Diabetic Girl, 8, Dead After Being Deprived Medication By 'Cult-Like' Religious Group Members

Four members of a small religious group in Toowoomba, Australia were called into court on Thursday after being charged of murdering an eight-year-old girl by preventing her from receiving her insulin medication for six days.

The four members of the Stevens family showed up on Thursday to confirm the receipt of the evidence against them. Theresa, one of the members of the family who showed up to accept the evidence, confirmed that the family has yet to read the witness statements given to them, according to the Daily Beast.

“I have not yet looked at it, but I have the ability to … if I wish,” she reportedly said.

The Stevens are part of a small religious group made up of three families. One of the groups there was the Struhs family, which had diabetic eight-year-old Elizabeth whom they prevented from getting her insulin for six days before she died. They were reportedly praying, singing, and chanting around her while she died.

The oldest sister of Elizabeth, Jayde Struhs, detailed that her parents stopped going to their regular church while she was at a young age, and that they would go to church at the Stevens’ house for years, adopting a version of Christianity that did not celebrate Christmas nor allow medical interventions, 9Now Australia reported.

“All we got told was that, that the church we were going to was corrupt and it wasn't quite fulfilling the whole religion,” she said. “They would, well we would, refer to ourselves as ‘The Saints.’”

Jayde said that she ran away from home when she was sixteen after she figured out her queer sexuality.

“When I told my mother I was a lesbian and that I didn't see eye to eye on her beliefs, it was straight away I had Brendan at the doorstep. I was taken to their house, we sat down for hours and I had (them), reading me scriptures saying how an abomination it was,” she said.

Elizabeth and Jayde’s parents, Kerrie Elizabeth Struhs and Jason Richard Struhs, are currently detained and have been charged with murder, torture, and “failing to supply the necessaries of life.”