She 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.

Candace was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina, on November 19, 1989, to a teenage mother and an abusive father, Angela and Todd Elmore.

Participating in the fatal session as therapists were Watkins and Julie Ponder, also without a license, along with Candace's "therapeutic foster parents", Brita St. Clair, Jack McDaniel, and Jeane Newmaker.

[3] Following the script for that day's treatment, Candace was wrapped in a flannel sheet and covered with pillows to simulate a womb or birth canal and was told to fight her way out of it, with the apparent expectation that the experience would help her "attach" to her adoptive mother.

Four of the adults (weighing a combined total of 673 pounds or 305.2 kilograms) used their hands and feet to push on Candace's head, chest, and 70-pound body to resist her attempts to free herself, while she complained, pleaded, and even screamed for help and air, unable to escape from the sheet.

[1] 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, April 19, as a consequence of asphyxia.

Brita St. Clair and Jack McDaniel, the therapeutic foster parents, pleaded guilty to criminally negligent child abuse and were given ten years' probation and 1,000 hours of community service in a plea bargain.

[9] Watkins was paroled in June 2008, under "intense supervision" with restrictions on contact with children or counseling work, having served approximately seven years of her 16-year sentence.