Diana Wichtel: A monstrous, lethal arrogance

When it comes to depressing idiocy, nothing that happened so far this year - or most other years - can beat the Moorhead case. This couple from Dargaville used fanatical religious belief as an excuse to allow their 6-month-old baby to die a horrible, but apparently spiritually correct, death.

Everyone knows the story by now. Caleb died of pneumonia. His weight was that of a 6-week-old baby and he was brain-damaged from a severe vitamin B12 deficiency. His vegan parents, followers of some lunatic fringe of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, treated him with cayenne pepper and put garlic in his booties instead of taking the simple medical advice that would have saved his life.

What Caleb really died of was a severe intelligence deficiency in those he looked to for care. It's easy to say what should have happened. Neighbours and family should have turned the Moorheads in to the appropriate authorities.

The staff at Starship should have caught the parents in a flying tackle as they did a runner on the one occasion when they put their baby's needs first and fronted up.

No beliefs, religious or other, should be tolerated if they deny any child adequate medical care.

But in the face of deliberate, determined ignorance of this calibre, there's no guarantee anything could have been done. We're dealing here with superstitious thinking that predates laws, medicine and basic common sense. To ensure their spiritual purity, these parents were willing to sacrifice their child.

Surely this was a bizarre and isolated case, I thought. Then I went on the internet. You could be there for days, weeping over stories of innocent children dying agonising and pointless deaths while their parents prayed (www.childrenshealthcare.org is a harrowing place to start).

Then I tuned in to talkback. Host Michael Laws said all the right things about the Moorhead case, as did some callers, but soon the fruit loops were phoning in. Here are the reasons some talkback Einsteins gave to justify the killing of Caleb Moorhead:

His parents believed they were doing the right thing; Deborah Moorhead allegedly had a bad experience with doctors as a teenager; the medical profession can be arrogant; religious beliefs must be respected; parents should have total rights when it comes to their children; because the Moorheads made a mistake and would have to live with it for the rest of their lives.

Dear, oh dear. Hitler believed he was doing the right thing, too. So did Osama bin Laden.

As for living with their mistakes, the Moorheads have both said that, even with the benefit of hindsight, they would have done nothing different.

This case isn't about religious choice. Caleb had no choice. It's about using religion to justify monstrous, lethal arrogance. Religion is about serving God. This is about trying to be God. The Moorheads used religion as an excuse to place themselves above the laws and conventions that allow people to live together in a civilised society. It's the sort of thinking that has led to most of the bad things done in the name of beliefs.

It all, as Justice Rhys Harrison was to say at the Moorheads' sentencing, "defies rational belief". I went along in the hope of understanding how such a thing could happen in the 21st century and came away no wiser, if a lot sadder.

Justice Harrison, measured but clearly furious, gave an excoriating summing up of the evidence. He quoted from Deborah Moorhead's own notes on her baby's condition in Caleb's ironically titled Well Baby book: "No one home"; "Not so smiley"; "No smiles"; "Not wanting to be held even". These are the details that break your heart. It was a portrait of a little boy who had lost all hope.

Caleb's parents put "uncompromising, dogmatic self-belief" before their baby, fumed the judge. It was, he said, quoting a witness for the prosecution, "so stupid".

The prosecution asked for a sentence of three to five years in prison. Justice Harrison gave them five and it's hard to argue with that, although you can't help but wonder whether a psychiatric institution might be more to the point.

Seated beside me in the public gallery were Herman and Tilda Jongkind, friends of the Moorheads, who featured on TV One's Sunday programme about the case. They were in court themselves last year for failing to provide the necessaries of life when their toddler developed meningitis. They didn't like antibiotics. They were waiting for a sign from God. God took his time. They eventually took the poor little guy to hospital. After having pus drained from his brain, he survived.

The Jongkinds told Sunday that they believed God sent the near-fatal complications to their son to teach them not to be so extreme. Herman said it was a "possibility" that the Moorheads made a mistake, but they thought they were doing the best for their child. Sigh.

Throughout the sentencing hearing, the Jongkinds seemed, at times, to be praying. You can only hope they were praying for Caleb and not for the Moorheads or other parents who see the needless suffering and/or death of their child as just another investment in their own personal and spiritual growth.

At the sentencing hearing the Moorheads said nothing in their own defence and again expressed no remorse. It came as little surprise to hear that Deborah Moorhead is nearly six months pregnant with the couple's next little hostage to spiritual purity. All, no doubt, to the greater glory of her cruel and primitive god.