A witness at Tasmania's commission of inquiry has learned while giving evidence that the state's health department carried out an investigation into his alleged sexual abuse without input from him — and came to the conclusion he wasn't abused.
WARNING: This article contains content that some readers may find distressing.
Ben Felton was the first witness to appear at the inquiry into the Tasmanian government's responses into child sexual abuse in Launceston on Monday, where the commission is focusing on the health system and the Launceston General Hospital (LGH).
Mr Felton told the inquiry he was admitted to the children's ward at the LGH with pneumonia in 1989 when he was 13.
He said late that night, he asked for a drink of water and a male nurse asked him to follow him to the kitchen.
Mr Felton told the inquiry the nurse gave him a glass of water but proceeded to pull down his pants and touched him inappropriately and made "other gestures that he was going to do things".
"What he did, I'm not going to go into that, it wasn't nice and nobody should ever have to feel like that," Mr Felton said.
Mr Felton told the inquiry he told his parents what had happened and there was a meeting between the family, two nurses, the director of clinical services, Dr Peter Renshaw, and someone they were told was a detective.
He said his father asked for the male nurse — who the commission is calling "George" — to be charged and investigated and, at the end of the meeting, Dr Renshaw told him there would be a full investigation and "hope your son doesn't remember".
However, Mr Felton said he never received any updates from the hospital, and no counselling nor other help.
In 2003, he said he decided to go back to the hospital to find Dr Renshaw.
"I just said to him, 'I'm the little boy that wouldn't remember' and, in that moment, I had his full attention," Mr Felton told the inquiry.
"I said, 'I would like to see the outcome of the investigation'."
Mr Felton said Dr Renshaw didn't give him any information but gave him the phone number for someone else at the hospital, who he called "once or twice a week for a couple of months" but "nothing happened".
Counsel assisting the commission, Elizabeth Bennett SC, presented Mr Felton with a letter from the hospital dated 2005, but he said he had never seen it before.
"If an investigation has happened, they certainly didn't inform the victim, myself," Mr Felton said.
"I went completely off the rails, sold everything I owned and lived homeless on the streets of London for a year.
Ms Bennett told the inquiry that Dr Renshaw had told counsel that there was a meeting in 2003 but he didn't have any information about what was said.
She went on to ask Mr Felton if he was aware of an investigation into his allegations, which he said he wasn't.
Then she read to him the findings of a 2021 Department of Health investigation report into his alleged abuse.
"In my view, the evidence does not establish — on the balance of probabilities — that 'George' touched Benjamin's genitals," the report stated.
"This is strongly denied and is not supported by the only contemporaneous evidence."
Mr Felton said anybody making judgements about that night was "only guessing, because they weren't there".
In addition to not being informed about the findings, Ben Felton told the inquiry no one had asked him questions for the Health Department investigation either.
He said that, to date, he had received no apology, compensation nor assistance from the LGH.
Mr Felton told the inquiry that no child should ever be put through the traumatic experience he had been through.
"I just want to know that every other victim out there, if we all come forward, we can steamroll these bastards out of our community," he said.
Zoe's story retold
The inquiry also heard from Craig and Anne Duncan, whose daughter, Zoe, was a passionate hockey player with chronic illnesses, including asthma.
In 2001, the inquiry heard, when Zoe was 11, she was admitted to the LGH after an asthma flare-up.
Her parents told the commission that Zoe disclosed that she was abused by a male doctor during that stay, eventually revealing that she had been raped.
Craig Duncan told the nurse on duty, who immediately reported it to other staff members, and a meeting was held.
Mr Duncan told the staff what happened, and a registrar in the room told him the doctor — who the commission is referring to as Dr Tim — was a very nice man and "wouldn't have meant any harm".
Three days later, Mr Duncan had a meeting with Dr Peter Renshaw, who was the director of medical services at the time.
"When I told Peter Renshaw what Zoe had disclosed to me, the first thing he said was: 'Well this is the third case of similar complaints against doctors in that department'.
"He told me, 'One's been deregistered and one's under a cloud. The name that you mentioned isn't the name I thought you were going to give me … he's my protege'."
The Duncans told the inquiry that, shortly after, Dr Renshaw interviewed Zoe himself, with her father and a secretary present.
Mr Duncan said that, after the meeting, Peter Renshaw told him that "Zoe wasn't upset enough for sexual assault of any nature to have occurred".
He said that, in a second meeting, Dr Renshaw explained away aspects of Zoe's allegations as the doctor looking for ulcers or trying to locate her heart.
A mandatory report of the alleged abuse wasn't made to Child and Family Services by the hospital for a week.
Mr Duncan told the inquiry that he felt Dr Renshaw downplaying everything had made him question himself.
"I think that I was taken advantage of, in a sense, because my conservative and cautious nature was played upon," Mr Duncan said.
"I should have insisted that action be taken. I feel responsibility as her dad. I let her down badly.
The Duncans told the inquiry that it seemed as though the hospital and department had been interested in protecting their own reputation, and it was unclear whether "key players" were protecting reputations, incompetent, dealing with a poor system of reporting, or worse.
"Was Zoe's truth deliberately covered up?" asked her father.
The Duncans themselves notified police in late 2001, but Zoe's allegations didn't lead to charges.
After battling anxiety and severe chronic fatigue, Zoe Duncan died in 2017 from epilepsy complications.
'I'm sorry for their loss'
Elizabeth Stackhouse was the chief executive of the LGH from 1998 until 2003. She told the inquiry that, 20 years later, it was her view that there were failures in Zoe Duncan's case.
She said there should have been an independent investigation.
Ms Stackhouse told the inquiry that Dr Renshaw should not have interviewed Zoe on site shortly after the alleged abuse, that she hadn't been happy about the delay in Zoe's complaint being referred to Child and Family Services, and had communicated this to Dr Renshaw.
She said that, in hindsight, Dr Renshaw should have been reprimanded.
Counsel assisting, Ms Bennett, told the inquiry that Dr Renshaw himself was expected to give evidence at the commission soon, and read aloud from an apology he had written.
"I believed at the time that Dr Tim's behaviour was a professional boundary issue which did not necessarily meet the criteria for a mandatory report," Dr Renshaw's apology said.
"I accept that this is wrong and would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the Duncan family for the seven-day delay in my notification of the incident."
