Law firm says Tasmanian government should accept accountability in civil claims over Griffin disaster

A law firm has called on the Tasmanian government to accept accountability in civil claims over the Launceston General Hospital paedophile nurse disaster.

A law firm helping several young women sue the Tasmanian government – after they were sexually abused as children by state employee James Geoffrey Griffin – have called on the government to accept accountability.

Arnold Thomas & Becker said in a statement on Wednesday that following a week of “harrowing evidence” at the commission of inquiry, it was time for the government to accept accountability over the Griffin disaster.

The firm is currently acting for about 12 Griffin victims, who were targeted by the paedophile as patients of the Launceston General Hospital paediatric ward.

The firm also said the government had put forward an “outrageous defence” that some of its clients were not actually abused by Griffin – meaning they would need to prove they were in fact abused.

Abuse lawyer Kelly Schober said over the past week, the commission of inquiry had heard evidence demonstrating the LGH was aware of complaints against Griffin – but ignored them.

She said the evidence demonstrated the state government had failed to protect children in its care at the hospital – failing to intervene and enabling Griffin to continue using it as “his hunting ground”.

“The government needs to revisit its response to our allegations and the findings of the inquiry,” Ms Schober said.

One of the firm’s clients alleges she was 17 when Griffin gave her pain medication, sedating her until she was nearly asleep, then raping her in a private room at the hospital.

Health chief breaks down during apology to child abuse victims

THE secretary of Tasmania’s health department has tearfully apologised to victims of child sexual abuse at Launceston General Hospital, adding she was “personally horrified by the lack of empathy, humanity” of those within her department and the Tasmania Health Service.

Kathrine Morgan-Wicks was due to give evidence at the commission of inquiry last week, but her evidence was deferred to August after former hospital CEO Stephen Eyre collapsed in the witness stand on Friday.

But she returned to the inquiry on Tuesday to say she was “deeply sorry” after hearing the evidence canvassed in Launceston over the past week.

Her apology was addressed to a number of individual victim-survivors who have given evidence, plus staff and whistleblowers.

“I have thought long and hard about how I can express my reflection and apology, and have done my best to do this, which is from my heart and as a human being that has heard all that has been said in this room,” Ms Morgan-Wicks told the inquiry, from a pre-prepared statement.

“I am personally horrified by the lack of empathy, humanity, and often a lack of trauma-informed approach by my department and the Tasmanian Health Service to such devastating accounts of abuse from the victim-survivors who have shown immense courage to come forward.”

Head of Department of Health Tasmania Kathrine Morgan-Wicks. Picture: Chris Kidd

She extended her apology to other victim-survivors, including those who remained silent and those unaware if they or their children may have been abused by nurse James Geoffrey Griffn or other paedophiles in the hospital.

“I have had many ‘I wish’ moments this week – I wish I had done, I wish I had asked more, I wish I had dived deeper, I wish I had known x detail and acted earlier – and I will take these learnings with me for the rest of my life,” Ms Morgan-Wicks said.

She said she was “personally devastated” by the lack of care and support offered to victim-survivors, the lack of proper procedure in dealing with abuse allegation, and the lack of staff training on interviewing, investigating and detecting grooming and child abuse.

Ms Morgan-Wicks said it was “wrong and an absolute failure by our health system” that witnesses and staff who’d come forward had been “fobbed off”, with the abuse minimised or their complaint ignored.

She also offered personal apologies to a number of victim-survivors who’d come forward during the Launceston hearings, and to the family of the late Zoe Duncan.

Zoe, then 11, reported in 2001 she’d been raped by an LGH doctor, but the hospital ultimately preferred the denials of Dr Tim* despite her escalating and consistent disclosures.

Zoe died at home from epilepsy in 2017 at age 28. She had vowed to never return to the LGH for treatment.

Ms Morgan-Wicks said Zoe’s family had “waited a long time for (the health department) to believe them.

“Let me say, as the leader of Health, I believe,” she said.

“I offer my deepest apology to you for our failure to hear what Zoe tried to tell us, and what she ultimately revealed through incremental disclosure.

“May Zoe rest in peace, with her memory living on through the enormous effort that you have each gone to, to right the wrong done to her, and I’ll never forget Zoe’s story.”

Ms Morgan-Wicks thanked a number of staff members – Will Gordon, Maria Unwin, Annette Whitemore, Kylee Pearn and Amanda Duncan – for coming forward as whistleblowers.

