That murder by rebirthing case. Warning: beyond vile.

The BBQ Pit
1

There were threads on this case before. This one from April, which was briefly resurrected last month at the utter miscarriage of giving the two murderers a minimal sentence.

I posted a brief reply to a much lighter-hearted thread about made-up or unusual words used with your friends and family, then picked up the latest issue of the “Skeptical Inquirer” from where it sat beside the desk and started skimming. It had an early-page story on this case. The story of course, I’d seen before. My take on it was saddened, philosophical. Was. SI, however, included the following transcript of the snuff film these two “therapists” made, which I had not seen before. I read it, put the magazine down, walked into the bathroom and knelt by the toilet and waited to see if I was going to vomit, and briefly, intensely, wept. I think I’m going to several times more before I can sleep tonight. Why not share it.

Mods, I don’t think posting the entirety of the quote violates any copyright. God knows I’d rather be able to link to it so I could avoid typing it, avoid reading it again. But I don’t have the words to describe just how fucking vile it is, none that even approach how Candace’s last moments in this life ran.

Note to those lucky enough to have never even heard of this case before: Candace was a little girl, aged 10, until the rapists (redundant “the” and additional space added deliberately) Julie Ponder and Connell Watkins made her a little corpse, aged now and forever.

Candace Newaker: I can’t do it. (Screams) I’m gonna die.
Julie Ponder: Do you want to be reborn or do you want to stay in there and die?
CN: Quit pushing on me, please…I’m gonna die now.
JP: Do you want to die?
CN: No, but I’m about to…Please, please, I can’t breathe…
CN: Can you let me have som oxygen? You mean, like you want me to die for real?
JP: Uh huh
CN: Die right now and go to heaven?
JP: Go ahead and die right now. For real. For real…
CN: Get off. I’m sick. Get off. Where am I supposed to come out? Where? How can I get there?
Connell Watkins: Just go ahead and die. It’s easier…It takes a lot of courage to be born.
CN: You said you would give me oxygen.
CW: You gotta fight for it
(Candace vomits and defecates)
CW: Stay in there with the poop and vomit.
CN: Help! I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. It’s hot. I can’t breathe…
CW: Getting pretty tight in there.
JP: Yep…less and less air all the time…
JP: She gets to be stuck in her own puke and poop.
CW: Uh huh. It’s her own life. She’s a quitter.
Candace Newmaker: No…

The no was her last word.

Ever.

But hey, they got the minimum sentence. After all, the judge didn’t see that they really intended to hurt the girl.

I hate my species sometimes.

2

Damn, that is cold. That judge needs to pull his head out of his ass for a second and think again about what that little girl went through before she died.

Drastic, I don’t believe that people who would do this to a defenseless child are part of our species.

3

Oh, they’re human all right. Only humanity can be that Evil.

4

Yet another reason to watch out for New Age quackery and superstition. I hope her mother suffers the memory of what she allowed to happen to her child for the rest of her life. I hope it tortures her to madness.

5

No doubt that is exactly what will happen. My question to you is why you would wish it upon her? The woman made a horrendous mistake, the consequences of which she could not possibly have forseen when she made it. Nor were these consequences her intention. What is it about that that makes her deserving of the suffering you describe? Where in that do you see malice or evil? Or do you just think all stupid people/stupid mistakes should be punished to a grotesque degree? Or is she deserving of the tortures of the damned for believing in something you don’t believe in?

stoid

6

Stoid:

One is a participant in one’s own ignorance. As far as a daughter is concerned it was her responsibility to do her due diligence to ensure that she understood before she exposed her child to this situation.

It is not a passive responsibility. It is not something where a mistake of this nature is tolerable. She is fully and completely reponsible for protecting her daughter.

She did not fail that responsibility. Failure can be forgiven or understood. She abandoned her responsibility, and her daughter died like an animal because of it.

Somehow I doubt someone capable of allowing such a thing has the capacity for the kind of remorse goboy suggests. I hope she learns, though. I hope she grows into it until it destroys her.

7

Okay, so sometimes, we allow certain registrations/licenses to lapse, like my driver license, which is about to expire tomorrow, but somehow, I would feel uncomfortable taking a loved one to a therapist that isn’t licensed. Just me.

I think, Stoid, that part of goboy’s anger, like mine, stems from the fact that the mother heard the child’s pleas for help and did nothing. Heard her vomit and knew that she defecated and still allowed it to continue. Heard the ‘hard breathing and soft whimpering’ and then, heard nothing for 20 MINUTES but did NOTHING. Let her lay there without a thought for her safety! Or at least, not enough of a thought to do something about it. I am enraged and I would be happy knowing that this wretched creature has enough of a conscience that she is in absolute misery over it!

8

That is exactly why I’m upset-and wasn’t this her FOSTER mother? She was going to be back with her biological family? Or was it vice versa?

Anyhoo, I think the mother is INDEED at fault, and did not just merely make a mistake. She was right there-could she not have said, “Stop.”?

