Mum’s anger at psychiatrist’s tell-all murder book

A mother was blindsided when she learned her murdered daughter’s last words through a book by a forensic psychiatrist.

Sonia Anderson, with a photograph of her daughter Bianca Girven, has condemned the decision to publish her daughter’s last words. Picture: Glenn Hunt

A mother was blindsided when she learned her murdered daughter’s last words through a book by a forensic psychiatrist who ­assessed the mentally ill killer.

Sonia Anderson says she felt sick when she read the information about her daughter ­Bianca Girven’s final moments in Donald Grant’s book, Killer ­Instinct.

Dr Grant was appointed by the Mental Health Court of Queensland to provide an independent report on Rhys Austin, who claimed voices in his head drove him to kill Girven.

“No one told me Bianca’s supposed last words. How is this ethical?” Ms Anderson said yesterday.

Melbourne University Publishing is known to have received at least one other complaint that the book contains substantial amounts of personal information about a ­killer Dr Grant reported on for the Mental Health Court of Queensland in a separate case.

MUP chief executive Louise Adler last night said the book was based on previously published material and was published “to contribute to the national conversation on mental health”.

Dr Grant had been a “highly respected forensic psychiatrist for over 40 years” and had “carefully considered the ethical issues ­involved”.

An author’s note says the cases were in the public domain through court proceedings and media reporting, and none ­involved treatment of patients in his care, otherwise “medical confidentiality would apply”.

MUP is understood to have at one stage discussed withholding the book from sale in Queensland but yesterday confirmed it remained available nationally, with Dr Grant on a publicity blitz to promote it.

Austin initially told police he and Girven — his girlfriend and long-time friend — were in a van at Brisbane’s Mount Gravatt lookout when they were attacked in 2010. More than a year later he admitted he had a “mission to kill” and had put Girven in a stranglehold for 10 minutes. He was ultimately found to be of unsound mind.

Dr Grant writes that in a long interview he asked Austin ­whether Girven said anything during the attack. “He paused for a long moment, looking distracted and distressed, before finally answering, though only at the ­behest of the voice in his head,” the book states. “He told me that Bianca had said, ‘I want to say goodbye to my son’, and that he’d replied, ‘No, he’ll know’, before tightening his grip … until she stopped moving.”

Ms Anderson said she was not warned that her daughter’s case would be included in the book, finding out from a victim-support service on Friday. “The information we as families get when a murderer goes through mental health is limited,” she said. “Somehow (Dr Grant) is allowed to give out any knowledge he has to the public, and be paid for it.”

Dr Grant, who was due to ­attend an event in Brisbane last night, did not reply to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for MUP said he was travelling.

The author’s note says all the people he saw for assessments were made aware the information they provided was not confidential and would go into a report available in court proceedings.

“Using real cases raises important and delicate issues with regard to confidentiality and carries the risk of causing distress,” the book states. “I have given a lot of thought to these issues. I have named offenders and their victims because they are already in the public domain.”