An Oregon City couple who tried to heal their dying daughter with prayer walked hand-in-hand into a crowded Clackamas County courtroom Monday and pleaded not guilty to charges of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment.
Carl Brent Worthington, 28, and Raylene Marie Worthington, 25, are the first parents prosecuted since Oregon cracked down on faith-healing deaths nine years ago, according to legislators and legal experts. If convicted, they could spend more than six years in prison.
National advocates for religious freedom and child welfare have been following the Worthington case, and reporters shadowed the defendants from the moment they arrived Monday at the Clackamas County courthouse, flanked by attorneys.
The Worthingtons, members of Oregon City’s Followers of Christ Church, barely spoke a word as Judge Kathie Steele explained the charges. In subdued voices, they answered “yes” and “yes, your honor” to acknowledge they could face prison time, then dodged television cameras as they left the courtroom.
They remain free on $250,000 bonds. A trial is set for mid-June.
Their 15-month-old daughter, Ava Worthington, died at home March 2 from bacterial bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection. Both conditions could have been treated with antibiotics, according to Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner. Her breathing was further compromised by a benign, four-inch cyst on her neck that had never been medically addressed, Young said.
The Followers of Christ, a non-denominational congregation with roots in the 19th-century Pentecostal movement, came under state scrutiny in the late 1990s after several church children died from medically treatable conditions. The deaths prompted the Oregon Legislature to remove religious shield laws for parents who treat gravely ill children solely with prayer, setting the stage for the Worthington case.
A spokeswoman for the Christian Science Church, which lobbied for Oregon’s original faith-healing shield laws, acknowledged that the church has been following the Worthington case but declined to comment.
