The Christian parents of a 10-month-old girl who died of malnutrition and dehydration have been charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse.
Seth Welch and Tatiana Fusari, both 27, allegedly refused to get their little girl, Mary, medical help for religious reasons. The couple were charged on Monday for the death of their daughter.
The Kent County sheriff’s office said Welch called 911 last week and deputies found the child not breathing inside a home in Solon Township, north of Grand Rapids in Michigan, USA.
One of the first responders noted the child’s sunken eyes and cheeks, and lack of pulse. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
An autopsy on Friday ruled the cause of death as malnutrition and dehydration due to neglect by adult caregivers.
The couple admitted their daughter had been skinny and underweight for at least a month. They didn’t seek medical help for religious reasons, fear of having Child Protective Services called and a lack of trust in medical services, according to records.
Welch and Fusari have two older children together, ages two and four. Child Protective Services filed on Monday a neglect case against the parents involving their two eldest children.
Mr Welch, who often uses his Facebook page to preach his Christian beliefs, also posted about Child Protective Services and a distrust of doctors, WOOD-TV reported.
On doctors, he said: “They’re priesthoods of the medical cult.”
On vaccines: “The righteous shall live by faith. It’s God who is sovereign over disease and those sorts of things and, of course, ultimately deaths.”
He said someone called CPS about him when he at first refused to get his oldest daughter vaccinated, and that he didn’t get his other two kids, including Mary, vaccinated.
“It didn’t seem smart that you would be saving people who weren’t the fittest,” he said in one video. “If evolution believes in survival of the fittest, why are we vaccinating everybody? Shouldn’t we just let the weak die off and let the strong.”
The couple could face life in prison without parole, if convicted of felony murder
