Nurse Rape Report a Cover-up

Nurse Rape Report A Cover Up

By Alena Kantor

Partner: Corryn

GAOC: Australia

Website: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/26/2501659.htm

Health spokesman Mark McArdle says that the release of a Queensland Government report into the handling of the rape of a nurse in the Torres Strait is a "complete cover-up".  A report was published without fanfare on the Queensland Health website late on Monday. The report says that "The nurse was raped in February 2008 when a man broke into her Queensland home on Mabuiag Island just weeks after she arrived." A senior Queensland Health executive has been fired since the investigation found that senior officials in the area failed to address important health and safety issues for workers for a long time. The investigation also found that senior health officials did not respond correctly or sensitively by not removing the nurse from the island quickly after the attack. "This is a complete cover-up. Again the Government is simply passing the buck to a public servant to wear what they are responsible for" said Mr McArdle in a statement early this morning. A prominent Health Minister, Stephen Robertson, refused comment late yesterday stating that the Government was in caretake mode for the election campaign.

I think that this is a very important event to acknowledge because it shows how by doing a few things correctly (addressing important health and safety issues and doing your job correctly) can really change a course of events. If the senior executives had done what they were supposed to it may have helped prevent future rapes and help the nurse recover better. The fact that this was all covered up until now is also very disturbing. It took almost a year for the story to be revealed to the public and the Government hid important details of a disturbing case. I think that that is the most sad and disturbing part of the entire ordeal. There were a lot of people at fault in this investigation and if some people had done their job better I think the outcome could have been very different.