Parents Jailed For Leaving Sick Baby In The Care Of Church’s Supernatural Healer

A man and his wife whose extreme religious beliefs banned modern medicine have been jailed for manslaughter after  their sickly 8-months-old baby died in the care of their church’s supernatural healer, the Daily Mail reports.

According to the media, Brian Kandare, 29, and Precious Kandare, 37, have been jailed after admitting the manslaughter of eight-month-old Rebecca, who died from pneumonia in January last year. She stopped breathing at her parents’ Apostolic Church of God, where a 20-strong congregation held prayers in a converted garage in the back garden of a house.
At the time of her death Rebecca weighed just 11lb 9oz, there was no trace of food or milk in her stomach and she was suffering from the worst case of rickets an expert has seen in his 33-year career, Nottingham Crown Court heard.

Her parents had inadequately fed her for months, leaving Rebecca ‘morbidly thin’ as she ‘wasted away’.
In the weeks and months leading up to her death the couple repeatedly eschewed the help available to them from the NHS in favour of ‘faith healing, ritual and the power of prayer’, the court was told.
Three days before their daughter died they then handed over responsibility of her care to a church midwife under the belief that she had ‘supernatural healing powers’.

Mr Justice Edis jailed Mr Kandare for nine-and-a-half years and Mrs Kandare for eight years.
Prosecuting, Jonas Hankin QC said Rebecca was ‘significantly underweight and severely malnourished’ and that she weighed as much as a three-month-old when she died at the New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton.
He said: ‘Her illness was treatable and her death was preventable.
‘It is highly unlikely that Rebecca would have died if she had been presented for medical care more than 24 hours before she collapsed.

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‘The stark reality of this case is that the defendants placed a higher value on adherence to the church’s teachings than their daughter’s welfare.’
Their church, the Apostolic Church of God in Wolverhampton, had strict views on modern healthcare with members of the congregation encouraged to speak to the church’s ‘midwife’, who had no formal qualifications, before seeking further help for medical problems.
Members could also be excluded from certain church activities if they went to a doctor without permission, the court heard.