The Wieambilla shooting and the death of Elizabeth Struhs were the actions of separate groups with a common motivation
In December 2021, two separate Queensland cults, obsessed with healthcare and motivated by religion, were anticipating the end of the world.
In Wieambilla, former school principal Nathaniel Train would soon die alongside his brother and sister-in-law Gareth and Stacey in a shootout which would also claim the lives of two police officers and a civilian. They believed police were devils and demons and needed to be fought to bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Meanwhile, about two hours down the road, in Toowoomba, Kerrie Struhs – who said in police interviews that the world was facing its “end days” – had been released from prison. By the next month, the sect she was a member of, known as the Saints, had convinced her husband, Jason, to withdraw insulin from her eight-year-old type 1 diabetic daughter, Elizabeth – inaction which ended her life by 7 January 2022.
In mid-2024, two Queensland courts in neighbouring buildings simultaneously conducted hearings about the separate homicides. The coroner’s court has yet to release its findings into the Wieambilla shootings.
The groups were not affiliated. They acted completely alone. Both were located in Queensland’s so-called “Bible belt”, the ultra-conservative Western Downs area in and around Toowoomba.
The director of Cult Consulting Australia, Raphael Aron, said it had probably never happened before in Australian history.
“I thought the juxtaposition of those two cases was really, really quite disturbing,” he said.
“Those two cases in courts almost side by side; I don’t think we’ll see it again in this country. It was very unusual.”
Aron said the uncertainty and fear of the Covid-19 pandemic led many to join or form cults – and there has been no reduction in the number since.
He said there is little family and friends can do to help a loved one leave – and it’s time for the government to step in.
“I get calls all the time about organisations that are denying their kids medicine, denying this, denying that, and – where do you go?”
All 14 adult members of the Saints religious group were convicted of manslaughter last month and the group was sentenced on Wednesday.
The cult’s leader, Brendan Stevens, was sentenced to 13 years in jail, and Jason Struhs was sentenced to 14-and-a-half years. Kerrie Struhs was sentenced to “slightly in excess” of 15 years in jail because she was on parole at the time of the offence.
The remaining sect members all received sentences of between six and nine years in prison.
But questions remain about actions the state government took in response to the cult and its leader.
When Elizabeth died she was on a safety plan imposed by child safety officers after the alarm was raised in 2019.
That year, the then six-year-old became seriously unwell and ultimately fell into a coma.
But the family did not call an ambulance or seek medical help for several days. Her life was saved when Jason took her to the hospital over the objections of his wife. Elizabeth made a full recovery.
Both Kerrie and Jason were convicted of failing to provide her the necessaries of life, husband testifying against wife in return for a lesser sentence. She was jailed in 2021; he spent years treating Elizabeth’s incurable illness.
While Kerrie was behind bars, Jason’s family life fell apart. His wife planned to leave him, she told police. The Saints spent months trying to convert him; finally he had a confrontation with his son, Zachary, and was baptised.
“I have no doubt Mr Struhs joined the church out of fear he would lose his family if he did not,” Queensland supreme court justice Martin Burns wrote.
When Kerrie was released from jail in December 2021 she was unrepentant, telling her parole officer “I would make the same decision again but I wouldn’t stop any other person interfering,” the court heard.
She made no mention of what Burns called “nothing short of a campaign” against Jason giving Elizabeth insulin. Again the Saints convinced Jason to change his mind.
On 1 January Jason started withdrawing the medication from Elizabeth. All parties agree that her symptoms were the same as in 2019. Elizabeth gradually lost consciousness as the 14 Saints adults prayed for her miraculous healing for days. She lost energy, the ability to eat anything but watermelon and mango, then the power to go to the toilet alone. She lost seven kilograms, about a quarter of her weight, as her fat and muscle broke down due to dehydration. She finally fell into a coma, then respiratory failure.
Kerrie was due to attend another meeting with her parole officer on 6 January. She cancelled it that morning, telling them she was too sick. It was the last day Elizabeth was alive.
“Had Mr Struhs fully realised God was not going to save Elizabeth and that she would therefore probably die, it is to my mind inconceivable a loving father, such as he, would have continued to sit on his hands,” Burns wrote.
The Saints cult existed for about 17 years.
Stevens – who was said by members to have been “chosen by God” – held church meetings multiple times a week at a house.
The court heard the group drew in a handful of new members over the years, all of them young people who had long searched for religious meaning.
Parents testified that they had tried everything to draw their children away from the group, to no avail, before tragedy struck.
Aron said it is a story he hears all the time. The problem is there’s no Ahpra-style watchdog for cult medicine and the police can’t act until a crime has been committed. It is even harder if the person is an adult, not a child.
He believes it is time for “some sort of regulatory body … which has the powers and authority to get into a place like this, to say ‘what the heck are you guys doing’ and the enforcement powers to close it down”.
And he is not the only person who thinks it is time for government to step in.
In a submission to an exposure draft of a bill before New South Wales parliament banning coercive control, Cult Information and Family Support, a non-profit association, argued that the legislation ought to also capture “those offering pseudo-medical or pseudo-psychological therapy without qualifications” such as religious leaders.
Tore Klevjer, a counsellor, said there is clearly a place for regulating things like work conditions and the finances of cult-like groups. He said bringing laws in would at least give former members an avenue to prosecute the people who controlled them.
But there is also a limit to how much power that should be granted to governments.
“I’m a little reluctant to give the state too much power over everyone’s life,” he said.
Part of the issue is that it is difficult to draw the line between a “cult” and a religion. There is no easy answer, he said.
It is also not clear what can be done to deprogram them if they do ultimately leave.
The Saints religious sect survived the trial. All 14 offenders remain committed members. Klevjer said it was imperative that the jail system separates the group once they are sentenced but he is not sure if they will ever change their minds.
In fact, the severity of their crime may actually make it mentally harder to quit, he said.
“We can become very blocked by shame, and if we’ve done something that we otherwise normally wouldn’t have done then it’s a protective mechanism to try and continue to justify it in some way … not to justify it means that now I’m a criminal,” he said.
Klevjer isn’t the only person to think this. In the Queensland supreme court earlier this month Burns said the group “obstinately refuse to accept as even a prospect that they might have been wrong”.
“The moment they stop believing what they’ve been professing now for a long time, is the moment they realise what they actually did,” Burns said.