'Somebody is dead as a result of what they did - or didn't do': Faith-healing parents charged with MURDER after second child dies from pneumonia are denied bail

Parents Herbert and Catherine Schaible denied bail two days after being charged with third-degree murder



Seven-month-old Brandon Schaible had died from bacterial pneumonia



The Schaible were on probation after their two-year-old son Kent had died of pneumonia in 2009

They are facing seven to 14 years in prison



Schaibles belong to fundamentalist Christian church, which teaches that it's a sin to rely on modern medicine over prayer



Parents charged with murder after they allegedly chose prayer over medical care for their sick son have been denied bail by a Philadelphia judge.



Herbert Schaible, 45, and his wife Catherine, 44, were charged with third-degree murder earlier this week after their seven-month-old son Brandon died of bacterial pneumonia in April.



If convicted, the Schaibles face seven to 14 years in prison or more. The couple had previously been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2009 for failing to prevent another son, two-year-old Kyle, from dying from pneumonia.



Again? The Schaibles had previously been convicted of manslaughter in the 2009 death of their 2-year-old son under circumstances prosecutors called 'eerily similar'

Basic medical care could have prevented his death, but instead the Schaibles chose to pray. ‘We tried to fight the devil, but in the end the devil won,' they told homicide detectives at the time.

They received probation in that case, but the terms included ensuring their additional eight children - ranging in age from 7-months to 17-years-old - would get regular medical checkups and go to the doctor when there was any sign of illness.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said the care was never given and decided to bring murder charges against the couple. Their remaining seven children have been placed in foster care.

The Schaibles were ordered held without bail Friday, two days after their arrest, although defense lawyers argued that they were neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community.

Prayed to death? A Philadelphia judge upheld murder charges Wednesday against Herbert and Catherine Schaible in the faith-healing death of their 8-month-old son

‘He is incarcerated because of his faith,’ said lawyer Bobby Hoof, who described client Herbert Schaible's mindset as resolute.



"He's strong willed," Hoof said. "(Yet) he's mourning this son. He's hurting as any dad would."



A judge acknowledged that the couple had never missed a court date in the first case but said he worried that might change amid the more serious charges. And he feared they may have supporters who would harbor them.



"Throughout this country ... there are churches like the Schaibles' whose members and leaders probably don't think they did anything wrong, and might be willing - to paraphrase the Schaibles' pastor - to put their interpretation of God's will above the law," Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner said.



Following the ruling, Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore was pleased with the judge's decision.



"Somebody is dead now as a result of what they did or didn't do," she said.

Faith-healing: First Century Gospel Church, where the parents are members, says using medicine is a sin

After their two-year-old son died of untreated pneumonia in 2009, the Schaibles had promised a judge they would not let another sick child go without medical care.



But now they've lost an eight-month-old to what a prosecutor called ‘eerily similar’ circumstances.



‘We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil's power,’ Herbert Schaible, 44, told Philadelphia homicide detectives after their ninth child, Brandon, died in April. Medicine, he said, ‘is against our religious beliefs.’



About a dozen children die each year in the U.S. when parents turn to faith healing instead of medicine, typically from highly treatable problems, said Shawn Francis Peters, a University of Wisconsin lecturer who has studied faith-healing deaths.



In Oregon, four couples from a faith-healing church have been prosecuted, the most recent in 2011 when a couple was sentenced to more than six years in prison for manslaughter in the death of their newborn son.



Murderers? Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, announces Herbert and Catherine Schaible would be charged with murder. The judge upheld the charge Wednesday, despite strong objection from the defense

The state legislature that year removed faith healing as a defense to murder charges.

The Schaibles are third-generation members and former teachers at their fundamentalist Christian church, the First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia.



At least two dozen children from First Century Gospel and its mother church First Tabernacle Congregation have died since 1971, reports NBC10 .



Their pastor, Nelson Clark, has said the Schaibles lost their sons because of a ‘spiritual lack’ in their lives and insisted they would not seek medical care even if another child appeared near death.



He did not return phone messages this month, but he told The Associated Press in 2011 that his church is not a cult, and he faulted officials for trying to force his members into "the flawed medical system," which he blamed for 100,000 deaths a year.



Extreme: Pastor Nelson Clark of the First Century Gospel Church tells followers to shun 21-century medicine for the power of prayer

LIVING ON A PRAYER: THE CASUALTIES OF FAITH-HEALING

It is estimated that around a dozen U.S. children die in faith-healing cases each year, a handful of which spawn criminal charges, according to experts. The First Century Gospel Church of Philadelphia’s teachings has clashed with authorities in the past. In 1991, eight children died in a measles epidemic. All the parents were members of either First Century Gospel Church or the nearby Faith Tabernacle of Nicetown which also preaches faith-healing. The tragedies are not isolated to Pennsylvania. In Oregon, Jeff and Marci Beagley, were sentenced to 16 months in 2010 for the death of their 16-year-old son. The couple refused to use medicine for their son Neil, who was suffering from a preventable urinary tract blockage. Instead, they prayed and used anointing oils in the hope of divine intervention. 'Too many children have died unnecessarily - a graveyard full,' Judge Steven Maurer said at their sentencing. 'This has to stop.'



‘These are people who have been brought up in these communities; their beliefs are reinforced every day,’ Peters said. ‘They're not trained intellectually to question these doctrines, where the rest of us might engage in critical inquiry, weighing the benefits of medicine versus the benefits of prayer.’



A handful of families, including one in western Pennsylvania, have lost two children after attempts at faith healing, according to Peters, who wrote ‘When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children and the Law.’



Peters isn't sure that courts have the means to prevent the problem, since such people don't fear legal punishment, only Judgment Day. Some believe death ‘is a good outcome,’ given their belief in the afterlife, he said.



‘They don't want to harm their children. They're just in this particularly narrow - and very, very dangerous - way misguided about the potential of medical science,’ he said.



He believes that ‘empathetic’ intervention, through dialogue between church and public health educators, could help some ‘get to a point where they allow their beliefs and practices to evolve.’

