The Death of Candace Newmaker: When Therapy Becomes Torture

Ten-year-old Candace Newmaker went to Colorado for therapy that was supposed to help her bond with her adoptive mother. Instead, she was wrapped in flannel, pinned down by four adults, and told to fight her way out while they pressed their full weight on her small body. For 70 minutes, she begged for air. For 70 minutes, they told her to keep fighting. She never made it home.

The Little Girl from North Carolina

Candace Elizabeth Newmaker came into this world on November 19, 1989, in Lincolnton, North Carolina. Back then, her name was Candace Tiara Elmore, and her life started in a way no child should have to experience. Born into a family where neglect was the norm, Candace lived with her birth parents Angela and Todd Elmore alongside her siblings Michael and Chelsea.

But here's the thing about child protective services. They don't remove children from their birth families lightly. The system is designed to keep families together whenever possible, offering services, support, and multiple chances for parents to turn things around. When CPS finally does step in to permanently terminate parental rights, it means they've documented substantial evidence that the parents cannot and will not provide even the most basic necessities for their children's safety and wellbeing.

That's exactly what happened with Candace and her siblings. At age five, she had already endured more trauma than many adults will face in a lifetime. Social services removed all three children from their birth home, and their parents' rights were terminated forever.

A New Beginning in Durham

Two years later, hope entered Candace's life in the form of Jeane Newmaker, a pediatric nurse practitioner from Durham, North Carolina. Jeane was a single woman with a heart for helping children, and she decided to adopt seven-year-old Candace. For many families, this would be the beginning of a beautiful healing journey.

But trauma leaves marks on children that aren't easily erased by love and good intentions alone. Candace began exhibiting behaviors that concerned her new mother. She was acting out at home, displaying defiance and anger that seemed disproportionate to typical childhood testing of boundaries.

Jeane, being a healthcare professional, recognized that Candace needed help processing her early experiences. She took her daughter to a psychiatrist who prescribed medications to help manage her behaviors. For two years, they tried this approach. But instead of improving, Candace's behavior seemed to deteriorate further.

There were reports that particularly alarmed Jeane. Candace had been playing with matches, which while concerning, is actually something many curious children do. More troubling were reports that she had killed goldfish. For any parent, especially one trying to help a traumatized child heal, this behavior would be absolutely terrifying.

Jeane felt desperate. She loved her daughter, but she was running out of options. Traditional therapy and medication weren't working. She needed something different, something more intensive.

The Road to Evergreen

Enter William Goble, a licensed psychologist in North Carolina. When Jeane shared her frustrations about Candace's continuing behavioral issues, Goble made a referral that would change everything. He suggested she take Candace to Colorado for intensive attachment therapy sessions.

By Candace's 10th birthday, Newmaker concluded that her daughter suffered from attachment disorder. The treatment would be conducted by Connell Watkins, who ran a clinic in Evergreen, Colorado.

Now here's where things get problematic right from the start. Watkins was operating without the proper licenses for this type of work, and she was conducting sessions in her basement. The fact that this was happening outside the realm of legitimate, licensed practice should have been a massive red flag.

But Jeane was desperate, and desperate parents often overlook warning signs when someone promises to help their struggling child. The cost was steep - seven thousand dollars for two weeks of intensive sessions. For a single mother, this represented a significant financial commitment, but Jeane was willing to do anything to help Candace.

The Pseudoscience Behind the Tragedy

Before we go further into what happened to Candace, we need to understand what attachment therapy actually is, because despite its clinical-sounding name, it's not legitimate therapy at all.

Attachment therapy is a pseudoscientific mental health intervention intended to treat attachment disorders in children. The theory behind it goes something like this: children who have experienced early trauma and abandonment develop what practitioners call "attachment disorders." They believe these children are filled with suppressed rage that prevents them from bonding with new caregivers.

The supposed solution involves what they call "holding therapy" or "rebirthing." During the height of its popularity, the practice was found primarily in the United States; much of it was centered in about a dozen locations in Evergreen, Colorado, exactly where Jeane was taking Candace.

The process is as disturbing as it sounds. Children are physically restrained, often lain upon by adults, while therapists try to provoke intense emotional responses like rage and despair. The goal is to break down the child's resistance completely, reducing them to what practitioners call an "infantile state" where they can supposedly be "re-parented" through forced eye contact, bottle feeding, and cradling.

Here's the crucial point: this entire approach is not based on legitimate attachment theory as developed by psychologist John Bowlby. The practice has resulted in adverse outcomes for children, including at least six documented child fatalities. Real attachment theory focuses on understanding how early relationships shape a child's ability to form healthy connections, not on physically dominating children into submission.

April 18, 2000: The Fatal Session

On April 18, 2000, three days before Candace's therapy was set to end, Watkins and her unlicensed assistant Julie Ponder decided it was time for the rebirthing session. This was supposed to be the culmination of Candace's treatment, the moment she would finally "attach" to her adoptive mother.

Candace was wrapped in flannel to represent a womb and told to free herself while four adults used their hands and feet to push down on Candace's small body, making it impossible for her to move or breathe.

Think about that for a moment. Here was a 70-pound, ten-year-old girl, completely wrapped in flannel sheets and pillows to simulate a birth canal. Four adults with a combined weight of 673 pounds were using their hands and feet to press down on her, supposedly simulating uterine contractions. They expected her to fight her way out of this restraint while they actively worked against her.

