Victim’s complaint against paedophile nurse Jim Griffin ‘shut down’ after his death

A victim-survivor of paedophile nurse James Geoffrey Griffin knew he would never go to prison. LAtest from the commission of inquiry >>

WHEN serial child sexual abuser Jim Griffin was released on bail in 2019, one of his victims knew he’d soon be dead.

“I think from the moment I found out he’d been let out on bail, I just had this inward feeling that he’s going to die,” Keelie McMahon told the commission of inquiry on Wednesday.

“I just internally knew there was no way he would end up in jail.”

Ms McMahon had finally come forward to the police about the abuse she’d suffered at Griffin’s hands as a teenage girl – and her initial experiences with the force were positive.

But once Griffin died by suicide later the same year in the wake of a string of child abuse charges, her entire police complaint was simply “shut down” with no further investigation.

“I asked ‘what happens from here? What do we do now? And I specifically remember him (the police officer) saying ‘that’s it, there’s nothing we can do’,” she said.

“That was it. I never heard from the police again. It felt like I’d put my trauma on the table and they’d picked it up and thrown it in the cupboard.

“They signed off on the paperwork … and didn’t want to deal with it anymore.

“There was no contact from the police, there was no contact from the hospital … It was just radio silence – there was nothing.”

Ms McMahon’s mother – who had worked on the children’s ward at Launceston General Hospital with the paedophile nurse – said she and her colleagues felt they were silenced after his death – with the matter “swept under the carpet”.

“(Before) Griffin died … when he left the ward at the end of July, we were sent an email to say Jim had retired, he will let us know when he wants a celebration, can we please respect his privacy, and he’ll contact us when he feels like he’s able to,” Annette Whitemore told the commission.

“When he died … there was another email to say a colleague had died over the weekend.

“There was no mention of who it was, and then it went straight into confidentiality as nurses, ‘please don’t talk about it’.”

Ms Whitemore said the fact she and her colleagues felt silenced made the situation more traumatic.

“We were told not to talk about it. That is not how you treat trauma,” she said.

Feeling their concerns and complaints were shut down after Griffin’s death, the mother and daughter spoke to interstate journalist Camille Bianchi in her podcast, The Nurse.

Ms Whitemore felt it was more important for the truth to come out than to protect her career at Launceston General Hospital.

“I was prepared to lose my job, I found another job to go to.”

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Nurse reveals how paedophile always wanted to ‘care’ for teens

JIM Griffin was always eager to put up his hand to “care” for teenage girls at Launceston General Hospital’s paediatric ward.

He was especially keen whenever the girls had mental health issues, eating disorders, or long-term chronic illness.

“The response was always ‘that’s just Jim’,” nurse Maria Unwin said.

Ms Unwin worked with the serial paedophile nurse from when he started on the children’s 4K ward during 2021.

While in charge on shifts, Ms Unwin started to feel “uncomfortable” with Griffin, saying she had “an uneasy gut feeling”.

“He had a strong preference to care for teenage girls when it came to patient allocation,” she told the child sexual abuse commission on Tuesday.

“He’d be very quick to put his hand up and say ‘I’ll take them’, especially young girls with mental health issues or eating disorders or other long-term chronic illness, and sometimes younger children as well with complex backgrounds or illnesses.”

Ms Unwin said Griffin liked to develop “a new best friend kind of relationship” with his young patients.

She said even though she had concerns, she felt she didn’t have a clear complaint to lodge with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.

Instead, she tried to allocate the patients he’d be interested in to other staff members.

Griffin wasn’t pleased.

Once he made eye contact with Ms Unwin, “a very intimidating glare, as if to say ‘why did you do that?’”

“He confronted me in the small kitchen … and said ‘why won’t you let me look after them? Have I done something wrong?’” Ms Unwin told the inquiry.

“I felt intimated … I responded with something like, ‘it’s somebody else’s turn today’.”

She said concerns had been raised with her manager, but “dismissed”.

“There was a strong group of staff who really admired Jim. He was extroverted and confident, he was very friendly,” she said.

“(Whenever I raised) my concerns with Jim, that something doesn’t quite seem right, the response was always ‘that’s just Jim’. There was that support and that acceptance that that’s just Jim.”

James Geoffrey Griffin.

Ms Unwin said coming forward to speak out put her career in the Tasmania Health Service at “very real risk” in being considered for future positions.

“In the end, I decided that I needed to do it for the victims and the families.”

‘Wet kiss’: Complaints about paedophile nurse went nowhere

A WET kiss. An inappropriate conversation with a group of girls about a nurse he called “titsy”, who he wanted to “shag”. Two or more “deficient” reviews about a string of complaints. A transfer to a children’s detention centre in the midst of a scandal.

Before 2019, when serial child sexual abuser James Geoffrey Griffin was finally charged, not one staff member at the Launceston General Hospital was trained in how to identify child sexual abuse or grooming.

Not one single person had oversight of child safety at the institution.

And there was no central repository where complaints of child abuse were handled.

On Tuesday, those “significant failings” that allowed child abuse and grooming to go unnoticed were admitted by the Department of Health human resources manager, James Bellinger.

Mr Bellinger admitted to the child sexual abuse commission of inquiry that prior to 2019, there was no child sexual abuse and grooming training provided to staff.

He admitted the hospital’s incident reporting system, SLRS, was not designed to capture child abuse and grooming behaviours.

“Is it fair to say it took Griffin’s offending to put this on people’s radar?” Elizabeth Bennett SC, counsel assisting the commission, asked.

“Yes,” Mr Bellinger answered.

He agreed the three pathways of reporting complaints did “not end up in a central repository”, not one single person had oversight of them, and no person who handled the complaints along the way was trained in the identification of child sexual abuse or grooming.

“That was a system that was capable of permitting grooming behaviour to go unnoticed?” Ms Bennett said.

“That’s precisely what happened in this instance … there’s a chance that had they (all the complaints about Griffin) been put together and analysed together, that a pattern might have been identified.”

She said there had been a report that Griffin had planted a “wet kiss” on a child on the ward, at night – but the matter hadn’t been escalated because of a “lack of training and a lack of awareness of the processes”.

Mr Bellinger said he’d reviewed a number of complaints against Griffin, starting with the “wet kiss” incident – but denied they’d been “considered in a silo”.

He admitted in hindsight, it was a “significant failing” that a complaint about Griffin – who told a group of young girls about a nurse called “titsy” who he wanted to “shag” – wasn’t escalated.

Counsel assisting Tasmania's child sexual abuse commission of inquiry, Elizabeth Bennett SC. Picture: ABC

Mr Bellinger agreed Griffin was transferred to Ashley Youth Detention Centre in the wake of this complaint, which he said in hindsight was an “error”.

Mr Bellinger also admitted subsequent reviews into complaints about Griffin were “deficient”, and that it was a “really significant failure of the hospital” not to take action on a credible 2011 report that he was a paedophile.

“Did you take any proactive steps to make the hospital safer at that time?” Ms Bennett asked.

“No,” Mr Bellinger replied.

The commission of inquiry will continue its hearings in Launceston until July 8.

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Originally published as Victim’s complaint against paedophile nurse Jim Griffin ‘shut down’ after his death