Tamara Lovett has been found guilty in the death of her son and will be sentenced June 19.
The Calgary mother treated her seven year old son Ryan with herbal remedies and refused to take him to the doctor.
He died in 2013 after getting an infection.
A Calgary judge found 48 year old Lovett guilty of failing to provide the necessaries of life and negligence causing death because a reasonable caretaker would've gotten Ryan medical help sooner in light of symptoms.
Ryan was bedridden for 10 days before he died.
Doctors say he was suffering from meningitis and strep.
“The crown's argument at trial and the judge's finding was that Ryan Lovett was so seriously sick that any reasonable parent would have obtained medical attention for him,” says Crown Counsel Johnathan Hak. “The court specifically found that Tamara Lovett actually knew how sick he was and simply refused to do so and therefore gambled with his life.”
The defence argued Lovett was a devoted mother and she would have seen a doctor and given her son the antibiotics medical experts testified would have saved his life if she had known how serious his illness was.
“It’s very disappointing for Tamara,” says Defence Counsel Alain Hepner. “She lost her son and now she’s reliving the event in terms of the charges being laid. We have to deal with the sentencing issue and then we’ll keep evaluating as we go on.”
With four other cases of child neglect relating to naturopathy, parents should be aware their personal beliefs can’t inhibit their child’s health.
“Children are not property of their parents,” says Juliet Guichon, assistant professor at the University of Calgary’s Cummings School of Medicine. “Children are in a trust relationship in respect to their parents. Their parents have a duty, a high duty to care for their children and help them grow up and to have adult lives of their own.”
Lovett will now undergo a psychological assessment to help determine an appropriate sentence and the crown says it will seek a prison term.
She will remain out on bail.
