by Sarah Chalmers

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Even by the depressing standards of Candace Newmaker's short, troubled life, the little girl's death was brutal beyond belief - a terrible monument to the folly and self-indulgence of modern America.

Just 10 years old, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, she was told to remove her shoes and lie on the floor on a blue flannel sheet in the home of an unlicensed New Age therapist in Evergreen Colorado.

As she curled into a foetal position, the sheet was wrapped tighly around her, its four corners twisted together above her head and held tightly. Then she was ordered to fight her way out of the man-made prison.

The bizarre display was meant to signify Candace's rebirth to her adoptive mother Jeane Newmaker, who held the corners of the sheet together.

As Candace struggled to be 'born', the therapist, Connell Watkins, and three assistants placed cushions around her and pressed into her tiny form, to simulate birth contractions.

Together, the four adults pressing in on her had a combined weight of 673lb. Candace, a pixie-like creature with brown hair and dark eyes, weighed just 70lb.

The idea of this rebirthing ritual was that Candace would form a loving, affectionate bond with her adoptive mother.

But just 10 minutes into the procedure, the little girl complained that she was tired, she couldn't breathe, couldn't push her way out.

Eleven minutes and 35 seconds into the session she cried: "I'm gonna die. Please, please, I can't breathe." After 21 minutes, she wept: "I'm throwing up."

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However, Watkins and her assistants kept pressing in on her, taunting her as a "quitter" and a "twerp".

"You want to die? OK, then die," said one assistant. "You got to push hard if you want to be born," jeered another.

By the time half an hour had elapsed, Candace had said she was dying 11 times and the only sound emanating from her petrified form was a faint whimpering.

Yet still one of the assistants, Julie Ponder, ordered: "She needs more pressure. She really needs to fight if she wants air."

Ten minutes later, Jeane Newmaker asked her daughter: "Baby, do you want to be born?"

From the motionless bundle in the middle of the room came a barely audible: "No." It was the last word Candace Newmaker uttered.

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