one of his latest comments
Christian Crotch Talk
It’s an atheist playground over there with only three Christians. Catholic Maggie who is quite opinionated and talks down to people, but at least is educated in other areas. John Fraser who is simply a pompous ass who talks down to people but in an insulting way and when cornered does the Pee Wee Herman act “I know you are but what am I?” And then there is dumbass Ed who throws out bizarre comments, writes outlandish posts and crybabies about being booted off a Christian forum at Amazon.