Faith Healing Turns Fatal
When Dale and Leilani Neumann's 11-year-old daughter became severely ill, they did what many parents would in the same situation: they prayed. But while most parents would also rush their child to the hospital if she became too weak to speak, eat, drink or walk, the Neumanns chose instead to simply continue praying as their daughter slowly died. Kara Neumann stopped breathing in March 2008, dying at her Wisconsin home of an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes. Her parents were convicted this year of second-degree reckless homicide, and in October they were both sentenced to six months in jail. The judge in their case called the Neumanns "very good people who made a bad decision, a reckless decision." Addressing the couple at sentencing, the judge told them, "God probably works through other people — some of them doctors."