From the very beginning, Candace was in distress. She complained, she pleaded, she screamed for help and for air. But according to the twisted logic of attachment therapy, this resistance was exactly what they wanted to see. They interpreted her desperation as the rage they needed to break through.



Connell Watkins

Seventy Minutes of Horror

What happened next was captured on video, because Watkins routinely recorded her sessions. This footage would later become the key evidence in the criminal trial that followed.

Candace stated eleven times during the session that she was dying. Eleven times, this little girl told the adults who were supposed to be helping her that she was dying. And how did Ponder respond? "Go ahead. Die right now, for real. For real."

Let that sink in. A child is telling you she's dying, and your response is to encourage it.

Twenty minutes into this nightmare, Candace vomited and defecated inside the sheet. Any reasonable person would recognize these as signs of severe distress requiring immediate intervention. But they kept going. They kept pressing down on her small body, interpreting her body's distress signals as therapeutic progress.

Forty minutes into the session, Candace was asked if she wanted to be reborn. She faintly responded "no"; this would ultimately be her last word. Even in her weakened state, even after 40 minutes of torture, she still had the strength to refuse what they were doing to her.

Ponder's response to this final act of resistance was to call her a quitter. "Quitter, quitter, quitter, quitter! Quit, quit, quit, quit. She's a quitter!"

The Final Moments

At some point during the session, Jeane Newmaker became too distressed watching what was happening to her daughter. Watkins asked her to leave the room, claiming that Candace might "pick up on Jeane's sorrow." So in Candace's final moments, even her adoptive mother wasn't there to advocate for her.

After talking for five more minutes, Watkins and Ponder finally unwrapped the child they had been restraining for over an hour. They found that she was motionless, blue on the fingertips and lips, and not breathing.

Watkins' first reaction wasn't alarm or immediate medical intervention. Instead, she casually declared, "Oh there she is; she's sleeping in her vomit." As if a child being unconscious and blue was somehow normal.

It was only when Jeane rushed back into the room and began CPR that anyone seemed to grasp the severity of what had occurred. Watkins finally called 911, but it was far too late.

When paramedics arrived ten minutes later, they told them that Candace had been left alone for five minutes during a rebirthing session and was not breathing. Even then, they weren't being entirely truthful about what had happened.

Paramedics were able to restore the girl's pulse and she was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Denver; however, she was declared brain-dead the next day as a consequence of asphyxia. On April 19, 2000, one day after the session that was supposed to help her heal, ten-year-old Candace Newmaker died.

Justice and Consequences

The entire fatal session, along with ten hours of other sessions from the preceding days, had been videotaped as part of Watkins' standard practice. This evidence would prove crucial in the legal proceedings that followed.

In 2001, Connell Watkins, 54, and Julie Ponder, 40, were found guilty of reckless child abuse resulting in death. They each received 16-year prison sentences. Watkins was released and accepted to a transitional community setting on June 6, 2008, having served approximately seven years of her sentence.

Jeane Newmaker also faced consequences for her role in the tragedy. She pleaded guilty to neglect and abuse charges and received a four-year suspended sentence. After serving her sentence, the charges were expunged from her record.


Connell Watkins and Julie Ponder

Candace's Legacy

The death of Candace Newmaker sent shockwaves through the mental health community and the general public. Her story became national news, forcing people to confront the reality that dangerous pseudoscientific treatments were being practiced on vulnerable children.

The case was the motivation behind "Candace's Law" in Colorado and North Carolina, which outlawed dangerous re-enactments of the birth experience. The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have both passed resolutions urging similar actions in other states.

But perhaps more importantly, Candace's death highlighted the need for parents and professionals to carefully scrutinize therapeutic approaches, especially those that seem extreme or operate outside mainstream psychological practice.

The Broader Problem

Candace's death wasn't an isolated incident. Since the 1990s, there have been a number of prosecutions for deaths or serious maltreatment of children at attachment therapy facilities. Her case represents a broader problem with pseudoscientific treatments that prey on desperate families dealing with childhood trauma.

The tragedy is that there are legitimate, evidence-based treatments for children who have experienced early trauma and attachment disruptions. Real therapy focuses on building safety, trust, and healthy relationships through patience, consistency, and respect for the child's autonomy. It doesn't involve physical restraint, forced compliance, or breaking down a child's natural self-protective responses.

Remembering Candace

Candace Newmaker was a little girl who deserved love, patience, and genuine help healing from her early trauma. Instead, she encountered adults who believed that her resistance to their methods was something to be crushed rather than understood. She died calling out that she was suffocating, and the people who were supposed to be helping her told her to die for real.

Her death serves as a reminder that desperation to help a struggling child can lead parents down dangerous paths. It underscores the importance of seeking licensed, evidence-based treatment from qualified professionals, and being deeply skeptical of any therapeutic approach that involves physical restraint or claims to have revolutionary methods that mainstream psychology doesn't recognize.

Most importantly, it reminds us that children's voices matter. When a child says they're in pain, when they say they're scared, when they say they're dying, we need to listen. Because sometimes, they're telling us the truth that could save their lives.

Candace Newmaker's story didn't have to end the way it did. But by remembering her, by learning from the failures that led to her death, we can work to ensure that no other child suffers the same fate in the name of healing.