“I’m sorry it’s taken a commission of inquiry for you to be believed.”

‘Independent facilitator’ to chair LGH review - July 5

AN INDEPENDENT facilitator will chair a review into child safety and governance at Launceston General Hospital.

Department of health secretary Kathrine Morgan-Wicks, giving evidence to the commission of inquiry on Tuesday, confirmed advice would be “independently facilitated”, with an advisory panel comprising experts, staff, victim-survivors and union representatives.

Her comments came after she and Premier Jeremy Rockliff announced the review over the weekend, in the wake of damning evidence and harrowing accounts of abuse at the hospital by paedophiles including James Geoffrey Griffin.

Counsel assisting the commission, Maree Norton, questioned Ms Morgan-Wicks and how she would ensure the review was independent, and that “all parties, including yourself” were accountable.

“This review is not about digging through the past and all the accounts we’ve heard – that’s absolutely for the inquiry,” Ms Morgan-Wicks replied

“This review is about structure … and embedding child safety and wellbeing right into our structure and our governance.”

The secretary said she’d “really like” to attend the meetings, and promised to “step back” if the integrity of the process was compromised.

“This is about setting up an organisational structure of our hospitals that will report directly to me,” she said.

“I feel that if I do not have an opportunity to participate in that … it makes it that one step harder to make sure that is implemented properly and works.

“I feel that as a leader of health, I need to be part of the solution.”

‘I really hate the LGH’: Patient says Griffin ‘had me fooled’ - July 5

WHEN Angelique Knight finally mustered the courage to tell police she’d been abused by nurse James Griffin, she was bluntly told “we can’t charge a dead person”.

That moment had taken her years to arrive at, only to feel “it was a waste of time”, leaving the station “humiliated, disgusted”.

“It really took a lot for me to go in there,” Ms Knight told the child sexual abuse commission of inquiry on Tuesday.

“When I spoke to the lady … she came back to me pretty quickly and said ‘sorry, there’s nothing we can do, we can’t charge a dead person – I’m sorry that this has happened’.”

Ms Knight was at Launceston General Hospital (LGH) regularly from the ages of five to 21 with an auto-immune condition.

She was placed under the care of Griffin, a now-notorious paedophile nurse, from the age of 14.

Initially, she hated him, noting “he was very touchy feely”, screaming out “I wanted that man away from me”.

Ms Knight’s mother complained to the nurse in charge, saying Griffin should not care for her child, but “nothing really came of that” and she was soon again placed in the abuser’s care.

Eventually, her opinion of Griffin started to change.

“He had me fooled,” she said.

“The touching began pretty much instantly, from the first moment to be honest. He was always hugging me, touching me, touching my bum. He always had his arms around me.”

Griffin was always there – even when she was washing and bathing – with his touching soon turning intimate.

Even though other staff noticed, no-one said anything.

“I just always got told, ‘that’s just Jim. He’s just a touchy-feely kind of guy’.”

When Ms Knight got married in 2009, she even asked Griffin to give her away.

But he was told by the LGH that doing so would be inappropriate, so he offered to be her MC instead.

After that, Griffin disappeared “off the face of the Earth – I couldn’t find him”, with Ms Knight unaware Griffin had died by suicide until she read an article in the Mercury.

“I just lost it. That was – it was like a dream, and then a whirlwind of emotions,” she said.

The inquiry heard when she came forward to disclose her abuse by Griffin, Ms Knight said police provided her no support or referrals – and she claims she was similarly dismissed by the hospital.

She said she emailed LGH director of clinical services, Peter Renshaw, but only received a “generic” response, “a very basic email that he’d probably sent to everybody” with “no acknowledgment this happened under his watch”.

Ms Knight said her contact with then-Premier Peter Gutwein was similar to her contact with Dr Renshaw.

“I just got back a very basic email that I feel that he didn’t write,” she told the inquiry.

Ms Knight, who was last year diagnosed with chronic leukaemia, said she had to recently spend three days back at the LGH, which was “horrendous”.

“I really hate the LGH,” she said.

She said while the staff more recently were caring, her perception of the LGH has been forever altered.

Last week, Ms Knight was at the LGH emergency department and watching the commission of inquiry live-streamed hearings on her phone.

“The head of nursing came in and saw me … and said, she was sorry she had to have this conversation, but if I could please be discreet because she’s got to support her workers because it impacts them as well,” she told the inquiry.

