Cathie Allen, blamed for failings at troubled Qld DNA lab, sacked

A scientist named as a key architect to the DNA debacle at Queensland’s forensic laboratory has been sacked – five months after being blamed for the failings in a Commission of Inquiry.

A senior scientist named as a key architect to the DNA debacle at Queensland’s forensic laboratory has been sacked – more than five months after being blamed for the failings in a Commission of Inquiry.

Government sources confirmed a termination of employment notice was sent on Wednesday afternoon to the lab’s former managing scientist Cathie Allen.

It is understood former Forensic Scientific Services team leader Justin Howes and lab manager Paula Brisotto have also been dismissed in recent weeks.

Scientist Cathie Allen during evidence at the Commission of Inquiry.

All three were placed on leave after disturbing evidence surfaced in the Commission of Inquiry last year, but the conclusion to their employment was delayed after each applied for extensions to their show cause notices.

The inquiry’s final report, handed down in December, said Ms Allen had duped Queensland Police Service, Queensland Health and the state government about the failings at the laboratory.

When handing down the findings, Commissioner Walter Sofronoff told reporters he blamed Ms Allen’s leadership as the “single biggest problem” within the lab.

The inquiry revealed the state run lab misled police and manipulated data to force an arbitrary sample limit for testing critical evidence from murders and sexual assault cases, leading to more than 1800 false witness statements in at least 1260 court cases.

Inquiry boss Walter Sofronoff with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk late last year. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

As a result of the findings, authorities are still sifting through the enormous pile of potentially false tests and reanalysing thousands of samples.

The report found the Premier and Health Minister “could not have known that Ms Allen had fed them misleading information and that, for a long time, she had actually been lying to her immediate supervisor and to senior police about the work of the laboratory”.

“Several scientists employed there had been clamouring for years about a dangerous lack of scientific integrity that they believed was systemic at the laboratory,” the report found.