When Your Religion Gets You ‘A Get Out Of Jail Free Card’: The Story Of A Faith Healing Family Who Killed Two Of Their Children

I am going to tell you a story, a story that is so sickening that at the end you would wonder how come it was allowed to happen. Then I would tell you what you already suspect but probably do not want to acknowledge.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible are a devout Christian couple in the United States. The couple are members of the First Century Gospel Church of Juniata Park, Pennsylvania. This church preaches faith healing, which tells you that no matter your ailment, if you believe hard enough God would heal you.

A tenet central to the church is this; “Medical insurance, hospital fees, and prescription costs today are enormous, but a believer receives healing for free. If anyone has more faith in doctors and drugs, than they have in the living God and the risen Savior, their salvation would be in serious jeopardy.”

So the Schaibles were very devout Christians, and believed this literally. In 2009, their two year old son Kent contracted bacterial pneumonia. They sat by his bedside and prayed for ten days straight, and the boy died.

After their trial, they were handed a ten year probationary sentence. This couple basically killed their child and not only were they not jailed, they were allowed to keep looking after their seven other children when they had shown no signs of rescinding their previous beliefs.

The judge included a requirement that the Schaibles schedule regular appointments with a “qualified medical person” for all their children and release their children’s medical records to probation officers. They never complied.

Then in 2013, their eight month old child Brandon Schaible was subjected to the same callous treatment. The infant could not breathe well and was suffering from diarrhoea, yet the Schaibles once again watched him die without seeking any medical help.

So after this couple killed two of their children due to a misguided belief in God, you would think they would be put away for life, or at least given heavy, deterring sentences. In both instances, they might as well shot those kids to death, because refusing to seek medical aid for a child with a life threatening condition, who has no say in the matter, is just as cruel as shooting him in the head.

After the second trial, the judge said they had violated the most important part of their probation; which was to seek medical care for their children. So he sentenced them to the life shattering sentence of seven years.

Prosecutors were back in court this month attempting to get a harsher sentence, but the Appeals court upheld the judge’s ruling. They claimed Judge Benjamin Lerner’s sentence was within his judicial discretion and did not violate the law.

I believe there is a reason this couple are not getting harsher sentences, and it is because people still hold a reverence for religion that it really has not earned. There are many things you cannot do in any other walk of life without getting the law rammed down your throat, but you hide it under religion and certainly everything becomes kosher.

The Catholic church s*x scandal is the biggest that comes to mind. The biggest Christian denomination in the world was found to have tons of Bishops taking advantage of boys they were supposed to work with, and the church had taken great pains to help cover up the scandal. To this point not many people have been punished for their role in this horrible scandal, and a lot of them continue to hold positions within the church.

We abhor corruption and duplicity in all walks of life, but we have people who fleece other people for a living and get no grief for it. We have prosperity preachers all over the world telling people that to prosper they need to sow seeds, and often it is the most desperate who throw in their last seeds in the attempt to reap something from God. So these people wallow in poverty, whilst the preachers continue to amass as much wealth as they can.

(Comedian John Oliver did a great bit on this that I would never forget, a video everyone needs to watch, which you will find below this article.)

I can go on and on. The point is that the holy status we give to religion gives people the blanket they need to hide their atrocities behind. We have the jihadists who claim they are doing it for a place in paradise, and parents refusing treatments for their children in danger on religious grounds is nothing new.

Despite all these, the worst thing I took from that story is that there is a provision in Pennsylvania law where a parent can refuse treatment for their child on religious grounds and have the full backing of the law. Knowing the United States, they probably have that provision in some of the other extreme right states.

The law reads… “If, upon investigation, the county agency determines that a child has not been provided needed medical or surgical care because of seriously held religious beliefs of the child’s parents, guardian or person responsible for the child’s welfare, which beliefs are consistent with those of a bona fide religion, the child will not be deemed to be physically or mentally abused.”

So basically, behaviour like that of the Schaibles is sanctioned by law. It just speaks to the undue reverence I talk about reserved for religion. Because belief is a matter of opinion, and in some cases we can tell you that your opinion is wrong. No amount of prayer can be a substitute for proper medical care, because for the most part medicine works, and prayer has never been proven to work.

It’s a shame that laws like that continue to exist when we simply know better now. People claim some special knowledge from an omniscient yet very inconspicuous deity, and that is fine. But it should never be a basis to hurt minors, and it especially must not be a get out of jail free card. Any other person in the position of having killed their child would not be treated this mildly, and we cannot continue to allow religion to be such an excuse, and a trigger, for the many crazy things humans do.

Most of the first half was written with information from The Friendly Atheist. You can watch John Oliver’s televangelist bit below…