Police interviews shown during the extraordinary trial for the manslaughter of the eight-year-old Queensland child reveal the beliefs behind the inaction of her parents and others. It took Jason Struhs 36 hours to call the ambulance after the death of his daughter Elizabeth.
When the police followed shortly afterwards, they heard singing. The Saints, a religious sect in Queensland, that has been likened to a cult, were praying for the eight-year-old to be resurrected. “I’m not jumping up and down in joy, but I’m at peace …” Jason told a police officer that day. “I gave my little girl what she wanted. And I expect God to look after her.”.
Justice Martin Burns on Wednesday found Jason Struhs, and religious leader Brendan Stevens, along with Elizabeth’s mother, Kerrie, brother Zachary, and 10 other members of the group, guilty of her manslaughter. Elizabeth Struhs died at her family home in Rangeville, Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, on 6 or 7 January 2022, of diabetic ketoacidosis.
Jason told police: “There were no feelings of oh well, that didn’t work.”. “I have to be patient. I have to keep praying. I didn’t sit there and think that I had killed my daughter, I was thinking that she was in a better place now,” he said.
Throughout the nine-week trial last year, the court heard hours of interviews with the Saints filmed by police, at the scene and in the days afterwards. Recently released to the media, they give an insight into their beliefs. Elizabeth’s mother, Kerrie Struhs, believed so strongly in the Saints’ faith she had been previously jailed for not providing her daughter the necessaries of life in 2019, when Elizabeth became sick for the first time.
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