Emma Joyce was sick and vomiting for days until she stopped breathing in her parents’ arms, in a small gray farmhouse in rural Idaho.
asserted
she → vomit → Idaho
The following summer, Emma Joyce’s little sister got sick.
asserted
sister → get → ?
Ava Joan wouldn’t eat or drink anything but a few grapes and some Sprite in a sippy cup.
asserted
Joan → eat → cup
She was breathing hard and fast.
asserted
She → breathe → ?
And when she vomited, it came out black, the hallmark of internal bleeding.
asserted
it → vomit → bleeding
She died in her mother’s arms in July 2010 from a complication of untreated diabetes.
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She → die → diabetes
Less than two years later, the girls’ toddler brother died from the same complication of untreated diabetes that killed Ava Joan.
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that → die → Joan
And nine years after that, another sibling died: a 4-year-old boy who’d suffered for weeks with similar symptoms.
asserted
who → die → symptoms
The parents told officers that they hadn’t taken the four children who died to the doctor because of their religion, the Followers of Christ, which considers the use of modern medicine a sinful lapse of faith in God.
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use → tell → God
And Idaho exempts parents from faith-healing sects like the Followers from the legal duty to give their children lifesaving medical care.
asserted
Idaho → exempt → care
The sect had at least 15 avoidable deaths among children from 2015 through 2025, according to healthcare professionals who reviewed their records for ProPublica.
uncertain
who → have → ProPublica
Among them were children in five families, including Emma Joyce’s, who had a combined total of two, three or four losses in this period or earlier.
asserted
who → include → period
Most of the siblings died of similar ailments, following similar patterns, that experts said could have been resolved with interventions as simple as insulin, antibiotics or a supply of oxygen.
uncertain
experts → die → oxygen
Experts were uncertain on only two of the sibling deaths, saying the death records lacked enough information to determine if the children’s lives could have been saved.
uncertain
lives → say → information
Idaho’s child abuse laws contain such broad religious exemptions that authorities did not intervene — either before or after the deaths.
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authorities → contain → deaths
The exemptions don’t just shield faith-healing parents from criminal prosecution for conduct that otherwise would be charged as neglect.
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that → shield → neglect
They also keep police and social workers from stepping in to protect a dead child’s surviving siblings from suffering a similar fate, no matter how many of them die.
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many → keep → them
It is a sharp contrast to neighboring Oregon, which in 1999 began to roll back its own exemptions.
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which → neighbor → exemptions
Not only did the possibility of prosecution in Oregon prove a powerful incentive for parents to seek medical care when their child’s life was at risk, the change in law also gave the state legal leverage to order medical care for surviving and future children — which happened in one Oregon case, days before Emma Joyce died in Idaho.
asserted
Joyce → prove → Idaho
According to backers of Oregon’s law, the goal isn’t to punish parents for allowing the avoidable death of a child; the goal is to prevent more deaths.
“If you don’t do anything, kids are going to die,” said John Foote, a former district attorney in Oregon who prosecuted several parents in his local Followers of Christ congregation after their children died from treatable ailments.
uncertain
children → accord → ailments
Keeping more children from dying is “the whole point,” he said.
asserted
he → keep → children
The graves of Emma Joyce and her sister and brothers are clustered near one another at Peaceful Valley Cemetery, a hilltop graveyard that belongs to the Followers of Christ, a faith-healing sect with at least four churches in Idaho.
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that → cluster → Idaho
All four children’s headstones are made from the same light gray stone, bear the words “beloved daughter” or “beloved son” in the same font and design, and have their mother’s and father’s names etched into the back.
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names → make → back
Throughout the cemetery are more of the same: siblings buried in child-sized plots with matching headstones.
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more → bury → headstones
In addition to the plots belonging to Emma Joyce’s family, there are two newborn siblings who died from treatable birth complications, four infant siblings who died from various causes, and three brothers whose death records prompted doctors to speculate that an immune deficiency ran in the family.
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deficiency → belong → family
Two babies in a single Followers family succumbed to meconium aspiration, despite how rare it is for a newborn to inhale the tarry stool known as meconium and then die from it.
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newborn → succumb → it
A study of more than 160,000 full-term births found less than 2% of newborns had meconium aspiration syndrome, and only 1.2% of those died, because healthcare providers know how to manage and treat it.
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providers → find → it
When a child dies unexpectedly in Idaho or elsewhere in the U.S., it almost always triggers close scrutiny from police and social workers.
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it → die → police
That investigation might find the parents committed a crime, such as beating or starving them, but it can also identify other risks to surviving siblings, such as a health condition that would otherwise go unnoticed — something that doctors who reviewed records for ProPublica suspected in several deaths within faith-healing families.
uncertain
who → find → families
Surviving siblings aren’t automatically shunted into foster care in such cases, but social workers do visit the home and lay eyes on the children to make sure they are safe and healthy.
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are → survive → children
If they’re not, prosecutors can seek a court order for medical care or other needs.
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prosecutors → ’re → care
A parent whose substantiated abuse or neglect leads to a death is permanently registered as high risk in child protection records.
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abuse → lead → records
Earlier this year, in response to the death of a newborn whose parents were flagged as high risk, Idaho lawmakers passed Benji’s Law.
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lawmakers → flag → Law
When such a parent has a new baby, the state now must do an expedited safety check to make sure the new baby isn’t in danger.
asserted
baby → have → danger
Surviving children may be temporarily removed from their parents’ custody.
uncertain
children → survive → custody
Idaho authorities in 2024, for example, took in eight children after the death of a medically fragile teenage boy in a home where police said they found “deplorable, unsafe” living conditions.
asserted
they → take → conditions
Idaho also took a newborn from a mother’s custody this year when the mother was indicted in the deaths of her twin toddlers; she pleaded not guilty to murder charges and is scheduled to go to trial in January.
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she → take → January
But it’s a different story when Idaho police or social workers find that the child’s death was a consequence of choosing faith over medicine.
asserted
death → ’ → medicine
According to Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue, the law’s exclusion of faith-healing practice from the definition of “neglect” means child protection laws for neglect don’t apply, so unless there is evidence of a crime, his deputies can’t take action and don’t notify child welfare agencies.
uncertain
deputies → accord → agencies
A deputy attorney general said something similar in 2016, when she testified before a Children at Risk-Faith Healing legislative work group.
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she → say → group
…and 29 more, not listed.
The Aporia
