600 rape investigation samples cleared in backlog
A backlog of 600 samples linked to rape investigations in Queensland has been cleared by the state laboratory after a DNA error led to failures in testing samples from thousands of major crimes.
Attorney-General Deb Frecklington said the state had increased the number of scientists at the Queensland Forensic Science Laboratory from 19 to 24 and appointed two new members to its leadership board.
He also said the state has cleared 70 percent of samples taken from major crimes awaiting testing since November, amounting to more than 8,200 samples.
“These aren’t just numbers, these are people who have waited and stopped waiting,” Frecklington said.
The laboratory has been in constant scandal since late 2021, with former forensic biologist Dr. It became the center of two landmark commissions of inquiry after Kirsty Wright blew the whistle on alleged testing failures in the 2013 murder investigation into Shandee Blackburn.
The FSQ is a statutory authority set up in 2023 to respond to this incompetence after it was revealed that cracks in Queensland’s then-automated DNA extraction method may have allowed criminals to evade conviction from 2007 to 2016.
But a report published in June said scientists knowingly tested samples in a “tainted laboratory” from early 2023, meaning some results given to police and used to prosecute cases were unreliable.
In late 2025, the state began outsourcing the tests to United States forensic laboratory Bode Technology.
On Monday, FSQ director Mick Fuller, who was appointed to the role in September, said the lab has since been able to “breathe and reset”.
“We never want to have a backlog of sexual assault kits, and I guarantee there won’t be another backlog as long as the laboratories survive,” he said.
Fuller said FSQ changed protocols to reduce contamination in samples that compromised more than 100,000 samples, while also upgrading technology and removing faulty equipment.
Fuller said Bode Technology can deliver results within a 60-day turnaround time.
“Aim [of] “Mine is to restart sexual assault testing, probably in July this year, which means we could have results within five or 10 business days,” he said.
The state had also retested results from about 20,000 samples previously analyzed from the first 40,000 samples that fell under the historical review process.
In June last year, the laboratory tested 10,000 of the flagged samples.
Fuller previously said he expected the state could clear about 1,000 major crime samples and 175 forensic medical examination kits a month, but he reiterated Monday that clearing the backlog “will take a lot of time.”
“It’s not just about taking a vial and retesting; you really have to look at the continuity of all aspects of it, but we’re reducing that,” he said.
The FSQ’s two new leadership members include UK Metropolitan Police forensic scientist Saranjeet Khera and long-serving Ministry of Justice employee Kirsten Eades.
Shadow Attorney-General Meaghan Scanlon said on Monday that the backlog under the former Labor government was starting to ease.
“Ultimately some of these issues have been of concern to both sides of politics for a long time and I think everyone wants to see justice delivered to victims of crime and this should be a truly bipartisan issue,” he told reporters outside Parliament House.
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