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Others faced charges

MEMBERS of Faith Tabernacle Congregation, who live an otherwise modern middle-class life, anoint their relatives with oil and pray
when they get sick. Only God, they say, can heal. Physicians and medicine are forbidden.

The argument triggers a classic tug of war between church and state.

At the heart is whether parents have the right to make their children live by their religious beliefs even if it means death.

In the last 10 years, several members of Faith Tabernacle Congregation have faced criminal charges when their children died or
became gravely ill.

. Dean and Susan Heilman, of Lawndale, were sentenced to 17 years' probation in 1999 for death of their 22-month-old son, a
hemophiliac who bled to death about 24 hours after cutting himself on a piece of glass in their back yard in July 1997.

. Daniel and Anne Marie Foster, of Tacony, were sentenced in 1998 to 14 years' probation for failing to seek medical care for their
2-year-old son who had cancer. The boy was hours from death when police and social workers took him from his home to a hospital. He
responded to court-ordered treatment and survived.

. And in 1997, Lorie and Dennis Nixon, of Altoona, Pa., were convicted of manslaughter after their 16-year-old daughter died of
complications from diabetes. Six years earlier, the couple were sentenced to probation after their 8-year-old son died from an ear
infection.

The largest rash of deaths came during a measles epidemic in 1991. Six children of sect members died. The oldest was 14, the
youngest 19 months.