Religious sect followers prayed and sang as an 8-year-old died. All 14 have been found guilty of manslaughter
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Fourteen members of a small religious sect in Australia have been found guilty of the manslaughter of an 8-year-old girl, who died after they withheld insulin needed to treat her diabetes because of their unwavering belief that God would heal her.
Instead, as she lay dying, they turned to prayer and song, maintaining a vigil around her bed, and even after she’d stopped breathing, sought divine intervention to raise her from the dead.
Elizabeth Struhs’s parents were among members of the home-based church found guilty Wednesday after a nine-week, judge-only trial at Brisbane’s Supreme Court that heard evidence from 60 witnesses and examined hundreds of exhibits.
Handing down the verdicts, Justice Martin Burns said Elizabeth’s death was “inevitable” after the group failed to administer insulin or seek medical help as she lay dying over six days in January 2022 at her home in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane.
All 14 members had refused to enter a plea, which was formally accepted as not guilty, and the courtroom was adapted to seat all defendants so they could stand trial together.
In his ruling Wednesday, Burns said that, until her death, Elizabeth was a “vibrant, happy child” who was “lovingly cared for… and adored” by all members of the church, including the accused.
“However, due to a singular belief in the healing power of God which, to the minds of her parents and the other members of the Church left no room for recourse to any form of medical care or treatment, she was deprived of the one thing that would most definitely have kept her alive – insulin,” Burns wrote.
Content retrieved from: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/29/australia/australia-sect-elizabeth-struhs-guilty-intl-hnk/index.html.
