Former DNA lab boss tells inquiry staff were afraid to speak up

A culture of fear existed at Queensland’s troubled DNA laboratory after a whistleblowing scientist was managed out of the lab, its former boss has told an inquiry.

Shandee Blackburn’s murderer remains at large, after Queensland’s DNA lab failed to find any evidence to identify a killer from the crime scene.

A culture of fear existed at Queensland’s troubled DNA laboratory after a whistleblowing scientist was managed out of the lab, its former boss has told an inquiry.

John Doherty, who ran Forensic and Scientific Services within Queensland Health between 2019 and 2021, said he had attempted to fix the workplace culture of the DNA analysis lab.

Mr Doherty also said the DNA analysis unit did not have any funding increases during his time in charge and was underfunded to the tune of $1 million as the Queensland government imposed budget pressures across the public service.

“No increases, only cuts,” Mr Doherty told the Commission of Inquiry, which is examining allegations the lab bungled the analysis of crime scene evidence over several years.

The allegations were first exposed in The Australian’s Shandee’s Story podcast, an investigation into the brutal unsolved murder of 23-year-old Mackay woman Shandee Blackburn.

Several scientists regularly came to his office telling Mr Doherty they were unhappy, he said.

“Some of them became regular visitors, often to tell me about how they feared for their safety and that the culture wasn’t good and relationships were pretty fractured,” he said.

Several scientists were dismayed by the treatment of scientist Amanda Reeves, who had left the laboratory in acrimonious circumstances after she raised a serious problem with the analysis of sperm samples.

The inquiry has earlier heard Ms Reeves from 2016 tried to ring alarm bells about the lab’s apparent bungling of some sexual assault samples, where sperm was present in a sample but could not be seen under a microscope in the first stage of testing.

Her fear was that there was a problem with the way the microscope slides were being prepared, and that the samples were effectively discounted and not further tested, even though they could contain offenders’ DNA.

An expert report has found this problem applied to 400 samples over the eight years the procedure was in use.

The inquiry has heard Ms Reeves was removed from her scientific work, denied permission to give evidence in sexual assault cases as an expert witness, and forced to sit in a library away from her colleagues.

“People didn’t feel safe about how that process was managed at that time. And they would often cite examples, you know, fear of retribution if they made any more complaints, just like Amanda encountered,” Mr Doherty told the inquiry on Wednesday.

“People were basically telling me it wasn’t a safe workplace.

“But at the same time, none of them were willing to go on record to allow me to actually tackle them directly.”

The inquiry heard a report by the Queensland Audit Office in 2018 found the laboratory had seen a reduction in staffing and identified the $1 million shortfall, he said.

“I do recall at the time getting some time vibes that the DG (Director-General of Queensland Health) was not happy about that commentary and that in his view FSS had been well supported over his time.”

Mr Doherty said FSS’s budget for processing ‘volume crime’ samples – mainly property offences – had been $3 million per annum from 2005 to his departure in 2021.

“It hadn’t increased a single dollar over that period of time. I’ve done the basic calculation – (according to) CPI it should have been at least $4 million. There had also been a significant increase in the number of cases coming into the laboratory over that period of time as well, so the lab was having to do a lot more work with essentially less money.”

The inquiry continues.

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Hear our latest investigative podcast on the DNA lab catastrophe. Shandee’s Legacy is season 2 of Hedley Thomas’ blockbuster investigation Shandee’s Story.

Find it by searching Shandee’s Legacy wherever you get your podcasts.