Answering to a leader called Queen Antoinette, they denied a 16-month-old boy food and water because he did not say “Amen” at mealtimes. After he died, they prayed over his body for days, expecting a resurrection, then packed it into a suitcase with mothballs. They left it in a shed in Philadelphia, where it remained for a year before detectives found it last spring.

Tomorrow, five of the group’s alleged members—including the boy’s mother, Ria Ramkissoon—are scheduled to be tried in Baltimore on murder charges. Sources and Ramkissoon’s mother said Ramkissoon, 22, has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge on one condition: The charges against her must be dropped if her son, Javon Thompson, is resurrected.

Thompson’s lawyer insists that his client wasn’t nuts, just devout: “She wasn’t delusional, because she was following a religion.” See how that works?

110 replies on “There Is No Morality Without Religion, Every Child Deserves a Mother and a Father, Novel Plea Deals”

  1. The lawyer is wrong.
    This is not a story about religion.
    It is a story about the criminally insane.

  4. @3: I’m guessing it was because he was a little under a year and a half old? I don’t remember enough about child development milestones, but that seems young enough that he might not have been talking more than a word or two.

  6. @3 the kid was 16 months old, a baby in other words. he probably didn’t understand what amen was all about. especially after he started to dehydrate to death.

  7. I think the defendants demands are perfectly reasonable. If the kid is resurrected all charges can be dropped. Until then, throw them all in jail and forget to feed them.

  8. ” he once saw Queen Antoinette blow marijuana smoke in Javon’s face. Members of the group believe that marijuana “frees your soul,”

    That pretty much sums this story up.

    A religion? No. Nothing more than a gang of stupid drug users.

  10. Not delusional? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. These fuckers are beyond delusional. Lock ’em up and “forget” to feed them, agreed.

  11. @ 8, if the followers were capable of ignoring a starving toddler’s inevitable cries as he starved, then it was religion. Religion can make you believe stupid stuff when the pastor says it’s so, like when one says homosexuality is a choice and not something you’re born with.

  15. Look at it this way. If they had aborted the child he would still have ended up in heaven with Jesus, but he would have been a foetus. That’s not much fun – an enternity in some sort of heavenly aquarium I guess. At least this way he gets to crawl around heaven.

  16. I’m sure that Jaysus talked to them and told them it was OK to smoke dope. Or maybe it was Santa Claus. One of those fictional people anyway.

  18. Well, at least the didn’t stone the child to death.

    Deuteronomy 21:18-21
    A Rebellious Son
    18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

  19. Just because she is following a religion does not mean she gets a “get out of jail” card.
    As if religion is all good and justifies such abuse.
    Oh look at me I am religious I should get a break on every injustice and you non believers should all get the book thrown at you.
    How does that saying go, I hope I get this right.

    “Some people do good and some people do bad but it takes religion to make good people do bad”

    But then I am not sure these people were good people being perverted by religion, could be they were just bad to begin with and the religion was the catalyst.
    Either way religion screws up good and bad.

  20. @ 19 – I’m afraid you have the situation backwards.

    The fact they acted from religious belief takes away the “get out of jail free” card they would have if they acted from mere personal delusion.

  21. 11 Having a ringleader that goes by the name ‘Queen’, blows pot and heaven knows what else on newborn faces, living in communes, neglecting children till they die is not being a member of any religion, it’s called being a hippie. Where have you learn to make such asinine comparisons always?
    Grow up.

  22. @ 21, it’s called a lifetime of experience objectively observing people who value internal beliefs over external facts. It’s something that cults and religions have in common. Sorry if you recognize yourself in the description, but it’s no less valid a comparison for that.

  23. @15:

    CAN an aborted fetus go to Heaven? It wouldn’t have been baptized, and I thought that was a prerequisite for entry through the Pearly Gates. Wouldn’t rather, the fetus have gone to Limbo, where all other unbaptized babies go?

    Oh, wait. Teh Church just declared Limbo doesn’t exist, didn’t they? So, does that mean all teh dead babies that were formerly in the Limbo-that-no-longer-exists get an automatic VIP entry to Heaven? And if Limbo never in fact existed, where did all teh dead babies actually go? Finally, if teh Pope can suddenly “decide” Limbo doesn’t exist, what does that say about the status of Heaven itself, and by extension Hell? Can those also be legislated out of existence with the flourish of a Papal pen?

    This is all so confusing…

  27. Okay, now I’m REALLY confused.

    So, One Mind Ministries ISN’T a religion? Even though they base their belief system on the Bible, have a charismatic leader who goes by a wacky title (sure, “queen” isn’t quite the same as “Pope” or “Bishop”, or “Imam”, or “Rabbi” or whatever, but on the other hand, it’s not THAT different), they pray a lot, apparently put a great deal of emphasis on saying “amen”, and believe in the power of resurrection?

    But, because they smoke teh Mary Jane, they’re NOT a religion, but instead just a cult of stupid, dirty hippies?

    So, is that the only thing that prevents a group of believers from being a bona fide religion? And if huffing pot is a disqualifier, why wouldn’t say, imbibing wine, as many so-called legitimate religions do, or say, ingesting peyote as some recognized Native American belief systems allow, or the use of bhang, as is done in some Hindu and Sikh ceremonies, not also be a disqualifier?

    Seriously, who decides these things? Is there some sort of pan-denominational sanctioning body out there that sets the rules for which group of believers get to be a recognized religion, and which get relegated to dirty-hippy-cult status? Because, if that’s the case, their decision-making process seems pretty darned arbitrary, so far as I can tell.

