The mother who learned of her slain daughter’s final words for the first time in a ‘tell-all’ book was warned reading the chapter would be a ‘harrowing’ experience.
Sonia Anderson received a call from Queensland Health’s Victim Support Service last Friday telling her forensic psychiatrist and author Donald Grant had written about details of her daughter’s death she had never been told.
‘I went home where I was safe, and then I read it. I skimmed it once and haven’t had the courage to re-read it, it was so traumatising for me,’ Ms Anderson told news.com.au reported.
The grieving mother of murder victim Bianca Faith Girven unleashed a tirade of fury at Mr Grant for keeping details about her daughter’s death to make profit in his book Killer Instinct.
She confronted him at his book launch this week, accusing him of purposely withholding her daughter’s final words from her for eight years, Nine News reported.
Mr Grant described his work as a ‘look inside’ the minds of murderers, including Rhys Blake Austin, the man who choked Bianca to death at a park near the Mount Gravatt lookout in Brisbane, in 2010.
Ms Anderson blasted the disgraced author in front of crowds attending the launch, attacking him for making money ‘to line your pockets on my daughter’s murder.’
‘You should have contacted me, and told me what had happened,’ the angry mother yelled to Mr Grant who sat down in front of his audience.
Sonia Anderson (left) confronted author Donald Grant (right) at the launch of his book Killer Instinct this week, accusing him of purposely withholding her daughter’s final words
‘I read in your book that my daughter wanted to say goodbye to her son, and I didn’t know that until you wrote it,’ she told him.
‘You didn’t tell me what my daughter’s dying words were.’
Ms Anderson’s enraged outburst sparked a mass walking out of the launch in Brisbane’s West End.
‘For eight years, I’ve spent a lot of time with journalists, with television, with newspaper articles and magazines and you the psychiatrist are the one and only person that has caused me and my family deliberate distress,’ she said.
Mr Grant described his work as a ‘look inside’ the minds of murderers, including Rhys Blake Austin, the man who choked Bianca (pictured) to death at a park in Brisbane, in 2010
Mr Grant claimed in his book Bianca asked Austin if she could say a final goodbye to her son before he killed her, to which he allegedly responded, ‘No, he’ll know’ before ‘tightening his grip’.
The distressed mother said reading the chapter took her back ‘to a bad place that I didn’t ever want to go back to. I’ve been very traumatised’.
‘I had to know. For the first five years after Bianca’s murder, I had a video constantly playing in my head of the horror of what happened to her.’
Finding out details about her daughter’s murder was particularly difficult given Austin’s case was transferred to mental health court and him eventually being committed to a mental health facility.
The distressed mother (pictured) said reading the chapter took her back ‘to a bad place that I didn’t ever want to go back to. I’ve been very traumatised’
Under Queensland Health rules, family members of victims of murderers under care in the system have access to a very limited amount of information.
The government department previously described the book a ‘betrayal of patients, victims and their families’, saying it could not believe it had ‘occurred with one of their doctors’.
Mr Grant said said he would donate a portion of his profits from the book to families of murder victims to help them get access information from trials and judgments.
But Ms Anderson wants to book removed from publication, holding it responsible for ‘re-traumatising 10 families’ and causing them ‘excruciating pain’.
‘He’s published it believing he has the right to give it to everyone,’ she said.
Finding out details about her daughter’s murder was particularly difficult because victims of murderers under care in the system have access to a very limited amount of information
Austin (pictured) had his case was transferred to mental health court and he was eventually committed to a mental health facility – making details about his murder hard to access