Imagine that the parents of an 11 year old child refused to give her medical treatment because they believed the ancient god Moloch would save her. They prayed to Moloch for a month, convinced that he would cure her ills, while the child got sicker and sicker. But alas, the child died of juvenile diabetes. Now imagine that the couple has three other children, and the authorities said it’s just fine and dandy for the kids to stay with their parents. “They are still in the home,” the police chief said. “There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see.”

Stop imagining. It happened, except they prayed to a different god. And since their abuse was religious, they get to keep their other three kids, because, what the hell, their belief was sincere.

What the hell is wrong with the police chief? No signs of abuse? How about one dead kid? Isn’t that abusive enough?

Fortunately, this is fairly uncommon, but it happens several times a year in the US, and almost every time the authorities not only let the parents get away with it, but allow them to keep any of their other kids who have been lucky enough to stay healthy.

While researching this story I came across this blog post, which lead to this link showing Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrating the death of their children.

JW’s use most medical care, but refuse blood transfusions. And now they’ve got the gall to present us with the happy, smiling faces of the children they’ve killed. How about showing their lifeless corpses laid out in coffins, you sick bastards?

I am not a big fan of Child Protective Services, whose goal seems to be breaking up healthy families and keeping violent dysfunctional ones together. In these situations they could actually do some good for a change. Once a parent demonstrates that they are too stupid to provide medical care for a child, their other kids need to be rescued from them immediately. The cause of the stupidity doesn’t matter.

And then, of course, the parents need to spend some time in prison. It doesn’t matter how sincere they were. It doesn’t matter which god they believed in. They killed their kid. They deserve severe punishment.