Elizabeth Struhs death: Trial of parents, religious group members continues
The father of one of 14 defendants in the Elizabeth Rose Struhs trial has told how his son said he was “not in any trouble” after her death. LATEST UPDATES
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The trial of two parents and other members of a Toowoomba religious sect accused of killing eight year old Elizabeth Rose Struhs has recommenced after the weekend break, with the alleged victim’s older sister and the mother of one of the accused giving evidence.
The sister has recounted her gradual estrangement from the family, and a previous incident in which Elizabeth had suffered insulin withdrawal, while the defendant’s mother told how her daughter had become increasingly involved in the hardline religious group.
Elizabeth Struhs died in her family’s Toowoomba home in January 2022 after her parents, Jason and Kerrie Struhs, allegedly took her off lifesaving insulin used to treat her diabetes, in an attempt to prove their faith in God’s healing powers.
Jason Struhs, 52, and the group’s alleged leader Brendan Stevens, 62, are charged with murder. Elizabeth’s mother and brother Kerrie and Zachary Struhs are charged with manslaughter along with 10 other members of the congregation.
They are Therese Maria Stevens, 36, Andrea Louise Stevens, 34, Acacia Naree Stevens, 31, Camellia Claire Stevens, 28, Alexander Francis Stevens, 25, Sebastian James Stevens, 23, Keita Courtney Martin, 22, Lachlan Stuart Schoenfisch, 33, and Samantha Emily Schoenfisch, 25.
Sect member’s father reduced to tears
Lachlan Schoenfisch’s father said he broke down crying when confronting his son in the days after Elizabeth’s death.
“I’m not a wilting violet normally, but I just broke down crying and Lachlan couldn’t understand why I was so upset,” Cameron Schoenfisch told the court.
“I said, like, mate how much trouble are you in?
“He said I’m not in any trouble. God teaches you that if you do the work of the Lord you’ll be persecuted.”
Mr Schoenfisch said Lachlan later claimed to be God’s ambassador.
“We just off drove off crying,” he said.
Mr Schoenfisch said soon after Lachlan joined the congregation, which he labelled a “cult’, he began ranting against medicines and pharmaceuticals.
He said Lachlan and his wife Samantha also began acting differently.
Mr Schoenfisch said he told Lachlan that God could not heal people of illness.
“I said this is going to end badly and when it does ... just remember we’re your mum and dad and we love you desperately,” he said.
“And he effectively told us we weren’t really his family anymore, we were just people and he’d gone off to join the true family.
“When they drove away that afternoon Lachlan’s mother just held me and sobbed ‘we’ve lost him’.”
Mr Schoenfisch said his son talked about people being healed.
“I just froze when he said I saw someone healed of diabetes,” he said.
Mr Schoenfisch’s daughter-in-law Samantha Schoenfisch cross-examined him, asking whether his strong beliefs about their new congregation had pushed them away.
Mr Schoenfisch said he had been quite gentle.
“If I had not been gentle you would have known it,” he said.
Mr Schoenfisch became heated at one point.
“You used to be a lovely little girl then you were so nasty,” he said.
Samantha’s mother Janet Crouch recalled her daughter speaking about Kerrie Struhs being jailed in 2021 for failing to provide Elizabeth the necessaries of life during a prior incident in 2019 which the child was lucky to survive.
“She said ...it’s wonderful what (Kerri) did, that she was willing to go to prison for her beliefs and by standing for her beliefs in god,” Ms Crouch said.
Ms Crouch said she asked about the people in her daughter’s new home church group “and she said that there is this messenger leader Brendan Stevens”.
Ms Crouch said she started seeing her grandson less after they joined the “cult”.
“I said that I realised that it was related to her beliefs with the cult ...and that I found that difficult and sad,” she said.
“She said that she loved me and that she hoped that I would follow their beliefs.”
Samantha called Ms Crouch after Elizabeth’s death saying she had had an exciting weekend or words to that effect, the court heard.
“She talked about praying over Elizabeth to be raised,” she said.
Ms Crouch initially thought Elizabeth had just fainted, however Samantha said the girl’s body had then been removed from the home
“(Samantha said) that was very exciting because more people would see her risen,” Ms Crouch said.
How I lost my daughter to the sect
The mother of one of the accused has outlined how her daughter started taking drumming lessons with one of the fanatical congregation members, ultimately leading to the girl disowning her family and joining the headline religious group.
In a further bizarre twist, the woman’s daughter – one of 14 on trial charged with manslaughter over the death of Elizabeth Struhs – grilled her own mother during cross-examination about her memory of events and the reasons why she joined the congregation.
