http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamasc...ley_emerg.html
Article (January 30,2010):
OREGON CITY -- Neil Jeffrey Beagley hated going to school, but the 16-year-old loved working on a 1973 Camaro he found on Ebay and working with his father on welding and construction projects.
As testimony wore on for two weeks, a picture of the boy at the heart of the Clackamas County faith-healing case now in jurors' hands slowly emerged. When Jeffrey and Marci Beagley took the stand, memories of their son made them both laugh and cry.
They shared stories of an active, independent boy, and described how they used faith healing to treat him for what turned out to be a fatal condition.
The Beagleys, members of Oregon City's Followers of Christ church, were charged with criminally negligent homicide for failing to seek medical care. Neil died June 17, 2008, of complications from an undiagnosed and untreated urinary tract blockage.
Oregon law once permitted parents to avoid homicide charges if they relied solely on spiritual treatment and their child died. That changed in 1999, largely because of the Followers' long history of children dying from untreated medical conditions.
Despite the high-profile trial over his death, very little was known about Neil Beagley before his parents' testimony. He didn't attend public school past the third grade and associated mainly with family and church members.
After more than a week of testimony filled with medical jargon and statements from police interviews after his death, jurors finally saw pictures of Neil Thursday morning in a slideshow presented by defense attorney Steve Lindsey, who represents Marci Beagley.
On two courtroom television screens, a clean-cut 14-year-old Neil grinned as he struck a pose in a dark suit and striped tie. One video showed a wide-eyed toddler ripping open a present half his size. In the background, Marci Beagley asks if he's happy. "Yes," he says, before he puts on a tiny, yellow hard hat and revs his new toy chainsaw.
On the stand, the Beagleys offered stories of a son who once proclaimed that he didn't need to go to elementary school because he already knew everything. As a child, he drew up a loan contract for his sister, stipulating that she had to clean his room once a week. He picked up welding quickly and helped out with his father's toilet business, one that might have been passed on to him.
There were brief glimpses of a boy who was said to be the "crown prince" of his family, which included his parents; two older sisters, Raylene Worthington and Nicole Sayre; and a younger sister, Kathryn.
Most of his relatives resided in the Oregon City and Gladstone area, and he saw relatives often. The death of Raylene Worthington's daughter, Ava, in February of 2008, hit Neil Beagley hard, his parents testified.
Worthington and her husband, Carl Brent Worthington, were tried in Ava's death on charges of criminal mistreatment and second-degree manslaughter.
Raylene Worthington was acquitted. Carl Worthington was convicted of criminal mistreatment and sentenced to two months in jail.
In the months following Ava's death, Neil was quiet, Jeffrey Beagley said. His mother said he had an upset stomach and wanted to spend more time with his father, with whom he had always had a close bond.
"Anything Jeff would do, Neil would tag along," Marci Beagley testified. "He was always happiest when he was with his dad."
It was a bond that prosecutors would later bring up in their own case against the parents. Neil's respect for his father, who never visited a medical doctor unless it was required for work and who once told detectives that seeking medical care showed a "lack of faith," likely influenced Neil's purported preference not visit a doctor in his last days, prosecutors said.
Alongside the picture of Neil's close-knit family that was portrayed on the stand, prosecutors saw another --
one of a family that only socialized with other church members in an insular community that numbered about 1,000.
Neil's older sisters went to public schools until high school,
but Neil became homeschooled after the third grade. Though he attended classes through an elementary school program for homeschooled children at Oregon City's Eastham School, he didn't participate in extracurricular activities run by anyone outside the church.
Neil eventually became a relatively small – he stood at about five feet, five inches and weighed about 121 pounds – but headstrong teenager, who took up the hobbies that his father loved, like fixing up cars. He balanced his own checkbook and went out with friends when he got his driver's license.
His parents also described a boy who was close to his faith and had his own Bible. Marci Beagley could not think of a time when his faith had not been a part of his life, she testified.
As Neil lay in the bed before his death in June, he asked that family members come for a laying on of hands, his mother testified. They asked him if he wanted medical care, but she said he declined.
According to police interviews conducted just hours after Neil's death, the Beagleys took stock in what their independent, headstrong boy said to the moment he stopped breathing.
"I wanted to honor his wishes," Marci Beagley told a detective.
-- Nicole Dungca
on a more comical note but yes their are those that are like that.
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