Faith Healers Charged with Manslaughter for Failing to Care for Premature Baby
What happens to a premature baby who is born to a faith healer family? You can guess that it’s not a good outcome for the child.
Dale and Shannon Hickman made “a horrible choice” for their child when they decided to go to a relative’s house for the premature birth instead of immediately heading to a hospital, a pediatrician testified Friday at the couple’s manslaughter trial.
The Hickmans’ son, David, was born two months prematurely and lived less than nine hours.
If the Hickmans had sought medical help in the first few hours of David’s life, the baby had about a 90 percent chance of survival, said Dr. Dan Leonhardt, a pediatrician and child abuse expert at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. “In this case, a 9-1-1 call is all it would have taken,” Leonhardt said under questioning from prosecutor Mike Regan.
