Tag: Alayna Wyland

The couple facing criminal charges for failing to provide adequate medical care to their infant daughter will be allowed extended visits at least five days a week with their child, who will remain in temporary state custody.

The Wylands are one of four couples from the same Oregon City congregation to be charged with failing to provide medical care to their child in a little more than a year. Members of the Followers of Christ Church rely on faith-healing rather than most forms of medical treatment.

Two members of an Oregon City faith-healing church were charged Thursday with first-degree criminal mistreatment for failing to provide medical care for their infant daughter.

Child-protection authorities took custody of the couple’s 7-month-old daughter, Alayna, after she developed a growth over her left eye that ballooned over several months to the size of a tennis ball and threatens her vision.

A judge Wednesday refused to return a 7-month-old girl to her parents, members of an Oregon City church that embraces faith healing, after hearing testimony that the child could lose vision in one eye because she didn’t get medical care.

The Wylands belong to the Followers of Christ church, which rejects secular medicine and relies on faith-healing rituals — laying on of hands, anointing with oil, prayer and fasting — to treat illnesses. The state medical examiner’s office has reported that during the past 30 years more than 20 children of church members have died of preventable or curable illnesses.

A judge has ruled that a couple who belong to a church that embraces faith healing must surrender their child for failing to provide medical care.

Over the past 30 years, more than 20 children of Followers of Christ church members in have died of preventable or curable illnesses.

The current case is unusual because the authorities intervened before a child died.