Rape victims forced to wait hours in Queensland hospitals

Victims have been kept waiting in Queensland hospitals for almost 24 hours unable to take a shower because there are no trained staff available to collect vital DNA evidence.

Cairns CIB Officer in charge Ed Kinbacher has pleaded for better services for rape victims in regional Queensland. Picture: Stewart McLean

Rape victims have been kept waiting in Queensland hospital emergency departments for almost 24 hours unable to take a shower, change clothes or brush their teeth because there are no trained staff available to collect vital DNA evidence.

A coalition of senior police, health staff and social workers has sounded the alarm on how the system “frequently fails” victims in regional Queensland as part of an independent inquiry into women’s safety.

Sexual assault victims – including children – have been turned away from regional hospitals ­because there are no medical staff available to conduct forensic medical exams, also known as rape kits, while larger hospitals have kept patients waiting for ­almost 24 hours.

The inquiry, headed by former appeal court president Margaret McMurdo, will report to the Palas­zczuk government this month about domestic violence recommendations, including whether to criminalise coercive control.

A second report into women’s experiences in justice system, including a review of the state’s sex consent laws, has been delayed until June 2022 because of a huge number of submissions.

In one submission to the ­inquiry, Senior Sergeant Edward Kinbacher, who heads the Cairns criminal investigation branch, said forensic examination services across the state were “generally poor and not fit for purpose” but the degree of dysfunction varied around Queensland.

The 34-year veteran detective said arrangements between the state government’s health, justice and police departments “fail frequently to adequately meet the psychological, medical/forensic and generally humanitarian needs of complainants and victims of sexual assault”.

Sergeant Kinbacher gave ­recent examples of failures including a child rape victim who was told no forensic exam was possible for 36 hours because there were no on-call staff available.

“After high-level complaints at Cairns Base Hospital, the examination was conducted in a shorter timeframe,” he wrote in his ­capacity as a Sexual Assault Forensic Integrated Response Network member.

Sergeant Kinbacher said ­another victim left the emergency department without being examined, after waiting almost 24 hours. “This victim was later located by police and the examination conducted,” he wrote.

A third victim was turned away from a regional hospital because no staff was qualified to conduct the exam. She then drove herself to a larger hospital where the rape kit was conducted. Sergeant Kinbacher said those failures happened when there were gaps in the on-call roster – the longest being four days – with no contingency plan from Queensland Health.

Lack of qualified staff available to conduct rape kits was exposed by the state’s auditor-general in 2019, who found survivors had to drive for hours to find a clinician trained to collect evidence.

The auditor-general decided to dig into rape kit availability ­“because the Queensland Police Service raised concerns about longstanding difficulties for sexual assault victims accessing these examinations”.

In response to the report, the Palaszczuk government promised to train more nurses to conduct rape kits and since then, more than 60 nurses and midwives have been trained through the Central Queensland University.

Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman said women were often retraumatised while trying to seek justice, and the inquiry was looking at better supporting victims as they made their way through the system.