Investigators believe the family of a newborn who died Monday afternoon in unincorporated Clackamas County may be associated with Followers of Christ, an Oregon City faith-healing church that has been linked to five criminal cases following a child’s death.
Clackamas County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a death investigation involving the newborn on South Maywood Street about 3:30 p.m. Monday, according to the sheriff’s office.
“This is still an open investigation, so there’s no further information we can release at this time,” said sheriff’s office spokesperson Brian McCall.
A man who opened the door of the Maywood Street home where sheriff’s deputies were seen Monday night declined to speak with a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Mark Snyder, 63, who has lived on Maywood Street for four years, said he counted about 75 cars, including two Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office vehicles, parked along his block and nearby Forest Ridge Road while walking his dog Monday afternoon.
When he asked a man what was going on about 7 p.m., Snyder said the man told him, ‘We’re not at liberty to say, but everybody is safe.’”
Maywood Street has been frequented by visitors since Monday, including about 25 cars parked on the road Wednesday, he said.
Snyder said he noticed his neighbor’s wife appeared pregnant when he saw her crossing the street last week to see her parents, who live directly across from her and her husband’s house on Maywood Street, he said.
A neighbor told him several years ago that the couple belongs to the Followers of Christ Church.
It’s not clear how the baby died.
Another couple belonging to the church was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison in July 2018 after their newborn daughter, Gennifer, died hours after a home birth attended by dozens of fellow church members.
Gennifer’s mother, Sarah Elaine Mitchell, and father, Travis Lee Mitchell, pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and criminal mistreatment. None of the midwives or family and church members who witnessed the birth called 911, according to the sheriff’s office. The agency said a church elder contacted the county medical examiner’s office to report the death.
The couple’s imprisonment marked the fifth criminal case within nine years in Clackamas County after a child’s death in the Followers of Christ community but the first to end in a plea deal.
Four other couples belonging to the Followers of Christ Church – including Sarah Mitchell’s sister and brother-in-law – were held criminally responsible for failing to provide medical care for their children, including a newborn, a 15-month-old and a 15-year-old boy who died between 2008 and 2009. Child protection authorities took another infant girl from her parents’ custody in 2011 after she developed an abnormal mass of blood vessels that engulfed her left eye.
The church doesn’t have formal leadership and isn’t connected to any mainstream denomination, according to a 2009 report by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Its origins are in the late 19th century’s faith-healing Pentecostal movement, according to the report.
— Catalina Gaitán, cgaitan@oregonian.com, @catalingaitan_
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