In Idaho, medical-care exemptions for faith healing come under fire
BOISE, Idaho — As Willie Hughes walked around the weathered plots and mounds of dirt at Peaceful Valley Cemetery, he remembered family that died too young and his brother Steven, who was born with spina bifida.
Steven never saw a doctor, a physical therapist or used a wheelchair. He crawled around on his forearms and died of pneumonia at age 3.
“I remember his was the first body that I saw and touched. It was traumatic for a 4 1/2-year-old to see his little brother in a coffin. I can’t tell you how many dead bodies I’ve seen,” said Hughes, a Boise truck driver who grew up in the Followers of Christ church.
Nearly one-third of the roughly 600 gravesites in Peaceful Valley Cemetery belongs to a child, advocates say. Spotty records make it difficult identify how and why the children died before burial at the graveyard used by the Followers of Christ, a splinter sect that practices faith healing and believes that death and illness are the will of God. But coroner and autopsy reports gathered by advocates, and former church members’ childhood memories, tell a story about children needlessly dying from a lack of medical care.
Child advocates estimate that nearly 183 Idaho children died because of withheld medical treatment since states across the nation enacted faith-healing exemptions in the early 1970s. They say many of those victims are buried at Peaceful Valley.
“We assume that a lot of deaths can be prevented,” said Bruce Wingate, founder of Protect Idaho Kids Foundation.
Wingate estimates three to four children will die this year in Idaho alone if lawmakers fail to lift the state’s faithhealing exemptions.
“Because this happens over time, people don’t get shocked. But 183 kids is outrageous,” Wingate said. To make his point, he built 183 pint-size coffins. Dozens of children’s advocates recently carried the pine boxes through the streets of downtown Boise to the Idaho Statehouse in a rally that unfolded in part protest and part funeral procession.
Marchers remembered the victims and carried signs urging state lawmakers to repeal Idaho’s faith-healing exemptions so parents could no longer deny their children medical care under the shield of religious freedom.
“No child should die as a result of neglect of any kind,” said Roger Sherman, executive director of the Idaho Children’s Trust Fund.
“Idaho policymakers have chosen to ignore this aspect of medical neglect. The most vulnerable members of society needed the protection of adults in society,” Sherman said amid a crowd of marchers carrying the coffins.
More children die of faith-based medical neglect in Idaho than any other state, according to Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, a nonprofit organization that tracks medical neglect and lobbies to repeal religious medical-care exemptions. The organization’s retired president, Rita Swan, points to the gravesites at Peaceful Valley as evidence. More than 200 of those sites belong to children, and many of their deaths could have been prevented, she said, citing data from gravestones, coroner reports, obituaries and statements from family members.
Many of the gravesites at Peaceful Valley remain unmarked, however, concealing information about the lives and deaths of those buried there.
Linda Martin, a former church member and retired Lane County barber, said Followers of Christ members eschew birth control, normally give birth at home and frequently forgo prenatal care. They often homeschool children and go without birth certificates, making efforts to track faith-healing deaths difficult, she said. The culture and rituals of the church compound the problem, Canyon County Sherriff Kieran Donahue said. He said followers have not always alerted authorities after a death. When deputies are called, they often find bodies moved, washed and redressed and dozens of church members milling about the house of the deceased, he said.
“You can start to imagine how difficult it is for law enforcement,” Donahue said.
The Washington Post contacted several members of the church for comment. None responded.
In Idaho and more than half the other states, some kind of religious exemption allows parents to withhold medical treatment from a child. Sixteen states have no religious exemption, according to a 2016 Pew report.