Two women pleaded not guilty to charges of child endangerment a week after an 8-year-old was found dead in their apartment from severe malnutrition and an untreated broken leg and her injured and emaciated siblings were removed alive.

The women, who were both born in Haiti but came to the U.S. at a young age, radically altered their lifestyles about two years ago when they came under the sway of a man they described as their religious leader, according to friends and acquaintances.

 

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Family members of a faith-healing couple accused of neglecting their baby girl's medical needs defended them in court Thursday.

The Wylands are charged with first-degree criminal mistreatment for failing to provide medical care to Alayna, now 17 months old. State child-welfare workers took custody of the girl in July to treat the growth, called a hemangioma, that covered her left eye and spread into her eye socket. Doctors testified that the expanding mass was threatening her eyesight.

 

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Five years after it abolished Hinduism as the state religion, Nepal is working on a new criminal code forbidding a person from one faith to "convert a person or abet him to change his religion."

Article 160 of the proposed code also says no one will be allowed to do anything or behave in any way that could cause a person from a caste, community or creed to lose faith in his/her traditional religion or convert to a different religion. The proposal would also prohibit conversion "by offering inducements or without inducement," and preaching "a different religion or faith with any other intent."

 

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Two former members of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries have been awarded $33 million each after they sued Alamo for ordering them to be beaten.

The two men testified that evangelist Tony Alamo ordered his enforcer, John Kolbek, to beat them.

 

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Convicting a Christian convert for insulting the prophet of Islam, a judge in Algeria last week stunned the Christian community by sentencing him beyond what a prosecutor recommended.

In Oran, 470 kilometers (292 miles) west of Algiers, a criminal court in the city's Djamel district on Wednesday (May 25) sentenced Siaghi Krimo to a prison term of five years for giving a CD about Christianity to a neighbor who subsequently claimed he had insulted Muhammad. Krimo was also fined 200,000 Algerian dinars (US$2,760), according to Algerian news reports.

 

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As the trial of two cult members accused of medical neglect of their daughter continues, a doctor testified the girl has permanent developmental damage to her eye and may require surgery.

Defense attorneys in turn argued that the parents are the victims of both religious discrimination and an overly aggressive bureaucracy that snatched heir daughter.

The Followers of Christ Church has left a trail of dead children in its wake.

 

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