HER DYING PRAYERS

By WILLIAM DOWELL/ALTOONA

The Nixons of Altoona, Pennsylvania, appeared to be ideal citizens. Dennis Nixon, 41, is a successful businessman known for his generosity and consideration. His wife Lorie, 45, is a devoted mother. Their two-story brick home is comfortably middle class and better maintained than most of the other houses on the street. In the backyard are bright-colored swings and slides for their numerous children. The neighbors point out that the Nixon kids always wear safety helmets when they ride by on their new bicycles. And Dennis and Lorie Nixon pray for their kids. They pray all the time.

But even with all their prayers, the Nixons have lost two children in a way that has set the town on edge and led to disastrous encounters with the law. In 1991 their eight-year-old son Clayton died as the result of an ear infection treated only by prayer. The Nixons pleaded no contest to charges of involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child, and they were put on probation. Last week the Nixons were found guilty of the same charges in the death of their 16-year-old daughter Shannon, who fell into a diabetic coma after four days of dehydration and nausea, dying on June 21, 1995. The Nixons, members of a tiny sect called the Faith Tabernacle Congregation, had refused to call a doctor on both occasions, convinced that all disease comes from the devil and that only God can cure illness. Charles Nixon, the dead children's grandfather and the pastor of Altoona's 140-member Faith Tabernacle congregation, clarified the sect's tenet: "We do not believe in 'faith healing.' We believe in 'divine healing' through Jesus Christ."

In 1995 Charles Nixon's entire congregation had prayed hard for his granddaughter Shannon. Her health had been troubling her for weeks. At 5 ft. 4 in., the teenager weighed only 100 lbs. More significantly, she was constantly thirsty. By June 18, Shannon was complaining of weakness and dizziness and decided to stay home from her job at her father's storm-door company. Though she was worried about her health, the thought of calling a doctor never occurred to Shannon. Instead she asked to be "anointed," a procedure the church reserves for extremely serious illnesses. The day after, she felt better and was prepared to pass the whole thing off as little more than the flu. But by evening, she felt sick again and asked to be excused from evening church services, promising to listen to a tape recording of the sermon instead. When her parents returned from church, Shannon hugged her father and said, "I feel I have my victory!" But that was premature. By the next day she was vomiting. When a brother asked about her condition, Shannon answered weakly, "The devil is fighting me hard." In the next 24 hours she started slipping in and out of consciousness, and her family increased the intensity of its prayers. On the evening of June 21, she fell into a coma and died, three days short of her 17th birthday. At her parents' trial, Dr. Michael Humphrey, an endocrinologist, testified that Shannon would have had a 97% chance of full recovery if she had been brought into the hospital on what turned out to be the last day of her life.

The Nixons were devastated by the loss of their daughter. But their faith was unshaken: it was God's will to take Shannon. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania law held them responsible for her death, even though their lawyer, Steven Passarello argued that Shannon was more than able to decide for herself whether she wanted to follow the sect's doctrine or seek medical help. William Haberstroh, the prosecuting attorney, countered that a life-or-death situation demanded parental intervention even for a mature minor. The judge's instruction that the case was one of law, not of religion, practically sealed the verdict. It took less than two hours for the jury to find the couple guilty.

The Faith Tabernacle, founded in 1897 and centered in Philadelphia, has run up against the law before. In 1983 two members were convicted in the death of their two-year-old son, based on a 1944 Supreme Court ruling that also influenced the Nixon case: "Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow that they are free ... to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion."

Now Haberstroh must decide what sentence to request from the judge. Although manslaughter can carry up to five years in prison, sentencing guidelines mean that the Nixons are more likely to get anywhere from probation to a year in jail. Further complicating matters is the fact that the couple have 10 children--and Lorie Nixon is expecting a child in a few months. None of her children has been delivered with medical assistance. Haberstroh is under no illusions that even a harsh penalty will change the Nixons' beliefs. A police detective who interviewed the Nixons reported that the family saw the trial as "an instrument of the devil testing their faith." But Haberstroh is determined to follow through, if only for the sake of the surviving Nixon children. "Diabetes is often an inherited illness," says he. "If one child had it, others may well have it."

--With reporting by John Kennedy/Philadelphia

With reporting by JOHN KENNEDY/PHILADELPHIA