Trust in God

Carl and Raylene Worthington told investigators they first noticed the bump on their daughter's neck when Ava was 3 months old. A doctor later said it was a benign cyst battling an infection in the child's blood; it continued to grow as she grew older. By the time little Ava reached 15 months, the bump measured three by four inches—the size of Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Greg Horner's wallet, he told a jury in the Portland, Ore., suburb of Oregon City last week. By Feb. 29, 2008, Horner said, this "cystic hygroma," a congenital lymphatic lesion, was pressing up against the girl's windpipe, according to a ruling from the county's medical examiner. She was slowly choking to death.

Carl and Raylene called in the devoted parishioners of their Oregon City place of worship, the Followers of Christ, to seek God's help. They anointed Ava with oil. They fed her diluted wine. They extracted phlegm from her throat with the kind of suction bulb used to baste a Thanksgiving turkey. They laid their hands upon the toddler and prayed she would get better. What the Worthingtons did not do is call an ambulance.

The first physician ever to examine Ava was the Clackamas County coroner, who performed her autopsy. "Almost up until the end, if they had gotten her adequate medical treatment, they would have been able to help her," Horner said during his opening statement. Ava died last March of bronchopneumonia and sepsis, associated with the cyst that compressed her airway and deprived her organs of the oxygen they needed to function properly, according to the county medical examiner. Seven women and nine men will soon decide whether Ava's parents should be convicted of manslaughter and criminal neglect for choosing not to seek medical attention for their child.

Circuit Court Judge Stephen L. Maurer rejected the couple's motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that they were being persecuted for their religion, which teaches that the use of doctors is a sign of weak faith. The case against the Worthingtons represents the first time prosecutors have employed a 1999 law passed by the Oregon Legislature after several children who belonged to the Worthingtons' church died during the previous decade.

Ava's 16-year-old uncle, Neil Beagley, died just four months after she did. Beagley succumbed to complications from a blocked urinary tract, a condition that, like his niece's, required a fairly simple medical remedy: antibiotics. Beagley's parents, also members of the Followers of Christ, are scheduled to face charges of criminally negligent homicide in January. Jeff Beagley entered a plea of not guilty last year; his wife, Marci, has yet to enter a plea.

Despite a recent rash of high-profile cases, those who rely completely on prayer to heal the sick appear to be dwindling in number, say experts in religious studies and medicine (none could offer specific statistics). And deaths attributed to a rejection of secular medicine are steadily in decline, says Seth Asser, a Boston pediatrician who studies the practices of faith-healing groups. That's largely because of the diminishing influence of sects such as the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), Asser explains, whose membership has dropped from more than 1 million before World War II to as few as 100,000 today, by some estimates (the church does not publish official numbers.)