FL - Woyah Andressohn, 6 mos, starved to death, Homestead, 14 May 2003

mysteriew

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Six-month-old Woyah Andressohn weighed less than 7 pounds and was 22 inches long when paramedics found her lifeless and emaciated body on the floor of her parents' living room on the evening of May 14, 2003.

Two years later, Woyah's parents, Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn, will stand trial for her death after an investigation into the family's vegan lifestyle revealed signs of starvation in Woyah and her four older siblings, from malnourishment to rickets.

Opening statements are expected Tuesday in Miami-Dade Criminal Court in the couple's trial on charges of aggravated manslaughter and child endangerment. They each face 30 years in prison for Woyah's death and an additional 20 years on four counts of child endangerment.

Prosecutors blame the couple's regimen of raw-vegetable meals and wheatgrass enemas for Woyah's death and for injuries to their living children, whose bloated stomachs and protruding ribs were noticed by neighbors and an investigator with the Florida Department of Children & Families.

http://www.courttv.com/trials/andressohn/101805_background_ctv.html
 
This story is HORRIBLE!!! They should be starved.....:banghead:
 
I hate to hear stories like this. Don't the parents have any common sense? Good lord both my boys weighed 20 pounds at 6 months old. Their pediatrician used to tease me about putting concrete in their formula. Anyone SHOULD know when a baby is starving. I feed hungry stray animals because I can't stand to see any living being going hungry. I just can't understand cases like that. Well I've always believed more innocent people died in the name of religion than in war.
 
A 6-month-old infant seemed more like a newborn when paramedics found her gasping for air on the floor of her parents' home, an emergency responder testified Tuesday in the manslaughter trial of the child's parents.

Paramedic Fernando Castano told jurors in the case against Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn that he mistook their 7-pound, 22-inch child for a newborn as he attempted to revive her.

Woyah died about 45 minutes later from what a medical examiner later diagnosed as "accidental malnutrition," according to Castano.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ct/20051019...gBvzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--
 
I'm thinking that I heard the prosecutor was also a vegan. That should help seal the deal. What a couple of MORONS!!!! Thank God they got the other kids out of there before they died too.
 
This is a strange case, and could go either way. Parents who have extreme diet regimens for their kids are odd, and this family seems very very extreme.

On the other hand, when they did the autopsy on this girl she didn't have a thymus gland, which would have caused this wasting condition in her anyway, no matter what diet she was given, as I read it. Normal parents would have taken her to the pediatrician and had that diagnosed and treated, but this case is not as open and shut as a simple starvation. Had she not been treated for lack of thymus, but given very great food, she would be in the same condition.

What a sad story.
 
KatherineQ said:
This is a strange case, and could go either way. Parents who have extreme diet regimens for their kids are odd, and this family seems very very extreme.

On the other hand, when they did the autopsy on this girl she didn't have a thymus gland, which would have caused this wasting condition in her anyway, no matter what diet she was given, as I read it. Normal parents would have taken her to the pediatrician and had that diagnosed and treated, but this case is not as open and shut as a simple starvation. Had she not been treated for lack of thymus, but given very great food, she would be in the same condition.

What a sad story.
That is still a case for neglect. They watched their dau. wasting away and did not take her to the doctor, even though their homemade remedies weren't working. So whether they starved her to death, or left her to waste away from disease, they were still neglectful.
 
A Florida couple accused of starving their baby to death are scheduled to face two of their surviving children in court today.

Joseph Andressohn, 36, and Lamoy Andressohn, 30, are charged with aggravated manslaughter and neglect in the death of their daughter, Woyah, who was 6 months old when she died in May 2003. The Andressohns also face four counts of child neglect stemming from the care of their four surviving children who are living with a relative under state supervision. The Andressohns say Woyah died from a genetic disorder that caused her malnutrition.

Two of the Andressohns surviving children, ages 6 and 8, are scheduled to testify for the prosecution today. The Andressohns had another child after Woyah's death, a girl named Joya, who is now 6 months old and is being cared for by a guardian.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1228918&page=1
 
Homestead Officer Robert B. Brown told a Miami-Dade County jury that he saw Woyah Andressohn lying on a blanket on the floor of an apartment after he responded to a frantic 911 call placed the night of May 14, 2003 by her parents, Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn.

The baby's arms and legs were rail-thin and her belly was distended, Brown said. Trash and clothes were littered around the apartment along with orange peels and other bits of food, he said.

The baby's condition, he said, "looked like something you might see in a National Geographic magazine, in an African country or a Third World country," Brown testified as the nine-person jury was shown enlarged pictures of Woyah.

Two of the Andressohns' other children are scheduled to testify in the case Wednesday about how their parents forced them to undergo enemas and sometimes whipped them if they ate the wrong foods. The children will appear in court via video hookup, with television networks agreeing to obscure their faces.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101901555.html
 
mysteriew said:
That is still a case for neglect. They watched their dau. wasting away and did not take her to the doctor, even though their homemade remedies weren't working. So whether they starved her to death, or left her to waste away from disease, they were still neglectful.

I agree.

It's also weird that they had apparently been visited very recently, several times, by CPS workers who didn't see a problem.

Poor girl.
 
Lamoy and Joseph Andressohn, the Homestead couple charged with starving their infant daughter to death on a raw-foods diet, saw their two sons Wednesday for the first time in almost three years.

The boys were bubbly, talkative and impatient, and they were testifying against their parents in a manslaughter trial.

Woyah Andressohn, age 5 months, died in May 2003, weighing less than 7 pounds -- half of what a baby her age normally weighs.

