A teen commits suicide when miraculous healing fails

[barbrainey]

Ole Anthony is the founder and leader of a ministry that investigates and monitors "televangelists." Anthony is to be remembered as the one who exposed three Texas televangelists in 1991 on an ABC program, "Prime Time Live."

Anthony claims that once a 14-year-old girl suffering from multiple sclerosis pledged $1,000 to televangelist Robert Tilton so that she would be healed. According to Anthony, this girl had to get a job in order to earn the money so that she could fulfill her pledge. When she finally sent the money in, her healing did not take place. When she called Tilton's TV program's prayer line to find out why, she was told that maybe the failure of miraculous healing was due to some hidden sin in her life. The girl went out into her backyard and killed herself by dousing her body with gasoline and set herself on fire. She chose an agonizing way of commiting suicide.

Anthony can't or won't reveal the girl's identity. But where did he hear it?

The story is related here:

Anthony/Trinity

Barb Rainey

[Skeptic]

Very sad, and plausibly true.
I recommend everyone interested in this sort of thing to read The Faith Healers, an expose by James Randi.

[Floater]

Originally Posted by Skeptic

I recommend everyone interested in this sort of thing to read The Faith Healers, an expose by James Randi.

I can second that.

[Joostik]

she was told that maybe the failure of miraculous healing was due to some hidden sin in her life

While not knowing anything about this particular case, this is exactly the thing Faith or Alternative healers tend to say. If it didn't work , then obviously the patients sinned/had negative thoughts/lacked faith. It's their own fault!

I don't know how they get away with it.

[Ravenhull]

Originally Posted by Joostik

While not knowing anything about this particular case, this is exactly the thing Faith or Alternative healers tend to say. If it didn't work , then obviously the patients sinned/had negative thoughts/lacked faith. It's their own fault!

I don't know how they get away with it.

A combination of people don't want to think that the person they have had faith in is wrong, and a fair amount of Just World Fallacy (i.e. bad things just don't happen, you have to deserve it somehow).

[Not_Done_Living]

How these people can do what they are doing and not get charged with Fraud... i mean they shut down "fortune tellers" around here for that very reason.

[Ravenhull]

Originally Posted by Not_Done_Living

How these people can do what they are doing and not get charged with Fraud... i mean they shut down "fortune tellers" around here for that very reason.

I think that in many cases, law enforcement is either afraid to take on the big ones (directly, or politically), or even among the believers. That said, a number of them have been successfully convicted, though most times though showing clear cut fraud such as having a person faking an illness onstage and miraculously being healed and such.

[musicgeek]

I'm not defending faith healing, but I'm slightly amazed that on this board we seem so willing to take the O.P.'s story at face value without concrete information. It may have happened, or it may have been a horrific story concocted to help sway opinion. In other words, "Cite, please!"

[Ravenhull]

Originally Posted by musicgeek

I'm not defending faith healing, but I'm slightly amazed that on this board we seem so willing to take the O.P.'s story at face value without concrete information. It may have happened, or it may have been a horrific story concocted to help sway opinion. In other words, "Cite, please!"

Very good point.

[Joostik]

Originally Posted by musicgeek

on this board we seem so willing to take the O.P.'s story at face value without concrete information.

Who, on this board, did so? The consensus seems to be only that it's the thing faith healers tend to say. As for the purported suicide, that's just hard to verify.

[barbrainey]

As the author of the OP, I must state that I do not believe Ole Anthony's story about the girl.

One reason is that he says she went to work in order to live up to her pledge of $1,000, but she was only 14 years old! There aren't many jobs a 14-year-old can get that will pay that much. Most kids aren't allowed to work before they're 16 years old, except as newspaper deliverers, or in a grocery store doing baggings.

Another is the fact that she has MS. This means that she has extreme limitations when it comes to work. So even with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act, there's not much she can do in the work place.

Also, it seems unlikely that a kid of that age would choose setting herself on fire as a means of suicide. It is more likely that she would take an overdose of medication. It would be far less painful.

Finally, if this story was true, it would have been mentioned in the national and even the international news media.

It's more likely that someone made it up, using real-life cases for a composite account to win Anthony's sympathy.

Barb Rainey