SEX ABUSE RECKONING
“DEFICIENCIES in the management of this information by Tasmania Police have been identified.” Is there a more passive way to say police failed to properly stop a pedophile nurse despite multiple warnings?
To their credit, Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein and Tasmania Police Commissioner Darren Hine fronted the public yesterday and apologised to victims of child sexual abuse for the mishandling of complaints. It’s just that there really aren’t any words that can provide comfort to any of the victims caught up in this.
An internal police review that was released yesterday revealed complaints made about Launceston General Hospital nurse James Geoffrey “Jim” Griffin date back to 2009. Griffin had worked in the Paediatric Unit of the LGH since 2001.
Child and Family Services and the police failed to communicate with each other over both a 2011 and a 2013 complaint.
So miscommunication potentially allowed this predator to roam free.
The review found in 2015, the Australian Federal Police gave Tasmania Police information relating to Griffin and sexual offending and child exploitation material. Inexplicably, there were “deficiencies in the management” of this information and an investigation is still under way. The findings of this investigation will be presented to the Commission of Inquiry.
Griffin, 69, of Legana, was eventually charged in 2019 with more than a dozen charges, including maintaining a sexual relationship with a young person under the age of 17, eight counts of indecent assault, distribution of child exploitation material and producing child exploitation material.
He died by suicide shortly after being charged. By agreeing last year to conducting the Commission of Inquiry into the Responses of Tasmanian Government Institutions to Child Sexual Abuse, Mr Gutwein has agreed to lift the lid on the handling of allegations of abuse across numerous government departments.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen 14 state government employees stood down pending child abuse investigations.
The government is not giving details into the nature of allegations, who is involved and how they came to pass. The government is saying it needs to wait until the Commission of Inquiry runs its course; it is expected to begin within weeks.
A day of reckoning is coming though. All we ask is that the truth is fully revealed — no matter who is implicated and how bad the failings are. Tasmanians have a right to know how the state is handling complaints of sexual abuse against children and will insist on knowing how past failings will be righted in the future.
We need all children and adults to know that no stone will be left unturned in holding those who abuse their power to account.