  28. Is this the right place? i was told there was going to be an angry mob here. I brought a torch. Well, a lighter, anyways.

    Cool. Are we going burn down a church or something?

  30. 11
    It is a proven fact that any time in the history of the world when someone was starved to death the perps acted on religious motives.

  35. Fortunately her lawyer appears to be NOT using the insanity defense, so maybe she will go to jail.

    As for the part about dropping the charges if the boy is resurrected, does that have a deadline? It’s been I think 2 years now. Maybe we’re supposed to wait until the End Of Days before passing judgement?

  36. It’s awesome to see the all the religious nuts posting here. The more they post the more obviously ridiculous their perspective becomes. The stupid-party is separated into two camps in this comment thread. The first say, “nah-uh those crazy baby killers were in a cult, that’s totally different then religion because I say so.” The second, which Lenny is generally a vocal representative of in any anti- religious thread, say, “the Stranger is totally intolerant of religious folks and it’s just another example of how marginalized and victimized religious thought is all over America! Dan Savage is out to get us. Boo hoo hoo.” Regardless, keep on posting religious nuts, you make my day with your desperate attempts at not being retarded.

  37. @27 – “So, is that the only thing that prevents a group of believers from being a bona fide religion?”
    No, Comte, I think it’s the fact that they starved a baby for their beliefs that makes it a cult.

    I can’t and won’t read these postings any more. They’re too heartbreaking and disturbing and scary. They terrify me that I, as a human, have the capacity to treat my amazing children – or other peoples’ – in such horrifying ways.

    I’m sorry Dan, but you’re not helping your cause by posting these. One doesn’t need to look hard to realize the capacity for moral depravity humans have; there is no reason to post these here. Instead of pointing out what monsters many people can be to their kids, it seems your point – showing the viruocrats that gays can be good parents too – would be better made (I echo) by showing positive stories of gay or single or otherwise non-traditional parenting. Quit dwelling on this garbage, Dan, it’s bad for you heart and it makes me nauseated.

  38. Actually all the religious nuts are Dan sockpuppeting to keep the hit count at slog from totally going down the crapper.

  40. Just because a lawyer said it does not make it true. Example: “torture is not illegal,” if said by a person licensed to practice law, does not make torture legal.

  41. @36 You got me wrong. I’m not even religious. So many Dan-apologists take the easy road of just discounting opposing viewpoints as the ramblings of less enlightened beings.

    I’m just one of those atheists who keeps his religious beliefs (or lack thereof) to himself and doesn’t try to impose them on others.

    I’m not speaking for or against religion.

    I’m speaking against the near-daily exploitation of stories of child-victims so Dan can run his personal crusade against bullshit strawman religious “arguments.”

    For those of you who want to defend these regular true-crime horror tales of agonized children, go ahead. Just don’t act like it’s making the world a better place and that Dan is somehow doing humanity a service.

    Dan represents atheists about as well as evangelical Christians represent Jesus.

  42. 41, And yet you are, for some odd reason, compelled to keep coming back to slog, Lenny, and reading the very posts that upset you?

  43. @41 I don’t buy it, and as much as I agree with some of what you say, your last line has me seriously questioning your assertion that you are non-religious. As a non-religious person how the fuck do you know who or what is representative of a fictional character? Or wait are you going to fall back on that awesome tactic of the standard Christian looking for validity- Jesus was a real guy! It’s historical fact! Yeah even if that were true, that doesn’t mean his views can be determined via some ancient book. So I apologize if your goal is simply to avoid the reprinting of horror stories, but I’m not convinced, and if the Slog isn’t a good venue for attacking the straw men of the religious world, what the fuck is?

  44. @37 If it is such a disservice to his cause, why does it seem to cause the fanatics that troll these boards to get so up in arms? It’s not the monstrous things occurring that has there hackles up, it’s the context in which they are posted that upsets them. And I think that speaks for itself.

  46. Not to mention, lenny, when has Dan EVER stated he “represents atheists”?

    You have this really annoying tendency to attribute things to people that they have in fact never claimed for themselves, which is why, regardless of your religious beliefs, nobody takes anything you say seriously.

    Maybe if you stopped trying to put words into other people’s mouths, that might change, but in the meantime…

  47. … in the meantime, Lenny, let these good people enjoy their kiddie-snuff porn provided by Dan.

    I think you’re retarded too, therefore you must be religious, despite what you say.

  48. @44
    I can’t buy into your argument, and I think that if you read back through the comments, you’ll see my point. Most of the comments here aren’t about gay marriage or adoption, about good parenting, about how hetero’s make bad parents… the comments are almost all about religion: is this a cult… religion is bad… religion is fine… was Jesus a real person… why does Dan hate God… and not about his professed desire: legalizing/normalizing gay adoption and marriage.

    Has anyone reading his posts over the last several months come around on this subject? I mean really, has “loveschild” changed his view on gays? Dan’s not convincing anyone with these despicable posts and perhaps he doesn’t really want to, despite what he claims. But then, who really cares? This is just one blog of thousands, one person among thousands striving for equal rights; Dan can write/post what he wants. I just won’t be reading these types of posts.

  49. Keep these going, Dan. For too long we have been subjected to the myth that religion is necessary for morality. The fact that these posts piss off a few people is reason enough to continue to post these stories. I am glad to see any any continued effort that undermines the role of religion. Religion is one of the pillars of social control and the sooner religion looses that power the better off our democracy becomes.

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