A religious group accused of killing an eight-year-old girl believed “God would heal” her diabetes after they withheld life-saving insulin, a judge has heard.
The group of six men and eight women, including the girl’s parents, refused to enter pleas to either murder or manslaughter in the Brisbane supreme court on Wednesday.
Elizabeth Struhs died at the family home in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, on 7 January 2022 after her parents and 12 others allegedly withheld her diabetes medication for six days.
Instead they prayed next to her and did not alert authorities as the girl’s health deteriorated, police alleged.
Elizabeth died while lying on a mattress on the tiled floor of the downstairs living area in her family’s Rangeville home.
Two members of the Toowoomba religious group known as the “Saints” – its leader, Brendan Stevens, and Elizabeth’s father, Jason Struhs, have been charged with murder, with 12 members charged with manslaughter.
The crown prosecutor Caroline Marco said Elizabeth had been “suffering for days” due to insulin withdrawal.
“Her parents were well aware of Elizabeth’s condition and consequences that would follow having lived through the experience of diabetic ketoacidosis two years earlier when she was first diagnosed and nearly died,” Marco said.
She alleged the religious group had aided or encouraged Elizabeth’s parents to lower and then stop her doses of insulin as the treatment came from doctors and was created by man.
“Their extreme beliefs as a small congregation were that God would heal her,” Marco said.
The court heard that the child safety department contacted the family after the girl, then five, was admitted to hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis in August 2019. She was just 13-15kg and hospital staff initially thought she was dead.
Her mother never attended hospital, the court heard, and had urged her husband not to admit the young girl. Nonetheless, she assured department officers her daughter would get proper treatment at home “without myself and the rest of the children intervening”.
“All we’ll do is continue to pray, for the certain healing that God has promised …,” Elizabeth’s mother, Kerrie Struhs, wrote, in a message read to the court.
“She’ll continue to receive what you believe she needs [insulin].”
Elizabeth was taken off insulin entirely on 3 January 2022. The court heard she spent days in pain, initially started vomiting after meals, before falling into a state of altered consciousness and finally unconsciousness and then death by 7 January on a mattress on the tiled floor of a downstairs room in the family’s Rangeville home. She was never taken to hospital.
At the beginning of the first day of hearings at the supreme court, the 12 accused were individually asked to enter pleas of guilty or not guilty. All of them entered variations on “I enter no plea”. Justice Martin Burns ordered a plea of not guilty be entered for all of them. They are representing themselves.
Marco told the court she planned to call more than 60 witnesses in a trial expected to run for 11 weeks.
That will include an adult daughter of Jason and Kerrie Struhs, who left the family in 2014 because their religion would not permit them to accept her sexuality, Marco said.
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Marco told the court that Jason Struhs resisted years of pressure to conform with the religious beliefs of Stevens, who was referred to by members of his small congregation as “the messenger” and “the preacher”. Stevens believed in “divine healing” and denounced medicine, the court heard.
The court heard the group had told him that God had cured his daughter after she survived the 2019 attack and that she was no longer sick and did not need medical care.
Jason Struhs later asked Elizabeth’s doctors in Toowoomba to conduct some sort of test to prove to the rest of the family she was still diabetic, the court heard.
Messages between Stevens and Kerrie Struhs in response to the move were read in court.
“Wow, fantastic. Don’t forget, no matter they say, unless she is taken off the insulin, there is no proof at all,” Stevens wrote.
“If they do any test other than that then they just continue in their deceit.”
Kerrie responded: “Yes that’s what I thought.”
The clinic ultimately refused him.
All defendants were clad in jail-issue uniforms, with the men wearing light prison tracksuits and thongs and the women wearing blue shirts and trousers with socks and sandals.
The prosecution was previously granted a judge-only trial after arguing the case should not be heard in front of a jury due to significant prior media coverage and the “notoriety of the matter” that could prejudice jury members.
The other accused are Zachary Alan Struhs, Loretta Mary Stevens, Therese Maria Stevens, Andrea Louise Stevens, Acacia Naree Stevens, Camellia Claire Stevens, Alexander Francis Stevens, Sebastian James Stevens, Keita Courtney Martin, Lachlan Stuart Schoenfisch and Samantha Emily Schoenfisch.
The youngest was 20 years old when charged while the eldest was 66.
The trial continues.