Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc
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Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc . Box 2604, Sioux City IA 51106 Number 1, 2007, © by CHILD, Inc. Phone 712-948-3500, FAX 712-948-3704 E-mail: [email protected] Web page: www.childrenshealthcare.org Written by Rita Swan Equal rights for children under the law abuse in May, 2003. She described Josef as “demon-possessed” with “his eyes rolling in the back of his head as if he were going through some transformation.” The boy called himself Legion, which means “many demons.” He wrote on the walls that he was going to kill everyone. He heated a fork and stuck it down a sibling’s pants, causing a permanent scar. She reported that the parents also claimed the boy was demon-possessed, had placed video cameras around the house to observe him, and were providing no mental health services. The Henry County Department of Family and Children’s Services (DFCS) relayed the report to Cobb County DFCS and requested a visit to the Smith home. Weeks later Henry County repeated its request. After Josef’s death Cobb County DFCS said the request had gotten misplaced. The Department also claimed, however, that the Henry County memo contained no allegations of abuse or neglect. “There’s nothing in that memo that says the Gwen Shamblin, Remnant Fellowship Leader parents might beat a child to death,” Cobb County Photo by Steve Harman/ The Tennessean DFCS Director Catherine Anderson said. Another teenager who babysat for Remnant Fellowship reported that Smith ordered her to hit Parents get life plus thirty years in Josef “hard” because he was crying. When she fatal beating refused, the father took him to another room, and In March, 2007, Sonya and Joseph Smith of INSIDE Mableton, Georgia, were sentenced to life in prison Belief in demons maims and kills............................5 plus 30 years in the beating death of their 8-year-old Quack doctor charged in autistic boy’s death ..........6 son Josef. A Cobb County jury convicted them of Georgia parents convicted for starving son..............6 murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, cruelty to Idaho suit over baby’s treatment goes forward ........7 a child, false imprisonment, and recklessness. Transplant supported over religious objections .....10 The Smiths belonged to Remnant Fellowship, a Charges dismissed in toddler’s death.....................11 church in Brentwood, Tennessee, that recommends Serenity or dissociation? ........................................12 severe corporal punishment of children on biblical Christian Science church advice to UK members..13 grounds. They are now in jail, and their surviving CS boy dies of diabetes; no charges.......................14 children are in foster care. Church tells members to raise the dead ................14 In Henry County, Georgia, Smith’s daughter by Encyclopedia articles .............................................16 a previous marriage had filed a report of suspected 2 then she heard the boy wailing more loudly. of him because he was so destructive and claimed to She quit her babysitting job the next day. She be “a soldier of the devil,” especially when the and her parents reported the incident to the Tennes- family engaged in religious activity, Mykel said. see Department of Children’s Services, which de- Family terrified of demon-possessed son clined to investigate, saying there wasn’t enough information to suspect abuse. On October 8, 2003, the family was watching a webcast church service of Remnant Fellowship State does not suspect abuse after baby’s death when Josef began “screaming, cursing, and carrying In July, 2003, the Smiths’ son Milek, age 17 on,” Mykel testified. “Every time we prayed, he months, died at home with no medical attention. tried to do things to my little brother James [age 2].” The medical examiner gave cardiac dysrhythmia The Smiths told Mykel to put Josef inside a (irregular heartbeat) as the cause of death. wood-lined chest. It was not as large as a cedar The death did get Cobb County DFCS out to chest; the boy would have fit snugly in prone posi- the home. Mrs. Smith would not allow the workers tion. After Mykel got Josef into the chest, he tied to talk to her children. They noted that the home the lid closed with an extension cord because Josef and the surviving children, all home-schooled, were kept “popping his head up.” clean and orderly. They found no reason to suspect Mykel testified that Josef continued cursing child abuse or neglect and closed the case. inside the box, yelling, “I’m going to kill all you Eleven weeks later Josef died. Mr. Smith told motherf—s when I get out. James is the first one on police officer Steven Gaynor the next day that