News Update - Wisc. mother knew her daughter was gravely ill

Here is an update on the trial of a Wisconsin mother who is charged with second-degree reckless homicide in the March 23, 2008, death of her daughter Madeline.

Madeline didn’t have to die. She was a victim of negligence based on the beliefs of her devoutly religious mother. A sister-in-law testified that Madeline’s mother did know how gravely ill her daughter was the day before she died, yet the mother chose to walk in circles around her bed while repeating magical incantations to a non-existent god.

“She was afraid,” the sister-in-law said. “She ran upstairs to Kara (Madeline’s nickname) and felt her and was relieved to feel warmth in her arm. Then she said they started praying and praying and praying and didn’t stop praying until supper time.”

Prosecutors contend any reasonable parent would have known something was wrong and Leilani Neumann, who believes healing comes from God, recklessly killed her daughter by praying instead of rushing her to a doctor as the girl became so weak she couldn’t walk or talk. The defense says the family hadn’t known the girl was dying.

How can you not know that your child is dying? It’s obvious, isn’t it? And it had to be obvious to the mother to make her pray so desperately.

Susan Neumann testified that she no longer had a relationship with her brother, Dale Neumann, who is Madeline’s father. She said she contacted police about two weeks after the girl’s death fearful for her brother’s other three children and worried that there could be “mass suicide” in the family.

Under cross-examination, the witness was asked whether God told her to go to the police.

She said she prayed about it but “felt in my heart” it was the right thing to do and maybe God answered her prayers.

The sis-in-law is as whacky as the mother is. They still don’t realize that their god IS NOT THERE (or even consider that if there was a god that he might WANT them to take Madeline TO A DOCTOR).

In addition, if this god didn’t come down to save Madeline, why the hell does this woman still think that God answered her prayer in going to the police? Apparently she is too deluded to ask herself why she didn’t “feel it in her heart” to call DCFS or other authorities BEFORE her niece died. This story really pisses me off because it’s the senseless death of a child.

And has this whole entire nightmare gotten through to the mother about the pointless non-power of prayer? Not at all . . .

Before testimony began Monday, Leilani Neumann read from her Bible and circled the defense and prosecution tables several times in prayer.