Wampum

A Wisconsin jury has convicted Ray Hemphill of felony child abuse in the death of eight-year old Terrence Cottrell. Hemphill, a school janitor and lay minister, is subject to a sentence of up to five years in jail.

Terrence Cottrell’s mother, Pat Cooper, had turned to Hemphill and other members of the independent Faith Temple of the Apostolic Faith Church for help in dealing with her autistic son.

Church members, in their ignorance, thought that Terrence’s autism was caused by demons. Accordingly, they held a number of “exorcisms” in an effort to drive the demons from Terrence and cure his autism.

As CNN reports:

The boy's mother, Patricia Cooper, and two other female parishioners told investigators that they made the child lay on his back on the floor of the strip-mall based church. They then helped to restrain him while the defendant laid perpendicular across Terrance's chest for almost two hours, praying and whispering aspersions at the devil into the boy's ear.

With a full grown man lying on his chest for more than 2 hours in 80 degree heat, Terrence Cottrell was unable to draw breath and died of asphyxiation.

Hemphill’s brother, the “Bishop” of the church, still refuses to believe that the church members did anything wrong:

The brother of a minister on trial for suffocating an autistic child during an exorcism told jurors Thursday that it was God who "took" the child, not the defendant's intense ritual.

"I'm the pastor and God has ordained my brother to be an evangelist, he has the gift to cast out devils," David Hemphill testified…

David Hemphill, 63, was not in attendance that evening, but he told jurors he gave his brother permission to perform the exorcisms as an attempt to save the boy from what they believed was demonic possession.

"I've seen God heal some people, and then I've seen God didn't heal some. So all we're asked to do is to believe in the word of God," David Hemphill testified during direct examination by Hemphill's attorney, Thomas Harris.

Hemphill told jurors it was his church's belief that God sent Jesus to heal those who are sick, and in turn, several members of his church, have been given the "gift" of healing hands.

"Is there any sickness or disease that's too hard for God or believers [to heal]?" Harris asked.

"No, there's nothing too hard for God, and nothing too hard for his believers," Hemphill testified, adding that they only pray for sick people who ask to be healed.

If all the church members had done was "believe in the word of God," Terrence Cottrell would be alive today. Terrence Cottrell did not ask to be saved by exorcism. Indeed, the evidence at trial showed that he struggled against his restraints until he was no longer able to draw breath.

It is not for me to criticize the religion of others. It is not the role of the state to regulate religious belief. Nonetheless, when religion goes beyond mere belief and takes the life of an innocent child whose only crime was to have been born with a brain that functions differently, the state must step in.

I do not believe that Ray Hemphill or other members of the church intended to harm Terrence Cottrell. I think that they were honestly trying to cure him.

Neither their ignorance of the nature of autism nor their subjective good faith excuses the conduct of holding a child down while the weight of a full grown man compresses the child’s chest until all life is squeezed out. After all, the death happened in Milwaukee in the twenty-first century not Salem in the 17th century.

Hemphill was guilty of being ignorant about the nature of autism and reckless with regard to the safety of the child. Ignorance is not a crime. Recklessness that causes the death of a child is.

The jury returned a verdict that spoke the truth.