9

Perhaps, ** Stoid ** because her mom was one of those in the room and ‘assisting’ in the process, and ignoring the childs cries that she couldn’t breathe.

I understand that the mom in this case was at her wits end re: how to reach her child. I also understand that according to the ‘therapist’, crying out ‘I can’t breathe’ isn’t unusual. Still. Hearing the child cry out she couldn’t breathe and then the lack of struggle subsequent? Nope.

10

adoptive mom.

11

Any other species on the planet has the instincts to keep danger away from it’s young, even if it’s the young’s own father…

This definately supports my theory that having the right to raise children is not a right, rather a privilege.

12

You know, just the other day I was talking to a friend of mine (he knocked up his girlfiend last year, so he won’t be coming back to college) “If you ever have trouble having your kids get to trust and love you…stick 'em in a bag with no oxygen! That’ll teach the little buggers to love you!!”
…Apprently common sense isn’t that common.

13

The total lack of regard for this little girl’s safety is horrifying and sickening. If these “therapists” (and I use the term loosely) were truly concerned about Candace’s life, there would have been, at minimum, a “safeword” used to signal distress. That so many people said “I can’t breathe” during this cockamamy “therapy” should be a sign that rebirthing (as these two practiced it) is physically unsafe and should be outright banned as such.

Robin

14

And how do you know she didn’t? It isn’t as though these people had a history of killing people, now is it?

Semantics. (Not to mention inflammatory…what does dying like an animal really mean, anyway?) How do you differentiate? I have met many stupid people in my life, as I’m sure you have. Stupid people can have the best intentions, and their stupidity will lead them to make poor decisions. Is it proper that they be tortured for their stupidity? From what I’ve read in the links provided here, this woman was at her wit’s end, the therapists presented this as part of a larger cure for her desperate situation. They told her, and she had no reason to think otherwise, that the cries the child was making were common with people going through this kind of process. Is she ** evil ** for believing them?

And that is a huge leap with little evidence to support it. If you insist that she suffer (and I’m sure she is - I just don’t agree that she “deserves” it) can you really explain why? In detail? Why should anyone suffer for anything they do? Aren’t punishment and suffering appropriate for acts undertaken with malice? Do you see malice in this woman’s actions? If your answer is yes, can you explain how, because I do not. I see stupidty, desperation, and judgment which can be said to be poor in hindsight. Had the treatment worked, who knows?

I think the therapists were arrogant and self-involved, and their hubris deserves to be punished, but I do believe the incident was fundamentally an accident. A terrible, terrible accident, and that no one meant that child to be harmed, especially her mother. I’m certain she is tortured over this, and I feel for her because of it.

stoid

15

I should state at the outset that I’m a 41 year old woman who once - and only once - paid for a rebirthing session. I should also state that I live in a country where you cannot call yourself a doctor, or a psychologist, or a chiropractor, or an acupuncturist without holding some kind of recognised qualification.

It is my responsibility as a parent to obtain appropriate health care for my child. That doesn’t mean that I have to submit my child to the traumas of chemotherapy should my child be facing a lifethreatening cancer with a grim prognosis. Nor does it mean that I have to submit my child to surgery. In very few cases will the government intervene to protect my child’s interests if I can demonstrate that I have made an informed decision which I truly believe to be in my child’s best interests.

What it does mean, is that it is my responsibility to act in the best interests of my child. It’s unequivocal here - a parent cannot deny their child a blood tranfusion on the basis of the parent’s religious or other beliefs. The rights of an adult to make that decision are totally respected.

Essentially, what I do not have a legal right to do is endanger my child’s life or welfare on the basis of my own personal beliefs. So if I take my child around the corner to the witch doctor down the road because I personally don’t agree with the recommended allopathic treatment, and I allow my child to be subjected to a regime of exorcism, or I stand by and let my favourite cult put my child on a water-only diet, and my child dies, I’m at least equally legally culpable of contributing to my child’s death. Morally, I’m probably far more culpable because I had a responsibility to take reasonable action to protect my child from harm.

There’s not a chance on this planet that I could have been in a room with my child when my child was so distressed that they defecated and vomited and not said “enough”. There’s not a chance on this planet that I wouldn’t have called an ambulance even if I thought my child had already expired.

Whenever a parent consents to any “treatment” for any condition on behalf of their child, they essentially act as a proxy, and it is their responsibility to make sure the consent is fully informed.

I’m utterly disgusted that any so-called “professional” would subject a child to this kind of treatment, and even more disgusted that a parent would allow it to happen.

We SOOOO need laws which stop everyone and their dog being allowed to hang out a shingle calling themselves a psychotherapist, or a counsellor, or in some way implying that they are competent to treat a physical or mental or, in this case, possible imagined solely in the mother’s mind, illness without being legally required to hold so much as a first aid certificate.

I hold some pretty basic first aid certificates, it isn’t horrendously difficult to tell whether someone is in genuine respiratory distress, or cardiac distress - and most people who hold first aid certificates will err on the side of caution EVERY SINGLE TIME. The defecation ALONE should have been a major indicator of the need for immediate medical intervention.

