A pedophile continued working at a Tasmanian hospital for eight years after the facility's human resources department was informed he had sexually abused a colleague when she was a child, an inquiry has been told.
Launceston General Hospital pediatric nurse James Geoffrey Griffin was charged with several child abuse offences in late 2019 and subsequently took his own life.
An inquiry has been told Griffin abused children and breached boundaries during a near two decade stint at the facility's ward 4K.
In 2011, social worker Kylee Pearn met with the hospital's human resources department and told them she had been abused by Griffin for several years from age seven.
"The response was there was nothing they could do without a conviction," she told the inquiry on Tuesday.
"They had looked into him ... and he had been on 4K for a long time. They said he would cause too much of a fuss if he was taken from that ward.
"I got the sense that it was just all too hard."
Ms Pearn disclosed the abuse after her child spent a night on ward 4K, saying she felt Griffin posed a risk.
"I thought how incredibly unfair it was that I could protect my child but no one else in this ward knew that information," she said.
She had an off-the-record conversation with police but didn't progress the matter.
"There was a lot of fear on my part. I wasn't sure of the likelihood of getting a conviction. It was a different time back then. I didn't feel safe to go through that process," Ms Pearn said.
Ms Pearn made a formal statement to police in 2019 in support of another survivor who had come forward.
Department of Health human resources manager James Bellinger said Ms Pearn's disclosure in 2011 should have resulted in notifications to child safety services, police and the national medical regulator.
He also said the head of agency should have been briefed.
"Given the nature of the disclosure, we would have had to seek advice from the office of the solicitor-general," Mr Bellinger said.
Mr Bellinger agreed there were deficiencies in an internal hospital review following Griffin's charges and pre-2019 there was no central repository for reports about staff conduct.
"Is there a chance that had they been put together and analysed, a pattern might have been identified?" counsel assisting Elizabeth Bennett SC asked.
"Yes," Mr Bellinger replied.
Mr Bellinger said there were no physical records of the 2011 meeting and that he couldn't recall whether he attended, despite a social worker who supported Ms Pearn saying he was likely there.
Ms Pearn quit her government job last year, saying she no longer felt proud being a public servant.
Media coverage of the charges against Griffin was a major catalyst for the calling of the commission of inquiry, which is examining state government responses to abuse allegations in the public service.
