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They said he was “appointed by God”. They called him “the pastor”, “the messenger” and “the healer”.
For 17 years, Brendan Stevens led his small congregation known as the Saints, a religious sect thrust into the international spotlight this week after one of its flock, an eight-year-old diabetic named Elizabeth Struhs, died after members denied her life-saving insulin. Fourteen members of the Saints, including Elizabeth’s parents, her brother and Stevens, were this week convicted of her 2022 manslaughter in a Queensland court.
Based in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, Stevens taught a conservative version of Christianity, based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. He believes “God heals”, and medicine shouldn’t be used under any circumstances. Every moment should be devoted to the worship of God; even sport or time dedicated to schoolwork is wrong, he declared.
Stevens is a charismatic and extraordinarily magnetic person.
In court, the father of one of the Saints referred to them as “a cult”.
In January 2022, Stevens and the Saints convinced Jason Struhs to take action that would lead to the death of Elizabeth. It took her four days to die, as the Saints prayed to God, sang, and waited for a miracle.
“It’s not extreme. It’s just words of God. God heals. And there’s no reason why I should put – or anyone else should put – their trust in the medical system, which has failed, any more than we should put it in God,” Stevens told police after Elizabeth’s death.
The Saints repeatedly told the court they believed – and still believe – she will rise from the dead.
‘We are your true family’
During the nine-week trial, the court heard from family members who did everything to try to drag their adult children away from the group.
All of them still appear to be committed members of the faith. Many cross-examined their own siblings or parents.
The court heard adults baptised into Stevens’ church would change almost overnight.
One father testified it took less than three weeks for his son to radically change – the length of a Pfizer vaccine schedule. One day he was a trained civil engineer – the next he no longer used even glasses.
When the time came for the second shot he said: “I’m not getting any vaccine. It will damn your immortal soul.”
But even after the mammoth trial, Stevens remains a mystery.
He is 63, married to Loretta Stevens, 67, wears a huge grey-white beard, and served for a time as a police officer as a younger man. He has seven children.
Stevens was apparently unemployed at the time he was arrested, earning an income paid in tithings.
He met the Struhs family in 2004 while serving in “something of a leadership position” at a Brisbane Revival Centres International church, the court heard, but fell out with them about four years later. Since then the Struhs and Stevens families held church meetings several times a week at one of their homes.
They speak in tongues. They don’t celebrate holidays like Christmas, Easter or birthdays. They believe in traditional gender roles and that being gay is wrong. Medicine was called “witchcraft”.
According to police interviews with Elizabeth’s mother, Kerrie, the group “are closer than any blood relations” because they are “all united by the Holy Spirit”.
Rather than attend school to learn, they did so to “spread the word of God”, according to estranged former member and Elizabeth’s sister, Jayde Struhs. Any school assessment would be addressed from a “religious standpoint”, she said.
Danielle Martin testified about the way her daughter, Keita Martin, 24, became a member.
A schoolmate of the Stevens’, she often visited their home for drum lessons. Over the course of a year the visits became longer and longer. In January 2018, she was baptised. Her mother forbade her from going back to the Stevens’ home in August 2018, but she moved out at 17.
The Stevens’ had sent Keita Martin a Christmas card. Her mother testified that it read “we are your true family. We love you more than your family does”.
Lachlan Schoenfisch was a civil engineer before he was baptised into the Saints in August 2021.
His father, Cameron, testified to court that his son changed in a matter of weeks. In September of October he made a final attempt to reason with his son.
“I said ‘this is going to end badly’. And I said, ‘when it does, when you get to the end of the road, you don’t know where to go, just remember that we love you desperately, no matter what. You’ve got a special place in your mother’s heart …’” he said.
“He effectively told us that we weren’t really his family any more. We were just people. And he’d gone off to join the true family.
“When they drove away that afternoon, Lachlan’s mother held me and sobbed and said ‘we’ve lost him’.”
Lachlan was convicted of manslaughter on 29 January 2025.
Paying the price
One of the first things Kerrie Struhs did after giving birth to her third child was tell Brendan Stevens.
“Sorry it’s late but thought you’d like to know. Elizabeth Rose was born at 10:50,” she texted that night, 31 January 2013.
Brendan was also there at the end, as Kerrie, Jason and others prayed over the dying child.
The court found Kerrie had been part of a “campaign” to change her husband’s mind about medicine.
Jason, who had resisted becoming a Saints member for 17 years, finally changed his mind when his wife was jailed in 2021 after Elizabeth became deathly ill in 2019.
“I have no doubt Mr Struhs joined the Church out of fear he would lose his family if he did not,” Justice Martin Burns, of the Queensland supreme court, found.
For two and a half years Jason had been the one to help Elizabeth her with insulin. But armed with new beliefs, in January 2022, he stopped providing her with the drug.
Such was the power of the atmosphere around Stevens’ church.
In the “cloistered atmosphere” Stevens and his followers had created, Jason became “so consumed by the particular belief in the healing power of God,” he believed she would either be saved by a miracle or raised from the dead, Justice Burns wrote in his judgment.
One of the police who questioned Brendan Stevens in the days after Elizabeth’s death put to him: “I mean, you’re a 60-year-old man who’s lived a full life and has several adult children. This was an eight-year-old girl who’s had to pay a price”.
“She didn’t pay the price, a dead person doesn’t pay the price! They know nothing!” he said.
“How do you know she was in agony? You have no idea!”
Brendan Stevens had no regrets.
