Evolution Space

Another Faith-Based Human Tragedy Tuesday, July 10, 2007

This is a family murder tragedy that could have been avoided. But sadly it wasn’t, apparently because of blind beliefs in scientology.

A 25 year old Australian woman in Sydney has been accused with the murder of her father and sister whose bodies were found last Thursday. She is also charged with grievous body harm on her mother.

Investigations into this family tragedy have shown that the accused woman has been denied psychiatric treatment for about a year by her parents because of their scientology beliefs. From the news article it is quite clear that the woman has been very ill mentally, but the parents have denied her of psychiatric medication on scientology grounds, and so no effective treatment was done on her.

This really maddens me – lives are lost, souls are destroyed because of credulous minds believing in completely ignorance and utter stupidity. When are we going to make this aspect of scientology a crime? This, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses’ horrible religious doctrine of rejection of blood transfusion, must be made criminal offences so that lives can be saved. This is not about freedom of beliefs; it is about saving human lives!

While it is so unfortunate that the father and the sister died, I feel even more saddened for the woman, and cannot imagine how she will live the rest of her life knowing the family-destroying crime she inflicted upon her own family. What she said after the murder is truly haunting and painful to bear:

“What have I done? I just butchered my family … I have just butchered my family. I stabbed Dad, Mum and sister. They are all dead.”

And all this could have been avoided.