(PA)Children have died from Lebanon's Faith Tabernacle for 100 years

http://www.ldnews.com/story/news/local/2017/03/10/ldn-investigates-children-have-died-lebanons-faith-tabernacle-100-years/98858590/
'IN 1924, LEBANON QUARANTINED CHURCH MEMBERS AFTER A FATAL DIPHTHERIA OUTBREAK. NOW, ITS PASTOR IS CHARGED IN A TODDLER'S DEATH.

Members of Lebanon’s Faith Tabernacle have been living by their beliefs – and dying by them – for nearly 100 years.

Yet the socially isolated community some describe as a cult has hidden in plain sight for most of that time in an unobtrusive, pink building at 414 N. Ninth St. – until the recent death of a 2-year-old girl brought the church and its refusal to use modern medicine into an unwanted spotlight.

Last week, in a move described as unprecedented, Berks County also charged the church’s pastor – 71-year-old Lebanon resident Rowland Foster – with failure to report child abuse to authorities, a third-degree felony.

Pastor Rowland is also Ella's grandfather.
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Ada Roth's family was particularly ravaged: five immediate family members fell victim to the serious but usually treatable bacterial infection.

“I would rather have my children and myself dead and on our way to Heaven than to be saved by medicine and go to Hell,” Roth said, as reported by Time Magazine, which picked up the story.
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Even as a child, Zehring didn’t understand why church members discouraged her from asking questions about how God was great, yet family members weren’t healed. Her father and four siblings died prematurely.
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Although church members live and work in their communities, they generally won’t associate with or let their children play with other members in the community, Zehring said.

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the 2007 book “When Prayer Fails,” author Shawn Francis Peters chronicles six cases from Philadelphia to Altoona in which either forced medicine was performed on a child or legal authorities considered charging the parents in the child’s death. In several cases, convictions were attained and upheld despite concerns regarding religious liberty.

One aspect of the legal fallout from Ella Foster’s death may be unique, however: the decision by Berks County prosecutors to file charges against the church pastor for failure to report known child abuse.

While Pennsylvania recently bolstered its child abuse protection laws in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal, ministers have been mandated reporters since 1975, said Angela Little, executive director of the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance. Penalties for failure to report were increased in the post-Sandusky package of laws.

“Of course, we want to be respectful of people and their faith, but that in no way should take precedence over whether a child has a right to live or die,” Little said.