Documentary record Bound by Fear
← Explore all cases
Conviction New Age and human-potential movements Evergreen, Colorado, USA (offense); Golden, Colorado, USA (trial) · 2001

USA: two attachment-therapy practitioners convicted of reckless child abuse resulting in death of Candace Newmaker

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Connell Watkins, unlicensed attachment/'rebirthing' therapist running a paid two-week residential therapy intensive, Julie Ponder, co-therapist assisting the same session, two further unlicensed assistant-therapists present and participating, not separately charged with homicide

Organization

Watkins' attachment-therapy practice, Evergreen, Colorado

Spiritual nexus

A child inside a paid, unlicensed therapeutic intensive was physically restrained and suffocated by the practitioners her adoptive mother had placed her under the total authority of, following a scripted 'rebirthing' procedure presented as legitimate treatment for her diagnosed attachment disorder — the therapeutic authority over the child was the entire mechanism of her death.

  • Spiritual healing or treatment

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2001-06-18 · jury verdict and sentence

    Jefferson County District Court, Golden, Colorado, USA. Connell Watkins and Julie Ponder were convicted of reckless child abuse resulting in death for the April 2000 death of 10-year-old Candace Newmaker during a 70-minute 'rebirthing' attachment-therapy session in which she was wrapped in a blanket and restrained by the two convicted therapists and two co-therapists, and asphyxiated. Both were sentenced to 16 years' imprisonment, the statutory minimum for the offense. The case prompted 'Candace's Law' in Colorado and a similar statute in North Carolina, criminalizing dangerous rebirthing re-enactments as a therapeutic technique.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • a 70-minute 'rebirthing' procedure in which the child was wrapped tightly in a flannel blanket meant to represent a womb and told to fight her way out while four adults pushed on her body with their hands and feet
  • total physical restraint of a 10-year-old inside a residential therapeutic intensive her adoptive mother had paid roughly $7,000 for, with no ability for the child to stop the procedure or be heard when she said she could not breathe
  • the framing of suffocation and physical crushing as a legitimate clinical treatment for reactive attachment disorder

Primary record

Sources

high quality reporting disposition "Rebirthing Therapist Sentenced", CBS News/AP, 2001.

Report of the sentencing of Watkins and Ponder to 16 years each following conviction for reckless child abuse resulting in death.

context context "Death of Candace Newmaker", Wikipedia, accessed 2026-07-19.

Context source only, consistent with corpus policy of using Wikipedia for background/cross-referencing rather than as the evidentiary source for the conviction and sentence, which are drawn from the CBS/AP report above.

Related record

Related cases · New Age and human-potential movements

← Explore all cases