Josef my list. I’m going to slit his throat.” acted demon-possessed. Smith claimed his eight- Ten or fifteen minutes later, he stopped yelling. year-old son was so strong that he could knock an Mykel cut the extension cord and opened the chest. adult out, often spoke in strange voices, and told Josef was unresponsive. them he was “a soldier of the devil,” Gaynor wrote. Mr. Smith ran to the chest, pulled his son out, Whipping sessions and isolation for days attempted resuscitation, and called 911. Josef died in a hospital a few hours later. Mrs. Smith told the police that she “normally” gave the children their whippings in increments of Eczema or bruises? ten blows each and that Josef had gotten several of Medical examiners testified that Josef died of those whipping sessions on the day of his death. blunt force trauma in “acute and chronic abuse” and The police reported that the Smiths locked positional asphyxiation. Autopsy photos showed Josef in his room to pray to a picture of Jesus on the his body covered with abrasions and bruises as well ceiling and in a closet for days and even weeks. He as brain swelling. was given only a bucket for a toilet. An older son Citing a high white cell count in Josef’s blood, sometimes held Josef down while the parents beat two doctors testified for the defense that Josef died him with implements. of an infection rather than blunt force trauma. A “No remorse” dermatologist testified that marks on Josef’s skin were because of eczema rather than bruising. Smith “jokingly told me. if he [Josef] ever The jury did not believe them and convicted the goes to the hospital, they’re going to drag mommy parents on all counts. The judge said their crimes and daddy to jail,” Gaynor reported. deserved the maximum punishment of life in prison Another police officer said the father told him plus thirty years. after Josef’s death, “I’m not going to lie to you— Church members paid for their bail and legal he’s bruised.” defense and crowded the courtroom. Church The parents “showed no remorse” and were leaders said the child’s death was an accident from “very defensive about their religion” and its recom- hitting his head on a banister. They described the mended discipline methods, the police wrote. Smiths’ discipline methods as “traditional spank- Josef’s older brother, Mykel Booth, age 16, ings and groundings of a child to his bedroom” and testified in court that Josef was frequently hit with denied they were abusive. foot-long glue sticks, coat hangers, belts, and an Remnant Fellowship was founded by Gwen extension cord. Everyone in the family was afraid Shamblin, who wrote The Weigh Down Diet. The 3 book, which claims obesity is caused by self- children open their eyes during prayers or hymn centeredness, has sold more than a million copies. singing or break any other rules, Remnant staff Remnant Fellowship claims about 1,000 members come to the parents during the service and whisper in some 130 cities. that the child must be removed from the sanctuary and spanked enough to make them too sorry to break the rules again. If children do not obey their parents the first time or if they’re slow to obey, they will live for only a few years on earth and have a horrible afterlife in eternal damnation, Shamblin claimed. Parents have only a small window of time to get their families in order because the refiner’s fire is coming through, she added. Her associate, David Martin, told about his three-year-old daughter’s willfulness. “We had a real showdown with her. We had to give her leg spankings over and over and over again for three weeks,” he said, but now they “hardly ever have to spank her.” Remnant Fellowship Church Photo by Jeanne Reasonover/ The Tennessean Spankings atone for parents’ sins After the 9/11 attacks Shamblin circulated e- “We are making little vessels for God to be mails comparing herself to the Old Testament King,” he said. “Love God more than you love prophets and saying she had been trying to warn these children. Then you will get a chance to cor- America. She claimed that only those who joined rect all the sins you have struggled with. God her church would be saved from the coming will rule and you will get to correct everything you catastrophe. did wrong in your own life and break the power of Remnant’s materials emphasize obedience sin.” above all else. Its webpage had a testimony by a Shamblin chimed in that hitting your kids is a woman who was first hesitant to hit her kids, but way to cancel “past sins,” to “break the curse of sin later she did it “in order to save their souls from hell through the generations of your own family.” rather than being concerned about their flesh.” “You don’t have to do ‘these little pats,’” she “The Bible says that if you do not discipline added.