Elizabeth Struhs’ father seemed ‘calm and collected’ after allegedly withholding diabetes drugs, murder trial told
Queensland supreme court also told trial is ‘religious persecution’ by leader of group accused of killing eight-year-old
The leader of a religious group accused of killing an eight-year-old girl by withholding her medication has claimed the trial was “religious persecution” and they acted reasonably under their faith.
Brendan Luke Stevens, 62, was the leader of a Christian group that called itself the Saints and is on trial for murder along with the girl’s father, Jason Richard Struhs, 52, in the Brisbane supreme court.
They are among 14 people on trial over the death of Elizabeth Struhs, who died on 7 January 2022 at her family home in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, after her parents and 12 others allegedly withheld her insulin diabetes medication for six days. Elizabeth’s mother, Kerrie Elizabeth Struhs, 49, and the other 11 members of the congregation are charged with manslaughter.
All 14 defendants are representing themselves at the judge-only trial and Stevens told Justice Martin Burns on Friday that he wanted to make a defence opening statement to give the group’s “perspective”.
“We believe in God. We see that there is a hypocrisy in the land generally, and we have chosen to walk with God. It is reasonable to believe in God. The prosecution has suggested it is not reasonable,” Stevens said.
“This isn’t really a trial about murder of a child as it is religious persecution,” Stevens said.
Stevens said the group had “no intention of fighting” the case by using law, which was why they had refused legal representation and had not applied for bail.
“We don’t have any particular care amongst ourselves what the judgment is, we don’t come to fight the charge,” he said.
The court also heard from witnesses on Friday, including paramedic Michelle King, who was one of the first team of ambulance officers to arrive at the scene. She told the court she had arrived to find about 20 people gathered at the house, and once she got there she heard singing from inside the building.
She found Elizabeth dead on a mattress in the house and decided to call for the police.
A man who identified himself as Jason Struhs asked her to do so outside.
“He seemed very calm and collected throughout. Yeah, didn’t really show any outward displays of grief or emotional distress,” she said on Friday.
Rachel Doljanin, a former Queensland Police crime scenes officer testified on Friday that she was tasked with taking photos at the Struhs family’s home in the Toowoomba suburb of Rangeville.
“I observed a group of people gathered in the front yard … some of those people were singing and I could hear a guitar playing,” Doljanin said.
Doljanin explained to Justice Burns what was depicted in dozens of her photos. Her photos included pictures of Elizabeth’s body as she lay on her back on a mattress on the floor with hands placed together on her chest.
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Other photos showed handwritten posters in the home stating “she is only sleeping” and “God will heal Elizabeth no matter what”.
The crown prosecutor, Caroline Marco, earlier told the court the group did not believe in medicine and said Elizabeth had been “suffering for days” due to insulin withdrawal.
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.
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.
Burns previously heard Jason Struhs was woken about 5am on 8 January by loud prayers and rushed downstairs thinking Elizabeth might have been healed by God in line with the group’s religious beliefs.
Struhs found instead that Elizabeth had stopped breathing and died during the night after suffering escalating symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis over the course of six days after he allegedly stopped giving her insulin.
Kerrie Struhs had weeks before been released from a five-month prison sentence for failing to seek medical help for Elizabeth’s diabetes symptoms in 2019, which almost resulted in the girl’s death.
Members of the group had exchanged messages after Elizabeth died in 2022 and told one another that God would raise her from the dead.
The trial is due to run for another 11 weeks.
In Malaysia, too, some Fundamentalist Islamist groups reject all "Western Medicine" , basically the entire formal health care system as Haram.
ReplyDeleteStatistics are hard to come by but I have no doubt there are children or adults with serious or chronic illnesses but treatable simply do not receive proper medical care.
The outbreaks of epidemics in Malaysian schools from unvaccinated children of parents who reject the standard childhood vaccinations , though given free, is just another sign of widespread rejection of medical care.