Faith-healing parents sentenced to 16 months in prison

Judge says sentence was necessary as deterrant to other church members

By Matthew Graham

The Clackamas Review, Mar 8, 2010, Updated Mar 8, 2010 (9 Reader comments)

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The Oregon City parents who were convicted in January in the faith healing death of their son were both sentenced to 16 months in the state penitentiary on Monday.

Jeff and Marci Beagley were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in January. Their son, Neil, died in June 2008 of a treatable blockage to his urinary system.

Neil had refused medical treatment in favor of using faith healing, according to the family. He died after a week in which he ate little, threw up regularly and spent most of his time in bed. The family asked if he wanted to seek medical treatment, but never sought it for him.

“The idea of sending Jeff and Marci to prison is heart-wrenching,” said Judge Steven Maurer. “The fact here is too many children have died unnecessarily, needlessly, they have died, and it has to stop, it just has to stop … and so as difficult and as heartbreaking as it is … Jeff and Marci Beagley are going to have to go to prison.”

Maurer made it clear that the sentence was a direct attempt to deter other members of the Oregon City-based Followers of Christ Church from relying on faith healing to the exclusion of medical care.

“The fact of the matter is that Jeffrey and Marci Beagley are in large measure a product of the church,” he said. “The church has imprinted on them their beliefs, their attitudes, their concepts of their responsibilities in a matter that permeates this case. Decisions that were made and were not made by Jeff and Marci Beagley really are the core result of their adherence and their devotion to their church. So there really is no meaningful way to escape it, and we’re deluding ourselves if we pretend otherwise.”

He said other formal and informal attempts to work with the church to get them to recognize serious conditions and seek medical treatment had failed, as evidenced by the deaths of Neil and his niece, Ava Worthington.

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