PASSAGE OF THE DAY: “It follows revelations in The Weekend Australian of a separate contamination scandal in the lab that led to a mother being wrongly told her deceased son must have been switched at birth. In that case, flawed processes resulted in tests repeatedly finding a mother and father could not be the biological parents of a young man whose skeletal remains were found in Brisbane’s south. More than three years later, a review by renowned forensic scientist Dr Kirsty Wright and colleague Tim Gardam found a bandsaw likely cross-contaminated samples. New DNA testing confirmed it was the couple’s son."
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STORY: “DNA LAB shambles linked sexual assault victim to fatal hit-run," The Australian, (Reporter David Murray) reports, on November 21, 2022. (David Murray is The Australian's National Crime Correspondent. He was previously Crime Editor at The Courier-Mail and prior to that was News Corp's London-based Europe Correspondent.)
GIST; ‘A sexual assault victim was wrongly linked to a hit-and-run death, and samples from the body of a murdered woman were rendered useless when a testing fault caused cross-contamination in more than 100 cases at Queensland’s troubled DNA laboratory.
Managers failed to investigate the mass contamination of samples throughout the first half of 2008, then sought legal advice on wording they could use in court disclosures to conceal it from the public, according to evidence to a $6m commission of inquiry.
Forensic scientist Ingrid Moeller was working on her first big case – the abduction and murder of a young woman by an unknown offender after a night out in Gladstone – when she noticed contamination of control samples where there should have been no DNA.
She was alarmed and brought the red flag to the attention of her team leader, Justin Howes, but effectively nothing was done.
“More samples started coming in for the case in the following months,” Dr Moeller says in a statement provided to the inquiry.
“Instead of thoroughly investigating the cause of the contamination, samples continued to be processed.”
A total of 19 samples from the case had to be retrospectively failed, rendering them unreliable and unusable in criminal proceedings.
Many of those were from the murder victim’s body, found in bushland on the outskirts of the coastal Queensland town.
Fortunately other evidence was unaffected, including a sample from material used to bind the victim that contained the DNA of the man who raped and killed her.
“Contaminations continued to affect extraction batches from early February to late June of 2008. Numerous other cases were affected by the contaminations,” Dr Moeller wrote.
In another murder, around 26 samples had to be retrospectively failed, making those unusable too.
Other documents provided to the inquiry show the DNA of a woman who had reported a sexual assault was found mixed with the DNA of a person killed in a hit-and-run.
Dr Moeller said in her evidence that she was “horrified” when she learned a sexual assault victim was wrongly linked to a murder.
“My understanding is that victim of the sexual assault case was then actually asked questions about the murder case,” she said.
The woman was found to have no connection to the death.
It was eventually discovered that following the introduction of a new automated DNA extraction process called DNAIQ, samples were leaking and cross-contaminating other unrelated cases in the same batch.
Then-acting managing scientist Cathie Allen prepared a briefing note on the contamination disaster for Queensland Health executives. It stated that a total of 117 cases had been identified as being affected including 25 major crimes, at a time when the lab was already under pressure in the media over revelations of major testing backlogs.
“These events have a large media implication, given recent adverse media coverage of QHFSS (Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services),” Ms Allen wrote.
“The Victorian Forensic Laboratory has recently encountered contamination of a much larger scale and this has been widely reported in the media.
“Comparisons could be drawn between Victoria and Queensland, although the cause of the contamination in Victoria has not been reported.”
Seeking to limit the public fallout, the lab sought legal advice about what it needed to disclose to the courts.
Joint advice was subsequently provided by Queensland’s then solicitor-general Walter Sofronoff, and an experienced barrister, Peter Davis.
“Queensland Health wishes to make proper disclosure of the irregularities in the testing, but does not, if possible, wish to use the word ‘contamination’ for fear that this might damage public confidence in DNA analysis in Queensland,” the advice stated.
The two lawyers provided written advice that Queensland Health should make “proper disclosure” in reports because it was an honest and proper course.
If it failed to do so, convictions could later be quashed and scientists could be accused of bias, undermining public confidence in the system, the advice added.
“It is not possible for us to draw the actual wording as this involves scientific input,” the lawyers stated. “There is some concern about the use of the word ‘contamination’. That word need not be used if the circumstances can be otherwise accurately described.
“Instructing solicitors can certainly assist in the drawing of the wording, and we can, if required, settle that wording.”
Mr Sofronoff KC is now heading the DNA inquiry, which has gathered evidence of disturbing failures dating back decades.
Dr Moeller said that as a new reporting scientist she felt out of her depth in dealing with the contamination of samples in the Gladstone murder investigation, so it was suggested Mr Howes could take over the case.
“This appeared to draw his ire when he said, ‘for f..k’s sake I’ll do it’,” Dr Moeller stated.
“For many subsequent years, Justin would bring up (the murder) as a way, I felt, of belittling me. He did this in front of other staff.”
It follows revelations in The Weekend Australian of a separate contamination scandal in the lab that led to a mother being wrongly told her deceased son must have been switched at birth.
In that case, flawed processes resulted in tests repeatedly finding a mother and father could not be the biological parents of a young man whose skeletal remains were found in Brisbane’s south.
More than three years later, a review by renowned forensic scientist Dr Kirsty Wright and colleague Tim Gardam found a bandsaw likely cross-contaminated samples.
New DNA testing confirmed it was the couple’s son.
Mr Howes and Ms Allen were stood down following a damning interim report by Mr Sofronoff that found the lab misled judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and victims.
Public hearings are due to resume on Thursday,
examining the unsolved murder of Shandee Blackburn, the case that sparked the inquiry through The Australian’s podcast, Shandee’s Story.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/dna-lab-shambles-linked-sex-assault-victim-to-fatal-hitrun/news-story/4971fe515ef8baf1b8e62722c447c0c9
