Elizabeth Struhs

Elizabeth Rose Struhs was an eight year old girl from Toowoomba, Queensland, whose death in January 2022 became one of Australia's most widely reported child protection cases. She had type 1 diabetes, diagnosed after a near-death experience in 2019, and depended on daily insulin injections to survive. Her parents, Jason and Kerrie Struhs, belonged to a small fringe Christian group known as the Saints, whose members rejected modern medicine in favour of faith healing.

In the days before her death, Elizabeth's insulin injections were withheld by her father, who later told the group he believed God would heal her. She was looked after at the family's Rangeville home in Toowoomba by members of the congregation while her condition worsened, and she died overnight on 6 to 7 January 2022 from diabetic ketoacidosis, a complication of untreated type 1 diabetes. She was not taken to hospital despite her deteriorating state.

The case became a national story because of the scale of those involved. Fourteen members of the Saints, including both of Elizabeth's parents, her brother Zachary, and the group's leader Brendan Stevens, stood trial in the Brisbane Supreme Court accused of her manslaughter. In January 2025 all fourteen were found guilty, and the following month they were sentenced, with Jason and Kerrie Struhs each receiving 14 years in prison and Stevens 13 years. The trial revealed that Elizabeth's family had been known to child safety authorities for years before her death, and that warnings about the risk she faced at home had been raised well in advance.

Elizabeth's older sister, Jayde Struhs, who had left the family and the group as a teenager and was not present at the time of her sister's death, became a prominent public voice in the aftermath, speaking about the controlling nature of the religion and calling for reform of the child protection system. Her advocacy, along with widespread public anger at the case, helped prompt the Queensland government to commit to a coronial inquest into Elizabeth's death.

That inquest opened in Brisbane on 12 October 2026, examining whether state agencies could have done more to protect Elizabeth given years of prior contact between the family and child safety and other government departments. The coroner, Ainslie Kirkegaard, opened proceedings by acknowledging Jayde Struhs and the scrutiny the family's case had already endured. The inquest is expected to run for two weeks and hear from around 30 witnesses, mostly departmental staff who had dealings with the Struhs family before Elizabeth died.