Danielle Martin, the mother of accused 22-year-old Keita Courtney Martin, told the court that it started with her then-15-year-old daughter getting weekly drum lessons in 2016 from now co-accused 25-year-old Alexander Francis Stevens.
“The more she attended, the longer she would stay after the lesson,” Mrs Martin testified.
At the start of 2018, Keita Martin started going to religious meetings at the Stevens’ house, which her mother was aware of.
However, her mother became concerned when her daughter started making excuses to stay at the Stevens’ house and not be picked up.
Mrs Martin later read part of her daughter’s journal in her bedroom, which said group leader Brendan Stevens and his wife Loretta had “counselled her on how to respond” and “supported” her.
“They were massaging her back and playing with her hair to console her,” Mrs Martin told the court.
In August 2018, Danielle Martin confronted Mr Stevens at his home after unsuccessfully telling her daughter to reduce contact with the congregation, which she ultimately ignored.
“I loved my daughter, and I went to fight for her,” Mrs Martin testified.
“I wanted to be very clear to him that I did not want him to contact her, see her, meet with her in the park, have her at the house, anything like that.
“He did not listen to anything I was saying, he was yelling over me, he was calling me and my friend ‘filthy, evil, loudmouthed women’ and he rebuked us for our behaviour and he wished that we would be struck down on our way home.”
Mrs Martin told the court that members of the Struhs and Stevens family sent Keita cards for her birthday that year.
“Some of them said ‘we are sorry you are going through this trial now’ and that ‘you are being tested’ and you will come through it,” she told the court.
“There were others that said ‘we are your true family, we love you more than your family does, they are not your real family’.”
Mrs Martin told the trial that her daughter attributed her pulling away from her mother to parts of the Bible.
“She told me there were some scriptures in the Bible that said Brendan [Stevens] had raised with her that said she wasn’t allowed to share a meal with me, she wasn’t allowed to tell me that she loved me, she wasn’t allowed to go in the car with me,” she said.
Ultimately, Keita Martin left home at age 17 and went to live with the Stevens around Christmas in 2018, after which there was only intermittent contact and visits with her mother.
Mrs Martin told the court that Keita did write to her from prison after she was charged over the death of Elizabeth Struhs and she did go and visit her once.
The defendants were allowed to question the witness, which led to Keita Martin interrogating her own mother on the stand about Mrs Martin’s previous Christian beliefs and Mrs Martin’s views about Keita joining the hardline group.
Keita Martin: “Given that you were willing to forsake Christian gatherings for your own personal reasons, do you think you lack understanding for a person who decided to sacrifice personal parts of their life to follow the Lord?”
Danielle Martin: “No, I completely understood why you would want to follow the Lord … I wasn’t happy with you going to the Stevens’ household … I was not comfortable with the ideas that you were coming home with as a teenager.”
Alexander Stevens, who initially gave Keita Martin drum lessons before she joined the hardline congregation, also questioned Mrs Martin.
“I think it is fair to say that Keita disowned you because she felt unloved and uncomfortable around you, and that you had not shared things with her especially during her childhood?” he asked.
Mrs Martin responded: “I wouldn’t know why she had not wanted to spend time with me anymore, she didn’t express that to me, she just said that we had different beliefs.”
Dad’s reaction to funeral arrangements
When Jason Struhs was contacted a few days after his daughter Elizabeth’s death about making funeral arrangements, he said that “he didn’t believe” in them and he “would not be burying a bag of bones”.
Coronial counsellor Julie Baker contacted Mr Struhs on January 11, 2022. She was calling to advise that a funeral director could now be appointed for eight-year-old Elizabeth because the post-mortem had been done.
“I advised Jason that he was now able to appoint a funeral director and basically I kept it pretty brief,” Ms Baker told the court.
“And how did he respond when you said that?” Crown prosecutor Caroline Marco asked.
“He said to me that he didn’t believe in funerals, Elizabeth was with God, and that he would not be burying a bag of bones,” Ms Baker replied.
“And did he advise what to do with Elizabeth’s remains?” Ms Marco followed up with.
“I confirmed with him that that is what he had said and I confirmed with him that he would be okay with a government-appointed funeral director who would take care of Elizabeth,” Ms Baker replied.
“I also asked if there was any other family member that may be willing to assist with making funeral arrangements. He advised ‘no, there was no one else available’.”
Following the evidence of Ms Baker, defendant Lachlan Schoenfisch queried whether he could ask her a question.
