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There are poor readers just as there are poor cooks, poor carpenters, poor baseball players, and poor anything else. Insisting that there aren't won't make your food magically taste good, your porch not fall down, or the Red Sox recruit you to pitch. Such is life.
Personally, I think there are a number of reasons for the problem under discussion. One is that children are taught, all too often, that written words are just transcriptions of sounds, and reading is the process of converting them back into sounds and understanding what they "hear". So there's no direct word-eye-brain connection; it's a word-eye-mouth-ear-brain connection; they move their lips when they read because they're not reading; they're listening. All their focus is on hearing the words, not on the images those words create. When they read "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness," they're not hearing the wind gusting through the streets, the beating of the rain on the windows, and the rattling of the shutters. No, they're hearing a voice reciting "It. was. a. dark. and. stor. my. night."
I'm not sure what I'd do to teach people like that (note: IANAT). Maybe try to get their other senses engaged. Have them draw pictures of scenes from the book, or perhaps dramatize them (the less dialog the better!). Pick a story where no physical descriptions are given of the characters, and ask the students to describe them. In short, try to engage senses other than their ears.
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