A judge praised a young mother for great strides in her treatment after she starved her 1-year-old son to death while part of the 1 Mind Ministries religious cult. The leader of a religious cult was “outraged” when a 1-year-old boy did not say “Amen” before a meal and ordered her followers to deprive him of food and water until he died, a Baltimore prosecutor told jurors Monday. A woman who pleaded guilty to starving her toddler son to death while part of a religious cult will be released from the Baltimore jail within a matter of weeks or even days, her attorney said Tuesday. A former religious cult member who helped starve her son to death believes he will be resurrected, but legal experts say her extreme faith doesn’t make her criminally insane. Accepting a plea bargain that her attorney described as unprecedented in American jurisprudence, a 22-year-old Maryland woman yesterday agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of other defendants in the death of her son under the condition that charges against her be dropped if the child rises from the dead.
Two women were ordered held without bail yesterday on charges that they participated in the starvation death of a child whom they considered a “demon” because he wouldn’t say amen after his meals, according to police charging documents.
From the moment that Ria Ramkissoon and her baby boy Javon joined the tiny religious cult, 1 Mind Ministries, in April 2006, her life would change irrevocably.
Court documents say cult members starved the toddler to death and kept his remains in a suitcase for more than a year, until Baltimore homicide detectives found the body in Philadelphia.