Caseworker: Teen seemed to have a cold

OREGON CITY, Ore, - Just weeks before a 16-year-old Oregon City boy died, a child welfare worker met with him twice but didn’t step in to get Neil Beagley a doctor because “he appeared to be sick with a common cold,” the caseworker said Tuesday in the faith-healing trial of Marci and Jeff Beagley.
 
The Beagleys are members of the Followers of Christ Church which believes in faith healing over traditional medicine, and the Beagleys are accused of criminal negligence in Neil’s death from renal failure in June 2008.

The Department of Human Services received two anonymous tips that Neil Beagley, or his 14-year-old sister, were ill and not getting medical treatment.

Jeff Lewis, a child welfare caseworker for DHS, met with Neil and his parents in early April of 2008.

“I sit down with Neil,” Lewis testified in court. “I’m on a bed and he’s in a rocking chair. He’s got a blanket over his lap. I notice the heat is on very high in the bedroom. Neil states that he’s been sick for the past week and a half. He states he’s feeling better now.”

The first time Lewis checked on the Beagleys’ children was in March, just days after the Beagleys’ granddaughter, Ava Worthington, died from what the medical examiner said was a treatable condition.

An anonymous caller said the Beagleys’ daughter was suffering from kidney infections but in both meetings with the Beagleys, Lewis said he found nothing out of the ordinary and no major health concerns.

Lewis said Neil told him he didn’t want to see a doctor and the Beagleys felt they were being unfairly targeted and hired a lawyer.

“He (Jeff Beagley) expressed concern that this kind of harassment by the reporting party will continue every time their children get sick,” Lewis said.

What is disputed in the case is whether Lewis also told the Beagleys that Neil was legally responsible for his own medical decisions.

“And I had stated that it would be an interesting court hearing because Neil doesn’t want to go to the doctor, and that at his age he has a say-so in whether or not he wants to go to the doctor,” Lewis said.

Also Tuesday, a doctor for the defense testified that Neil could have lived his entire 16 years without any recognizable outward symptoms.

Pediatric urologist Dr. David Vandersteen testified that the vast majority of children with the condition Neil suffered from are diagnosed during childhood through routine examines but there are cases that go undetected.

Vandersteen, who was brought all the way from Minnesota, said Neil had trouble breathing, walking, and was vomiting in the week before he died, which he said are the same problems a person can have with the flu.

He said he saw no outward evidence in the autopsy that Neil was in danger of imminent death.

Also, defense attorneys unsuccessfully tried to convince the judge to block the doctor from addressing whether the Followers of Christ Church and it members’ practice of shunning doctors in favor of faith healing could have resulted in Neil’s condition not being detected.

“Today we’re dealing with a surgeon. He’s a plumber, as he describes himself. How on earth can a surgeon offer an opinion on religious beliefs?” said Wayne Mackeson, Jeff Beagley’s attorney.

“No one is trying to put the church’s beliefs as the central piece of this case, but it has a role,” said Judge Steven Maurer.