Cathie Allen: Disgraced DNA boss sacked after damning inquiry

The scientist who oversaw disastrous testing practices at Queensland’s DNA laboratory – which compromised thousands of criminal cases – has been sacked.

Cathie Allen, pictured giving evidence to the inquiry remotely, has been terminated from her role.

The scientist who oversaw disastrous testing practices at Queensland’s DNA laboratory which compromised thousands of criminal cases has been sacked.

Cathie Allen, managing scientist of the health department’s forensics lab for 15 years, had her employment formally “terminated” on Wednesday afternoon.

A royal commission-style inquiry in December found Ms Allen and her deputies, Justin Howes and Paula Brisotto, were behind a testing threshold that meant thousands of crime scene samples were ignored for years.

Ms Allen was severely criticised in the report’s findings for having lied to police, the government, victims of crime and the inquiry.

She was stood down in September as the inquiry probed catastrophic forensic failings dating back more than a decade which were first exposed in The Australian’s podcast series, Shandee’s Story.

Described by inquiry head Walter Sofronoff KC as a “malignancy”, Ms Allen “set out to deceive her executive-director, the director-general and the minister and succeeded in doing so”.

After Mr Sofronoff’s final report was handed down on December 13, Ms Allen and her deputies were given three weeks to respond to show-cause notices.

The process has taken almost six months, with Mr Howes and Ms Brisotto also leaving Queensland Health in recent weeks.

Mr Sofronoff KC found Ms Allen, Ms Brisotto and Mr Howes were responsible for “the conception and drafting” of a scientific paper to convince police to agree to an unusually high DNA testing threshold in 2018. Designed to improve turnaround times for police, the threshold resulted in key evidence being missed in murder and rape cases.

The lab, now overseen by Linzi Wilson-Wilde, is retrospectively reviewing thousands of sexual assault cases dating back to 2008 “to determine which should be subject to retesting or re-analysis”.

In parts of the report Mr Sofronoff criticised the scientific paper Ms Allen used to persuade unknowing police to accept a third-rate testing system as: “Nonsense. Specious. Untrue. And bogus,”

Reasons for her deception were not made out in the report, but Mr Sofronoff has previously said he believed it was to make the lab “look good” and improve turnaround times for police. He agreed Ms Allen was the “single biggest problem” at the lab.

Mr Sofronoff’s report stopped short of recommending criminal charges against Ms Allen, despite finding she lied under oath and that her actions and inaction as lab boss had caused enormous damage to criminal cases and public confidence in the reliability of DNA testing.

His report was referred to the state Crime and Corruption Commission in December.

The CCC last week would not answer questions from The Australian, including whether a formal investigation had begun or whether further action would be taken.

Ms Allen denied wrongdoing throughout the inquiry, repeatedly insisting she was “not a liar”.

Agreeing with her barrister, Matthew Hickey, that she’d been depicted “as some kind of Disney villain,” Ms Allen said she found it “quite distressing”.

But Mr Sofronoff rejected her denials, finding her responsible for overseeing scientific vandalism during her 15 years at the helm.

“I have found that serious problems have existed within the laboratory for many years, some of them amounting to grave maladministration involving dishonesty,”his report said.

“In most cases that will have reduced the prospects of conviction by a failure to obtain evidence which could support a complaint.

“It is possible, but unlikely that the failures could have resulted in a wrong conviction.”