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Attleboro, Massachusetts, a city of 42,000 on the border with Rhode Island, is witnessing a troubling clash between the rights of parents and the responsibility of the state to protect children.

The parents of newborn Jeremiah Corneau and 11-month-old Samuel Robidoux are accused of allowing them to die. The two sets of parents say the boys died in accordance with God's will. State prosecutors charge that the parents, not God, are responsible. Samuel's parents, Jacques and Karen Robidoux, face a murder trial that starts this month.

Jeremiah's parents, Rebecca and David Corneau, have not been charged with a crime. The state has, however, taken their other four children into protective custody. In addition, a juvenile court judge in February ordered the Corneaus jailed for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of a baby officials believe was born in late 2001. The Corneaus say Rebecca had a miscarriage but refuse to disclose the location of the child's body. State officials suspect that the child is alive and being hidden by family members.

Both families belong to The Body, a small, insular sect whose members embrace faith healing and reject modern medicine. Members believe they receive direct revelations from God. Sect founders Roland Robidoux and Roger Daneau were members of an Attleboro Bible study that evolved into a group of about 20 adult members at its peak in the 1980s. Most members come from their two families. Daneau, 62, was found dead March 7 of an apparent heart attack at the sect's communal home.

The case has raised important legal questions about state intervention in the lives of fervently religious families. Constitutional scholar Stephen L. Carter of Yale Law School believes that while parents should have wide latitude in raising their children, the state must set some limits.

"Although I am a strong advocate of respecting parental authority in creating even a very insular religious and moral world for their children, I also believe that a civilized society must place some limits," Carter told CT. "The law generally places the limit at the well-being of the child."

Body member Michelle Mingo believed she received a revelation from God about Karen Robidoux in early 1999. According to journals the group kept, God was angry with Karen for being "vain." As a penance, she was to drink a gallon of high-fat almond milk. She was also to stop giving solid foods to her 10-month-old son, Samuel, who was still nursing.

It soon became apparent that Samuel was not getting enough nourishment, and he slowly lost weight during the next six weeks. When Karen, then 23, began to ask questions, members told her that Satan was tempting her to doubt.

According to one journal entry, God asks Karen: "When are you going to believe me? It would please me if you took Samuel and left him in the palm of my hand. Fear not and believe. I don't care about Samuel. I don't care about the flesh. I don't care about Samuel right now. I'm working with you to believe without doubt."

Samuel died a few days before his first birthday in April 1999.

"When you have someone who is perceived to have a direct connection to God—and no checks and balances, no accountability—then anything goes," says Robert Pardon, executive director of the New England Institute of Religious Research (NEIRR) in Lakeville, Massachusetts. "It's only by the grace of God that more children did not die."

Jeremiah Corneau died during childbirth later in 1999. While his parents say Jeremiah was stillborn, state officials believe he was born alive but quickly asphyxiated. Authorities believe Jeremiah would have survived if he had been born in a hospital. Roland and the other men from the sect buried the bodies of both children in Maine's Baxter State Park in late September.

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May 21 2002, Vol. 46, No. 6