Faith-healing trial continues
Father told police he did not believe in doctors
By JOSEPH B. FRAZIER
Associated Press
Thursday, July 2, 2009 9:59 AM PDT
OREGON CITY — As 15-month-old Ava Worthington’s condition worsened and she lay dying she was given diluted wine, prayers and anointments. They didn’t work.
But the medical examiner who did her autopsy said Wednesday that basic medical care she never got easily could have saved her at any time, up to the last days, even hours, of her short life.
Members of her parents’ church, the Followers of Christ, shun medicine for faith-healing. Her father, Carl Brent Worthington, was heard Wednesday saying in a recording of an interview with detectives two days after his daughter’s death that there was no thought of calling a doctor.
‘’I don’t believe in them,’’ he said, adding that who lives and dies is the will of God, not doctors.
He and his wife, Raylene, are charged with manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in the March 2008 death of Ava. It is the first case brought under Oregon’s 1999 law that rejects a religious defense for most abuse cases.
Dr. Chris Young testified Wednesday about a growth on Ava’s neck.
He described it as a cystic hydroma, a mass the size of a grapefruit filled with fluid and extending from her right lower ear to the shoulder blade.
The cyst was noticed when she was three or four months old and could easily have been fixed, he said. “But it was not treated, resulting in her death.’’
He said it pushed Ava’s air passage to the left, starting a chain of breakdowns.
The mass grew during her last three months and built pressure on her respiratory system, shutting down its defenses, making it hard for her to breathe, and pressuring her esophagus, making it hard for her to swallow.
He said she had a cold, which can make such growths expand, as family members said it had.
At about 26 inches and 15.5 pounds, he said, she had the height and weight of a 6-month-old and was below the fifth percentile for her sex and age, meaning that at least 95 percent of her peers were taller and weighed more.
In that state, he said, she was so fatigued just trying to breathe “that she could no longer support the effort. She ran out of energy. She stopped breathing.’’
In the recording, Worthington said that on the day Ava died the church asked for prayers and that members came to the house.
“They all knew that she was not doing too good,’’ he said.
He described his daughter’s final hours as surrounded by prayer, anointment, watered-down wine, fasting and the repeated laying on of hands. Ava’s breathing got worse when she was lying down, he said, and visitors “kept her stirred up to keep her breathing. We moved her around.’’
Family members said that just before her death Ava appeared to be improving. Young said that may have been a sign her body was closing down.
At the end of the interview, Worthington told detectives: ‘’I suppose you’ve never seen anything like this.’’
The trial opened on Monday and is expected to last at least three weeks.
To Mr Rash wrote on Jul 15, 2009 4:43 PM:
So lets go over this..... a sickness killed the girl...no one gave it to her, she contracted it either through air, touch, etc. It was a no fault type of thing. The parents didn't leave a bottle of death laying around for her to drink....it just happened for whatever reason.
But explain this to me........in your scenereo, where did the gun come from and who didn't lock it up?
The sickness wasn't something that could of been avoided, once she was sick the parents had the ultimate choice of what medical care their child was given. They chose to use prayer to help heal the child. Sadly, it didn't work for whatever reason.
In your case, your own dumbself left a loaded weapon laying around that your kid could get ahold of. Pretty obvious who's fault that was.
Getting sick is no one's fault, a child finding a loaded weapon in the house most definitely is someone's fault. "