A Slap on the Wrist
Where are all the “tough on crime” Republicans on cases like this?
- A couple whose infant daughter died of meningitis after they treated her with prayer instead of medicine were sentenced to a year of weekends in jail.
Richard Wiebe, 30, and Agnes Wiebe, 31, were sentenced Friday and were to surrender next month. They pleaded no contest last month to child abuse and involuntary manslaughter.
They also were placed on five years’ probation and ordered to attend parenting classes. Superior Court Judge Gerard Brown agreed to suspend a six-year state prison sentence.
The couple, members of the Church of God in Upland, treated their 11-month-old daughter’s high fever, vomiting and convulsions with home remedies and prayer instead of taking her to a doctor.
Julia Wiebe died in July 2001 of what doctors said was a treatable form of bacterial meningitis. The couple said their religion shuns modern medical treatment.
A year of weekends?? What the hell?! Shouldn’t baby-killers get more punishment than grounding? I’m surprised the judge didn’t just say “No TV for a month and you can’t go to the mall with your friends!” And what’s up with the parenting classes?? “Next time you guys have a kid, we’re going to teach you how not to kill it.” As far as I’m concerned, these parents are murderers. I don’t give a shit what their God told them to do, if they withhold medical care from a dying baby they should rot in jail.
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Greg: They’re not public menaces and they didn’t do this on purpose. They’re ignorant religious dipshits who’ve just lost their child from their own stupidity. What good would incarceration do? Send a message to the ignorant religious dipshit community?
Comment by Molly — September 16, 2003 @ 3:18 pm
They’re not public menaces and they didn’t do this on purpose.
Tell that to their dead baby…
If these people are so fucking stupid that they think prayer is going to save their vomiting and convulsing child, then they are a threat to society.
What good would incarceration do?Send a message to the ignorant religious dipshit community?
Do you not think they deserve to be punished for withholding medical care from their dying child? Thousands of people are accidentally killed every year and their killers don’t get the luxury of doing their time on the weekends, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who are in jail for nonviolent crimes.
To me, this is no different than if a well-respected religious leader who poses no threat to society gets behind the wheel after having a couple glasses of wine and accidentally runs over a little kid. Negligence is negligence, regardless of how ignorant or stupid the person is.
Their retarded religious beliefs may be an explanation of why they let their baby die, but it’s not an excuse. They deserve to be punished as harshly as anyone else who lets their kid die.
Comment by greg — September 16, 2003 @ 3:58 pm
Sterilize ‘em so there aren’t any more from their loins.Let’s practice eugenics on the right!!They really are just a burden on the rest of us.
Comment by Palolo lolo — September 16, 2003 @ 4:57 pm
Do you not think they deserve to be punished for withholding medical care from their dying child?
Greg: You have any kids of your own? If so, how well do you think you’d handle it if you managed to kill one with your own worthless judgement? Personally, something like that would ruin my life; if you think the idiots aren’t hurting, you’re obviously made of sterner stuff than most people.
Thousands of people are accidentally killed every year and their killers don’t get the luxury of doing their time on the weekends . . .
What are you talking about? Although accidents are the third or fourth most common form of death, it’s very unusual to do time for one.
. . . not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who are in jail for nonviolent crimes.
Oh, now there’s an argument: “Other people are incarcerated for lousy reasons, why not these folks?”
Comment by Molly — September 16, 2003 @ 7:27 pm
I thought we had a punishment for involuntary manslaughter, Molly, that was usually far worse than weekends in jail. I’m with Greg on this one. This was a homicide, no matter what the intentions of the parents. We should have sympathy because they killed their own child? Okay, but that is not what law is based on. There are rules; they broke them; they pay the consequences. The judge was too light.
Comment by Jonathan — September 16, 2003 @ 8:00 pm
Obviously I’m doing whatever the opposite of preaching to the choir is here. But it’s not like these people were crackheads renting the kid out to pedophiles; they’re religious dumb-asses, probably without insurance, doing what some minister of The Church of Dumb-ass convinced them was the right thing.
If anyone wants to advocate going after whoever paid his rent by conning them into thinking prayer would cure their baby, I’m with you. The kid died of religion. Unfortunately, it’s not a unique honor since religion is in a unique position to foist truly evil endeavors on the merely gullible. But if we’re better than that, we should be able to distinguish between two.
Comment by Molly — September 16, 2003 @ 8:54 pm
So a couple can pray their child to death and get off lightly. But if a mother acting alone drives her kids into a lake, or drowns them in the bathtub then she deserves jail.
Personally, I have more sympathy for a clinically depressed mental patient left alone in a house with five children than two ‘mentally sound’ adults who consciously decided to let their child die in a fit of willful stupidity. But imo, none of them should be out walking around with the rest of us until they get some serious help.
What is it with these fundamentalist Christians who keep killing their own kids, anyway? Moral degenerates, if you ask me.
Comment by natasha — September 16, 2003 @ 9:12 pm
Recent story in the Hartford Courant about a young woman who ignorantly left her baby unattended in a bath. Baby died. Woman is going to prison for a long time.
Not yet in prison, she just had another baby. (She may have already been pregnant when the other kid died. I don’t think this is a case of a really careless person with a zillion kids.) Her husband was set to take the baby home and have it cared for in the family, but the state came in and took the baby away.
I don’t see the point of the jail term. Maybe if there was a pattern of neglect, or if the baby was left in the water for an hour, but not for a mistake that could take mere moments (answering a phone, say, or taking a pan off the stove.)
I think the faith healing is, if anything, worse, because it’s a willful act that requires hours and hours of watching the child weaken and die and refusing help that is known to work.
I guess she would have been better off had she said she was faith-bathing the baby.
Comment by Jon H — September 16, 2003 @ 9:15 pm
Memo to Christian Scientists:
Did you ever think that maybe GOD sent the doctor and the medicine?!
Comment by Carl — September 17, 2003 @ 7:21 am
Greg: You have any kids of your own? If so, how well do you think you’d handle it if you managed to kill one with your own worthless judgement? Personally, something like that would ruin my life…
Something tells me these folks, and people like them, will attribute this to “God’s will” and move right along.
Comment by A2 Matt — September 17, 2003 @ 8:59 am
“it’s not like these people were crackheads renting the kid out to pedophiles”
No–if they had merely been crackheads renting the kid out to pedophiles, the kid might well still be alive.
Comment by rea — September 17, 2003 @ 12:12 pm
“Did you ever think that maybe GOD sent the doctor and the medicine?!”
And then there’s the one about the preacher whose town is being flooded. When the water reached the church step, some people came by in a rowboat and told him to climb in.
“I’m waiting for God to save me,” he replied.
When the water started washing the pews away, another boat came by. The people in it begged the priest to get in, but again he told them that he was waiting for God to save him.
He eventually had to climb up on the roof, where a helicopter came by as the water was closing in on the church steeple. They lowered a rescuer on a rope ladder, but the priest would not be budged. God, he was certain, would step in and save him.
Of course he gets washed away and drowned in the flood waters. Being a virtuous man, he goes to heaven. When he gets there, he’s confused, doesn’t understand what happened. At the pearly gates he confronts St. Peter.
“I had faith, I lived a good life, I trusted in God to save me. And when I died, I ended up in heaven. Why didn’t you intervene?”
“My son, what more could we do? We sent two boats and a helicopter.”
Comment by natasha — September 18, 2003 @ 12:04 am