These people subjected an asthmatic child to a technique in which hyperventilation is deliberately induced, and offered her no medical intervention whatsoever when she became distressed?

There are some great, and extremely responsible, practitioners of alternative medicine in my community. I hate it that every time a case like this occurs, it’s the responsible practitioners who suffer the consequences, because the irresponsible ones didn’t give a damn in the first place.

I’d much rather see this mother and her co-conspirators face life in prison than the woman who drowned her 5 children a few weeks ago. I just don’t know how anyone can defend her inactions unless they are going to claim undue influence on the part of the rebirthers. And if anyone is going to claim that, then the rebirthers should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

16

Actually, as far as understanding what could be happening to the child, the shocking thing is that apparantly her mother is a pediatric nurse. Then it does seem amazing that the vomiting and defecating didn’t clue her.

But it still comes back to this: what exactly is she guilty of, in terms of what was going on in her mind? Stupidity? Indifference? Malice? If you don’t think she was malicious, then you think she was indifferent. If you think she was indifferent, why would she have been fighting so hard to keep the kid? And if it was neither of those, then it was stupidity, and why should anyone be punished for stupidity?

Is there a fourth or fifth option that I’m not seeing?

Reprise: there is no evidence that I’m aware of that anyone, much less this mother, would have any reason to equate rebirthing for psychological problems with witch doctors for physical ones. * This was a freak occurance. * Has it * ever * happened to anyone else? Not that I’ve heard about. So to say that this is similar to something like not taking antibiotics for an infection is just wrong, I think. It’s not nearly so clear cut, nor had anyone any idea it would be life-threatening, much less fatal.

I understand everyone’s disgust at what happened, and I share it. I just don’t agree that the mother acted in such a way as to deserve being thought of or treated like a malicious, evil person.
stoid

17

**

After this moment this was no longer an accident. Up to this point, I could possibly understand a parent thinking, “Gee, I had no idea this would be so traumatic, but this is probably normal for this sort of thing.” But at this point, to allow the session to continue with no attempt at intervention by the parent, is at best, negligence, at worst, maliciousness. It is not merely the case that the little girl died. It is the case that the little girl was in obvious distress, and no one did the one thing that any responsible individual would have done - stop the session. But this goes beyond mere irresponsibility. And this was not a freak occurance - there were plenty of warning signs. Had she just keeled over, that would have been a freak occurance. But she begged. She pleaded. She died. And her mother did not intervene.

Sounds like evil to me.

18

I disagree. I think the mother was evil.

Taking the kid to the murderers was stupid. But, as you say, she was desperate.

But she sat passively for twenty minutes and listened to her kid scream in pain and slowly die, terrified. That’s evil.

It’s evil to not stop something that’s clearly torture. When a kid’s screaming “I can’t breath” and is so upset or hurt that she’s vomiting, any non-evil person who doesn’t enjoy watching a child being tortured stops whatever’s going on and calms the child down and makes sure the child actually can breath, regardless of ANY legit or quack theory.

Especially if part of the reason she can’t breath is about 500+ lbs of adults are sitting on her, and the other reason is because her mouth is filled with her own vomit and her hands are restrained so she can’t clear the vomit away. Taking her to the murderers was stupidity. Sitting there and watching her child die slowly and horribly was evil.

And regarding the murderers, since we didn’t get justice via the legal system, I hope we get justice via the prisoners. I personally hope all the stories I’ve heard about what happens to child murderers in jail comes true on them. I hope it’s so severe that the murderers become verbed. “Jeez! The prisoners in that jail just “Pondered and Watkined” that guy!”

Fenris

19

What was she guilty of?

Neglect. She heard her daughter screaming for help. She heard her daughter in horrid torture…she did NOTHING.

20

I’m with Stoid here. I’m not convinced the mother was truly evil — I think horribly misguided, and too trusting of people who said they knew what they were doing is a better description.

There was a lot of coverage in the local papers here, as I live near Durham, NC, where Newmaker was from. An important piece of information that has been left out of a lot of the opinions I’ve been reading here is the fact that the mother was NOT in the room at the time Candace stopped breathing. (I would connect you to a cite on this, but the damned Raleigh News and Observer has started charging $1.95 to allow you to read an on-line article.) I can’t remember at what point she left the room, but it was well before the death scene. She was troubled by what was going on, and the “therapists” said it would be better if she left the room, which she did. She didn’t come back in until the “therapists” unwrapped the sheets and found a blue kid, and called her in to help, because she was a nurse (ironic, huh?)

I think it was tragic that she didn’t follow her instincts and just say “To hell with you people, this is just too much trauma for my child to be put through” and stop the proceedings when she was asked to leave the room. But evil? No. She wouldn’t have spent all the time and expense trying to find the therapy that would help the child cope better if she had been. She is the other victim of Ponder and Watkins, as she now has to live out her life knowing that she went in there with the best of intentions, but now has to share the blame for her adopted daughter’s death.