The boys -- whose names The Herald has decided not to print -- are 9 and 7. They testified on closed-circuit television from the judge's chambers and never heard or saw their parents.

''Do you love your Mommy?'' Rubin now asked the older boy.

''Until I noticed that my baby sister was dead,'' said the math student. ``Then I loved her three quarters, not the last one.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12947031.htm
 
A couple on trial for starving their daughter to death with a strict vegan diet held each other and fought back tears as their oldest son told a Miami jury that he has forgotten his mother's name.

"I can remember a little, parts," 9-year-old Yahshawa Andressohn said in court Wednesday of his former life with biological parents Lamoy and Joseph Andressohn. The boy and his siblings were taken from the parents in May 2003.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/20/child.death/
 
Mary Andressohn avoided eye contact with the defendants Thursday as she testified that the children were healthy and happy in her home, where she feeds them a diet of meat, cooked vegetables and occasional sweets, in contrast to their former diet of raw vegetables, fruit and coconut milk.

The three boys and a girl were suffering from a variety of ailments, she testified, from pneumonia to asthma when they came to live with her.

In comparing the children to when they lived with their parents, Mary Andressohn described them as looking like "starved Ethiopians" from a "Save the Children" commercial.

"They were energetic, but small and short," said Mary Andressohn, a supervisor with the Department of Homeland Security.

Defense attorneys sought to cast the witness, a single woman with no children of her own, as a spinster desperate to claim the Andressohn children for herself.

"Are you seeking permanent custody of the four children?" defense attorney Robert Barrar asked the witness regarding her reasons for testifying.

"If they get convicted, yes," she said. "If they don't get convicted, no."

In a tense cross-examination, punctuated by Judge Stanford Blake ordering co-counsel Ellis Rubin not to call the witness "Aunt Mary," her fitness as a guardian was also called into question, and she grew evasive as she was questioned about abuse allegations.

"Didn't the Child Protective Services advise you that you were under investigation for locking the children in a tool shed?" Rubin asked. "Didn't they also accuse you of other unusual forms of punishment, including stuffing a towel in a child's mouth?"

"Never heard that one," the witness testily responded.

She admitted that the Department of Children and Families visited the home once and photographed the children based on allegations she had beaten them with a belt.

"There were no marks, and the case was closed," she said.

Court resumes Monday, depending on anticipated weather conditions.
http://www.courttv.com/trials/andressohn/102005_ctv.html
 
I found this on www.vegan.org It seems their diet is pretty healthy, so why did the child starve? I eat a lot of the foods they say are vegan from looking at this list. There must be more to it than what they put on their website.


In the meantime, here are some simple and healthy meal ideas to start with:

BREAKFAST
cereal/granola with soy/rice milk
oatmeal or other hot cereal
bagel/toast with jelly
pancakes
soy yogurt
fruit smoothie

SNACKS/DESSERT
pretzels, popcorn
peanuts, almonds, walnuts
sunflower or pumpkin seeds
chips & salsa
banana, apple, orange
raisins, figs, dried apricots
pie, cookies, cake


[font=Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif]LUNCH/DINNER
peanut butter & jelly
grain/soy burger
vegetarian hotdog
veggie lunchmeat sandwich
baked/mashed potatoes
french fries
tofu, tempeh, or Seitan stir fry
Seitan casserole
pasta with tomato sauce
tofu lasagna
bean burrito
seitan casserole
tofu lasagna
[/font]
 
Sadie, I don't think that anyone is objecting to the vegan diet as a whole. But when giving the diet to kids, you have to be very careful that you are meeting all their nutritional requirements. They were using their own version of a vegan diet, which did not meet the nutritional requirements for kids, and were not obtaining medical care for the children.
Additionally, the above diet would not be suitable for infants and their growing nutritional needs.
For adults and older kids the diet may be fine. But again, care needs to be taken to make sure nutritional needs are met.
 
Ok I see what you're saying. Come to think of it my kids would have thrown fits if they did have meat and milk.
 
I believe the parents in this case were raw/live foodists. The calorie requirements of all of the children could/would not have been met through this diet.

Regardless of the lack of thymus gland in the wee babe who died, the other children were starving, physically abused, and forced to live in filthy, disgusting surroundings. One child said he was afraid to tell his mom he was hungry because he would be beaten.

Lovely set of parents there.

I hope they rot to death in prison. Or, better yet, STARVE.
 
The children of a vegan couple appeared bright-eyed and healthy to a case worker who investigated claims of child neglect at the family's home in 2002.

Child protection investigator Rose Lesniak told a Miami jury that she visited the home of Joseph and Lamoy Andressohn three times in 2002 to look into reports that the couple was not feeding their children properly and each time left with the same impression.

"I didn't see any risk factors," Lesniak testified Tuesday in the couple's trial. "There were no hazardous signals and there was always food in the home."

As the first witness for the Andressohns' defense, Lesniak testified that the children appeared happy, healthy and alert each time she visited them, leading her to believe that the complaints of a family friend were unfounded.
http://www.courttv.com/trials/andressohn/110105_ctv.html
 
A 6-month-old baby fed a diet of raw food died of natural causes brought on by a compromised immune system that was not the result of malnutrition, a medical expert testified Thursday in the manslaughter trial of the infant's parents.

"What we have is a natural disease that killed someone," said Dr. John Marraccini, a former Palm Beach County medical examiner and Harvard University-trained forensics expert who is being paid for his testimony.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/florida/MGBTZ7LLLFE.html
 

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