Inquest examines child safety failures before cult death

Summarised from 2 outlets · Updated 16 Oct, 22:02 · Archive

An inquest has heard that Australian authorities ignored hospital warnings before an eight-year-old girl died in a faith-healing cult home.

Elizabeth Rose Struhs was eight years old when she died in her Toowoomba home in January 2022. Her parents, Kerrie and Jason Struhs, had stopped administering her lifesaving insulin medication under the belief that God would heal her diabetes. The family were members of The Saints, a Toowoomba-based religious sect that rejected modern medicine. Her death was entirely preventable.

A coronial inquest in Brisbane has now examined the decisions of Child Safety, Queensland Police, Corrective Services, the Department of Education and Queensland Health that allowed her to return home. The inquest heard that doctors had pleaded with authorities not to return Elizabeth to her parents despite a previous near-fatal hospitalisation in 2019, when she was admitted in a comatose condition with diabetic ketoacidosis.

At that earlier hospitalisation, her mother wanted her healed through God, but her father intervened at the last second and took Elizabeth to hospital minutes before she would have died. Despite this warning and doctors' pleas, government authorities allowed her to be returned to her family. Fourteen people were later convicted of her manslaughter.

How it is being reported

• Child Safety ignored hospital warnings before Elizabeth Struhs’ cult death, inquest hearsDoctors pleaded with authorities not to return Elizabeth Struhs home; she died there anyway. Now an inquest has put state authorities under scrutiny.Perth Now · 16 Oct, 21:53
• Child Safety ignored hospital warnings before Elizabeth Struhs’ cult death, inquest hearsDoctors pleaded with authorities not to return Elizabeth Struhs home; she died there anyway. Now an inquest has put state authorities under scrutiny.The West Australian · 16 Oct, 21:50

In this story: Elizabeth Struhs · Kerrie Struhs · Jason Struhs · The Saints · Toowoomba · Queensland · Brisbane

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