“I was going to ask a question about whether or not she believes that Elizabeth ... has a soul that’s separate to her body and if she is familiar with the words of Jesus saying ‘let the dead, bury the dead’,” he said.
Justice Martin Burns ruled it irrelevant and did not allow the question.
Eldest daughter Jayde Struhs told the court that during the time Elizabeth spent in a coma and recovering in Queensland Children’s Hospital in July 2019 due to untreated diabetes – although at this point, her condition had not yet been diagnosed – her father vowed to “make a lot of changes at home” and “protect Elizabeth” against his wife’s hardline religious beliefs against traditional medication.
Jayde Struhs, who spent every day in hospital with her younger sister alongside her father, told the court on Monday that she was there with her father as they were educated about Elizabeth’s condition and the need for full-time monitoring.
Ms Struhs said her father told her while they were in hospital with Elizabeth that he knew there would be opposition from his wife Kerrie to giving Elizabeth the insulin she needed due to the congregation’s views against traditional medications.
“He said he knew he would have to stand in the way and take full responsibility for caring for her, knowing that he would get no help,” Ms Struhs told the court.
“He said he wanted to change a lot of things when he got home, get Elizabeth away from that so he could protect her after we nearly lost her.
“He said he wanted to be around more to be part of the family and move away from mum and the beliefs.
“One of the last times I saw him, he was getting into the back of an ambulance (with Elizabeth) and he just said he wanted to make big changes at home and protect Elizabeth.”
Ms Struhs said she did get to spend a day with Elizabeth before her death when Mr Struhs brought her to a women’s AFL match in Toowoomba.
Ms Struhs said she found out about Elizabeth’s death in January 2022 after receiving a message from a journalist asking if she knew the Struhs family.
Ms Struhs then performed an internet search and saw a media article with a photo of her family’s home, reporting an eight-year-old had died.
She said she quickly realised it was Elizabeth.
Jayde Struhs tells of group’s beliefs
Jayde told how the view that God healed illness became strong when her mother and the Stevens family split from a church in Brisbane and began holding their own religious gatherings.
“The view was and always has been that God created us so he can heal us. Not to rely on medicine. We would pray to god to heal us,” she said.
Jayde, dressed in a black suit and shirt, fidgeted with a ring on her finger as she gave evidence.
“If anyone was ill or hurt themselves it was the first thing we’d hear ‘god heals, lets pray’” she said.
Jayde said her father who was not a member of the congregation at the time still made sure their children got vaccinated, however she did not go to the doctor or dentist otherwise.
She said Christmas and Easter were considered pagan festivals so they stopped celebrating them.
“This was when we had split and I believe it was coming towards Christmas time and that was something that had been brought up at Sunday meetings and that it was a pagan festival that the rest of the world followed and that perhaps we don’t celebrate that. And that became something that mum wanted to do for us,” she told the court.
Jayde said she was also encouraged not to associate with non-members.
“That was really tough. I was encouraged not to be close with even my (extended) family members,” she said.
Jayde said she first met the Stevens family when she was five at school and her and her mother were soon baptised by Brendan.
She also described what she called “receiving the Holy Spirit”.
“It’s the receiving of speaking in tongues – the Holy Spirit from God – his language for us pretty much,” she said.
When she was 16 Jayde said she left the family home for good after discovering she was gay.
“Another big view of the church was that your sexuality was a massive thing and being gay was not OK,” she said,
“And it was quite seen as an abomination in the sight of God and that was the words that were used, it was disgusting.”
While her father Jason was supportive her mother Kerrie did not take the news well.
Jayde said she was taken to Brendan’s home with her mother.
“He tried to tell me I’m not gay and I need to find God and I could lose my connection with him If I didn’t. And then a lot of bad things would happen to me if I followed that,” she said.
“I was scared of what was going to happen to me if I did accept myself and it was talked about that I would practically endure hell forever. And it was something that I was very scared of.”
Jayde was able to recall the exact date she left the family home.
“It was one of the biggest moments of my life choosing to leave my family. It’s not something that I wanted to do. And I just felt like I wasn’t going to be safe there,” she said.
She believed her mother paid tithes to Brendan Stevens of about $50 every week.
During cross-examination of Jayde, defendant Acacia Stevens asked whether she had a healthy childhood.
“I did yes, fortunately,” Jayde said.
“And do you recall that if there were cases of people being sick or unwell that they got better once they prayed,” Acacia asked.
“Eventually,” Jayde responded.
Jayde is not accused of any wrongdoing.
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