“I did tell her that I was speaking this week, but no acknowledgment or ‘I’m sorry’.

“I felt really hurt and upset about it … why do people not want to talk about it?

Dr Renshaw is expected to give evidence before the commission in August.

Complaint about LGH HR was referred back to HR – July 4

TASMANIAN Ombudsman Richard Connock says a complaint about claims of a cover-up at Launceston General Hospital should not have been referred back to the hospital’s HR for investigation.

In November 2019, Tasmania’s Integrity Commission received a complaint raising concerns about alleged mishandling of staff complaints in the Griffin scandal by the hospital’s HR department, and that documents and evidence had been destroyed.

Last week, the Integrity Commission’s Michael Easton said he’d recommended the November 2019 complaint be referred back to the Department of Health.

The complaint then ended up at the hospital’s HR department.

On Monday, Richard Connock, who is also the state’s Health Complaints Commissioner, was asked whether the Integrity Commission should have referred the complaint back to the Department of Health “as the most appropriate body”.

Counsel assisting the commission, Maree Norton, asked if doing so was a conflict of interest.

“Bearing in mind that part of that complaint concerned mishandling of staff complaints by the HR department, do you have any observations about the propriety or otherwise of HR being responsible for responding to the complaint?” she asked.

“It probably should have gone somewhere other than human resources in this instance, yes,” Mr Connock replied.

Last week, the commission heard the hospital’s HR department had received a number of alerts about paedophile nurse James Geoffrey Griffin over several years, but failed to intervene.

Head of Child Safety Service apologises for agency’s failings – July 2

THE head of Tasmania’s Child Safety Service has apologised to the family of Zoe Duncan for the agency not believing she was sexually abused by a Launceston General Hospital doctor, and for failing to protect Tiffany Skeggs from predator James Griffin.

On Monday, executive director Claire Lovell told the child sexual abuse commission of inquiry the agency made mistakes in dealing with both cases.

Zoe’s family reported her sexual assault to the Launceston General Hospital when it happened in 2001, but the hospital failed to report it to the agency for nine days.

The commission heard the agency then took nearly four months to complete an investigation, and did not report the matter on to Tasmania Police.

Ms Lovell said while there was no standard time frame for completing an assessment, the 11-year-old’s allegation should have been reported to police immediately.

She agreed it was inappropriate to subject Zoe to numerous interviews, and it was wrong the agency considered her evidence “contaminated” because her account had changed.

“She never moved from her position that something bad happened to her. She increased the details of what happened to her, but she never contradicted herself. Do you think it was a fair assessment that she was not a credible witness in that context?” counsel assisting the commission, Maree Norton, asked.

“No,” Ms Lovell replied.

Ms Norton noted Dr Tim* said he didn’t want to know the nature of Zoe’s allegations.

“Ultimately, Dr Tim’s* denial of allegations, which he ultimately didn’t have particulars of because he didn’t want them, was preferred over Ms Duncan’s clear and consistent disclosures,” she said.

Ms Lovell, who did not work in her role at the time, said it must have been the policy of the agency to investigate allegations before referring them to Tasmania Police – but this was no longer the case.

She said there was “certainly enough” by today’s standards to find Zoe had been abused; she agreed her agency should have reached out to the Duncan family.

“There is a role for us and there’s a role for me in acknowledging what happened … wasn’t right. It appears to me that Zoe Duncan was sexually abused and this investigation didn’t substantiate that,” she said.

“That’s a very poor outcome for that family, for Zoe and her family, and for that I’m extremely sorry that was their experience.”

Ms Duncan passed away from epilepsy in 2017 at age 28, refusing to return to the hospital for treatment.

Tiffany Skeggs speaking in Launceston after providing evidence at Tasmania's child sexual abuse commission of inquiry. Picture: David Killick

Ms Lovell also apologised to abuse survivor Tiffany Skeggs for the agency’s failure to protect her from James Geoffrey Griffin – given it was notified about what was happening to her as far back as 2013.

The commission heard the agency spoke to Griffin at the time, telling him there had been an “over-reaction to his behaviours”, his actions had been “misinterpreted” and “he ought to be more careful in future”.

“I was very, very moved by Ms Skeggs’ statement. I found it incredibly brave,” Ms Lovell said.

“The most powerful learning comes from people like Ms Skeggs.

“We should have protected Ms Skeggs and we didn’t protect her, and for that it’s hard to find words to say how sorry I am. I’m deeply sorry.”

* Name changed.

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