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Launceston General Hospital staff kept in the dark about paedophile co-worker James Geoffrey Griffin

Keelie McMahon said she realised she needed to come forward "for the other people, more so than myself". (ABC News: Jessica Moran)

Nursing staff at the Launceston General Hospital were told their colleague had retired and to respect his privacy, when he had actually been suspended because of child sexual abuse allegations, Tasmania's commission of inquiry has heard. 

Keelie McMahon and her mother Annette Whitemore have given evidence at the inquiry into child sexual abuse in government agencies, which is this week focusing on the Launceston General Hospital (LGH) and James Geoffrey Griffin, the now notorious paedophile who worked on the children's ward of the hospital for almost two decades.

WARNING: This article contains content that some readers may find distressing.

Ms Whitemore was a registered nurse and worked with Griffin, and their families became friends and went on camping trips together. 

Ms McMahon told the inquiry she was sexually abused by Griffin from when she was 14, around late 2011, but did not tell anybody.

At the end of July 2019, a police investigation into Griffin was underway because of other complaints, but Ms Whitemore said an email was sent to staff at the LGH saying "Jim had retired".

She said the email stated that "he will let us know when he wants a celebration, can we please respect his privacy and he'll contact us when he feels like he's able to."

Annette Whitemore (left) with her daughter Keelie McMahon. (ABC News)

Ms McMahon said she didn't tell anybody about her abuse until her mother told her that someone else had made a complaint about Griffin. 

"My first thought went to, people aren't going to believe her," Ms McMahon told the inquiry.

"To begin I didn't want to make a formal statement but then I thought about it and I thought 'no, I need to do this for the other people more so than myself'." 

Ms McMahon made a police complaint in September 2019. 

Ms Whitemore was still working at the hospital, and said she told her managers what had happened and took some time off.

'Please don't talk about it'

Griffin was charged in October of 2019 over child sexual abuse and child exploitation material, but he was bailed and died by suicide before he could be tried. 

Ms Whitemore said an email sent to staff only said that "a colleague had passed away", with no mention of Griffin's name.

"Then it went straight into confidentiality as nurses, 'please don't talk about it'," Ms Whitemore told the inquiry.

"So there was a feeling of we couldn't talk about someone we'd known upwards of 15, 20 years that had passed away."

"And even thought he'd done all these vile things … there were so many mixed emotions around finding out what he'd been accused of, finding out what he'd done to my daughter and finding out that a colleague had died."

She told the inquiry that the nurse unit manager Sonja Leonard and the nursing and midwifery director Janette Tonks were "trying to keep a lid on things so were telling us not to talk about it", until the director of clinical services, Peter Renshaw, returned from overseas. 

Ms Whitemore said trauma-informed professionals should have been brought into the hospital straight away.

"The feeling was it was just being swept under the carpet," she said.

She said she had "no respect" for Dr Renshaw, who had initially been supportive.

Dr Renshaw is expected to give evidence later this week. 

Manager thought 'education and redirection' would change behaviour 

Sonja Leonard, the former nurse unit manager, told the inquiry that she had directed staff not to talk about Griffin's death because no death notice had come out yet, and because she was trying to buy time to talk to HR and the nursing director about what they should do. 

"I did direct the staff not to discuss Mr Griffin's passing, that we'd had a difficult weekend but if we could just focus on our work and our professionalism," Ms Leonard said. 

Ms Leonard became the nurse unit manager — Griffin's manager — in 2008, and said it wasn't long before she became aware of bullying and a "dysfunctional" culture on the children's ward, Ward 4K. 

She told the inquiry she frequently saw Griffin meeting young patients with a hug over a number of years, and she was aware of Griffin calling children on the ward "babe", "baby" and "princess" from 2008 onwards. 

Counsel assisting the commission, Elizabeth Bennett SC, asked Ms Leonard if Griffin's everyday behaviour of hugging children and calling them "baby" had been more or less accepted by her as "just Jim", to which Ms Leonard responded "it was accepted by all the staff, yes". 

James Geoffrey Griffin worked on the children's ward of the hospital for almost two decades. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)

The inquiry heard Ms Leonard took a series of reports and complaints about Mr Griffin to HR or the nursing director, including that Griffin was cuddling a child, going against a care plan and giving his phone number to patients in 2009. 

Griffin received warnings about "professional boundary breaches". 

Ms Bennett put to her that it was clear by the time another complaint was made about Griffin in 2017, that he wasn't going to comply with professional boundaries with children. 

Ms Leonard: "I always thought that education and redirection would change that behaviour"

Ms Bennett: "You had had that view since 2008, is that right?"

Ms Leonard: "Yes"

Ms Bennett: "It is by this stage 2017, is that right?"

Ms Leonard: "Yes"

Ms Bennett: "At what stage should someone simply be moved away from children?"

Ms Leonard: "I'm not sure of the answer to that question" 

The inquiry had previously heard that Griffin went on secondment to Ashley Youth Detention Centre not long after a 2017 complaint about him making sexualised comments to teenage girls.

Ms Leonard told the inquiry she didn't know how the transfer to Ashley came about, but presumed Griffin had arranged it himself with involvement from HR. 

Ms Leonard ended her evidence by crying and saying she felt she had been groomed by Griffin during a period where the culture and conflict in Ward 4K created a "perfect storm". 

"I feel deeply that we were deceived, we were manipulated and we were sold a version of Mr Griffin that he wanted us to believe." 

She said at the time, she hadn't perceived a risk to children but looking back now, she "most definitely" did.

Mandatory reporting issues 

Ms Whitemore said while nurses at Ward 4K knew in general terms that they were mandatory reporters, it had not been clear to them that they could go outside of the hospital to make complaints to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA).

Emily Shepherd from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)

Emily Shepherd from the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation told the inquiry that in a staff meeting after Griffin's death in 2019 there was a "collective recognition that there had been a pattern of reporting over a number of years" about him. 

But she said there was a lack of clarity on which specific medical staff were responsible for mandatory reporting and that everyone had the obligation to report, and many nurses had not known they could go to AHPRA, and were also unclear on how they might escalate a complaint. 

Ms Leonard told the inquiry there was an issue with staff and mandatory reporting right up to 2020, when she realised some child safety concerns unrelated to Griffin were only being reported to social workers, and not mandatorily reported to the Child Safety Service. 

She said she couldn't recall what training there was around mandatory reporting, and she escalated the systemic issue to the nursing director of women's and children's services. 

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