Witness: Children of vegan couple seemed healthy before baby’s death

MIAMI — The children of a vegan couple appeared bright-eyed and healthy to a case worker who investigated claims of child neglect at the family’s home in 2002.

Child protection investigator Rose Lesniak told a Miami jury that she visited the home of Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn three times in 2002 to look into reports that the couple was not feeding their children properly and each time left with the same impression.

“I didn’t see any risk factors,” Lesniak testified Tuesday in the couple’s trial. “There were no hazardous signals and there was always food in the home.”

As the first witness for the Andressohns’ defense, Lesniak testified that the children appeared happy, healthy and alert each time she visited them, leading her to believe that the complaints of a family friend were unfounded.

“I believed they were being harassed,” she said.

Lesniak acknowledged, however, that her visits occurred before the birth of the Andressohns’ fifth child, daughter Woyah, who died in May 2003 at 6 months of accidental malnourishment, according to a medical examiner who also testified Tuesday.

The child weighed less than seven pounds, which is less than half the average weight for a baby her age, and was 22 inches length, or five inches shorter than on average, according to testimony.

“She had almost no fat on her whatsoever,” Broward County Medical Examiner Reinhard Motte testified, as he held up startling autopsy pictures of the emaciated infant. “The skin hangs from her bones because there was no muscle or tissue for it to hold onto.”

Reinhard dismissed implications from the defense that she died from unrelated causes such as acid reflux or DiGeorge syndrome, an abnormality that weakens the immune system.

“People with partial DiGeorge syndrome don’t wither away and die like this,” he testified.

Jurors also heard from the Andressohn family friend who lodged the complaints with the Department of Children and Family Services.

Cassandra Butler, a pediatric nurse practitioner, testified that she met the couple in 1995, after they were married and when Lamoy was pregnant with their first son, Yahshawah.

At the time, Butler testified, the couple was exploring the “living foods lifestyle.” She said she attempted to warn them of the disadvantages of only eating raw foods and refusing to bring the children to doctors, but that it was like “talking to a wall.”

“They believed that through the foods they ate they would receive protection from certain diseases,” Butler said in the trial’s first glimpse into the couple’s philosophy. “If they ate raw foods that still had life in them, it would get utilized by the body.”

Butler also related an incident in which Joseph Andressohn climbed a tree on her neighbor’s property and picked four coconuts, which he carved up to feed to his children on the sidewalk.

The Andressohns face up to 50 years in prison on aggravated manslaughter and four neglect charges relating to her surviving siblings.

The defense will continue its case Wednesday.

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