The Massachusetts Appeals Court yesterday upheld the termination of the parental rights of David and Rebecca Corneau to their three children, ruling that a lower court correctly decided that the three should be legally freed from their parents.
The children, ages 8, 6, and 5, were placed in state custody in 1999 after prosecutors charged that another child in the Corneaus' Attleboro religious sect had starved to death. Investigators also learned that a baby son of the Corneaus who died during a home birth in 1999 was secretly buried in the woods of Maine, beside the other dead child.
The Corneaus have not been charged in the death of their son, but three other sect members face charges in the alleged starvation.
The Appeals Court rejected David Corneau's argument that he had no responsibility for the death of the other sect child. The court found that the lower court judge had correctly considered evidence that Corneau could have intervened and saved the child's life.
David Corneau's argument, wrote Appeals Court Justice James McHugh, overlooked the ''abundant evidence'' that the sect shared responsibility for ''the activities and behavior of all of the group's children.''
The appeal was filed by David Corneau; Rebecca Corneau did not appeal.
The Corneaus are jailed on contempt charges for refusing to reveal the location of a baby that state child welfare officials believe was born last year. The couple say Rebecca Corneau had a miscarriage.
David Corneau's lawyer could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The justices also rejected David Corneau's argument that he and his wife did not abandon his children after they were placed in foster care. The Corneaus did not visit or communicate with their children, even when the children requested it, McHugh wrote.
And the children said David Corneau told them not to communicate with him or his wife because pictures and letters would be similar to using the telephone, a practice forbidden by the sect.
''Benevolent abandonment, if benevolent it was, is abandonment nonetheless,'' McHugh wrote.
The court also noted that evidence had suggested the three Corneau children had been spanked so often and so hard with a wooden paddle that the skin on their buttocks was thickened and calloused.
The decision ''reaffirms the clear concerns we had about the ability of members of this organization to keep children safe,'' said Carol Yelverton, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Social Services.
The Appeals Court also admonished Juvenile Court Judge Kenneth Nasif for telling David Corneau and other sect members that he, too, was a religious man and for making other comments about religion.
Although it seemed as if Nasif were only trying to establish rapport, McHugh wrote in a footnote, the Constitution leaves ''no room for the injection of a judge's religious sentiments'' into his or her official duties.