Parents in faith-healing case never considered calling a doctor



Updates from the courtroom, court documents and past stories on the case.


"I don't believe in them," Carl Worthington said of doctors. "I believe in faith healing." Raylene Worthington said that her religious beliefs do not encompass medical care and that she would not have done anything different for her - daughter, who died at home of pneumonia, a blood infection and other complications.


Ava's father, who goes by Brent, his middle name, described what happened:




Two hours later Ava was dead.

The interviewers, Detectives Michelle Finn and James Rhodes of the Clackamas County Sheriff Office's child-abuse unit, asked pointed questions, and Brent Worthington provided details about his, his family's and his church's beliefs and practices.









"I did everything I could do for her," Worthington said. "What I was doing was working," he said. "She was getting relief."

Dr. Christopher Young, the deputy state medical examiner who conducted the girl's autopsy, disagreed. "The absence of action led to her death," said Young, who testified after the jury saw the interviews.

Ava's cyst first appeared when she was a few months old.

By Christmas 2007, the cyst was swollen and likely interfered Ava's with breathing, Young said. "That's the time when a reasonable parent" would have taken a child to a doctor, he said.

Ava's various medical conditions were easily treated, and antibiotics and a simple medical procedure could have saved her right up to the day she died, Young said.

The cyst could have been drained with a needle, providing temporary but instant relief, Young said, and antibiotics could have dampened the infections.

-- Steve Mayes;