This thesis investigates the impact of apology hesitance on medical relationships after an error occurs. Literature suggests that medical personnel are reluctant to apologize because an apology suggests legal liability, violates the drive to provide perfect care that is expected of medical personnel and reinforced during medical education, and violates the certainty over bodies and maladies expected of medical personnel. I suggest that a culture of silence, a pattern of conduct embedded in medical culture, encourages apprehensiveness towards apology and responsibility in the face of error. Despite the fear of litigation, ‘Apology Act’ legislation shields apologizers from having their apology used against them in court, and literature suggests that apologizing following an error benefits doctors by restoring conscience and confidence, assists in the healing of patients and families and restores trust in their relationship with their health care provider, and refines the practice of medicine by addressing how the error occurred. I present two arguments in this thesis. First, I argue that a culture of silence has serious negative impacts on medical relationships and the safe provision of medical care as a whole by obstructing responsibility, apology, and preventing the discussion and correction of conduct that led to the error. Medical personnel who refuse to apologize, or provide an apology that is conditional, instrumental or otherwise of poor-quality leaves their relationship with patients and families in jeopardy. Further, by not apologizing, medical personnel obstruct their own ethical and moral development and obscure the origin and conditions surrounding the error, potentially jeopardizing the safety of future patients. Second, I argue that the medical culture of silence should be replaced by a culture that embraces apology. Doing so would permit medical culture to draw from care ethics, the principles of which are appropriate to responding to, maintaining, and repairing relationships that have experienced damage. The emphasis that care ethics places on maintaining and repairing relationships is especially coherent with apologies that seek to morally engage with the victim, promise non-repetition, and establish a proper record of events. Further, care ethics offers normative recommendations for conduct to respond to and repair relationships, provides inroads to refining notions of human security and safety, and is particularly attuned to interrogating dynamics of power within relationships, dynamics that can limit the potential for and impact of apology. This thesis offers the Tainted Blood Scandal of the 1980s and 90s as a case study. The provision of contaminated blood and blood product resulted in thousands of Canadians becoming infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Hepatitis C. Through this case, I show that the actions of public health officials, the Red Cross, and healthcare providers reflected a culture of silence that sought to avoid and dispute attributions of responsibility by victims, blood activists, and the public. This is the culture that this thesis in its advocacy of apology seeks to challenge. / Graduate

Abstracts THE TAINT This is a memoir of Ray “Poss” Ide, a man who has carried the taint of a horrifying crime since he was seventeen years old─a crime he claims he did not commit. The crime was the rape of a fourteen-year-old girl. The Taint looks at the time leading up to his conviction for rape, including the years he spent in Westbrook Boys’ Reformatory and Boggo Road Gaol as a minor, and then his sentence served in NSW gaols with such inmates as Stephen Bradley, the man who kidnapped and murdered Graham Thorne, and the bizarre but rather likeable Dave Scanlan, known for his exploits as “the Kingsgrove Slasher”. In prison, Scanlan encouraged him to become an elite sportsman and released, Poss was recruited by Canterbury Eels football team; but just on the point of making a name for himself in Sydney, someone discovered that he had been gaoled for rape, and humiliated, he left the team. He moved back home to Queensland via Grafton, NSW (where he met and later married the Jacaranda Queen) and continued his sporting career, but never again in the Big League. He became the Manager of the Waterside Workers’ Club and helped prevent a turf war between the Wharfies and members of the Painters and Dockers. Poss is now working with lawyer Robert Bax to have his case re-opened. He believes his story to be a cautionary tale for young men. It is a chronicle of social change, including the sexual revolution of the sixties, the confrontations with “the demons” in the streets of Brisbane during the Joh era of Bible-bashing fundamentalism and police corruption. It’s a story about what really went on behind closed doors in institutions where vulnerable children were preyed upon, in gaols where men were expected to become beasts. It is a story of how the taint of a terrible crime affected a man’s whole life. “QUESTIONS OF OWNERSHIP” Writing someone else’s story can be an ethical minefield─especially regarding questions of ownership. Who owns the story, the subject or the author? The easy answer to this is the subject owns the story and the author the text, but on closer examination this may not necessarily be so. Then there are those other stakeholders who claim ownership of story: people who embrace a narrative because of its similarity to their own lives. Published stories about institutional abuse have resonated for adults who as children were placed into the care of churches or the state. Another kind of ownership is claimed by readers who accept a version of a story and dismiss any counter-story as being invalid. What I call the “Plath Phenomenon” is an example of this. I will examine these kinds of ownership of story with particular reference to the work of Janet Malcolm on biography and then will look at gaps and silences in “official” stories, those created in police stations and courtrooms.

Abstracts THE TAINT This is a memoir of Ray “Poss” Ide, a man who has carried the taint of a horrifying crime since he was seventeen years old─a crime he claims he did not commit. The crime was the rape of a fourteen-year-old girl. The Taint looks at the time leading up to his conviction for rape, including the years he spent in Westbrook Boys’ Reformatory and Boggo Road Gaol as a minor, and then his sentence served in NSW gaols with such inmates as Stephen Bradley, the man who kidnapped and murdered Graham Thorne, and the bizarre but rather likeable Dave Scanlan, known for his exploits as “the Kingsgrove Slasher”. In prison, Scanlan encouraged him to become an elite sportsman and released, Poss was recruited by Canterbury Eels football team; but just on the point of making a name for himself in Sydney, someone discovered that he had been gaoled for rape, and humiliated, he left the team. He moved back home to Queensland via Grafton, NSW (where he met and later married the Jacaranda Queen) and continued his sporting career, but never again in the Big League. He became the Manager of the Waterside Workers’ Club and helped prevent a turf war between the Wharfies and members of the Painters and Dockers. Poss is now working with lawyer Robert Bax to have his case re-opened. He believes his story to be a cautionary tale for young men. It is a chronicle of social change, including the sexual revolution of the sixties, the confrontations with “the demons” in the streets of Brisbane during the Joh era of Bible-bashing fundamentalism and police corruption. It’s a story about what really went on behind closed doors in institutions where vulnerable children were preyed upon, in gaols where men were expected to become beasts. It is a story of how the taint of a terrible crime affected a man’s whole life. “QUESTIONS OF OWNERSHIP” Writing someone else’s story can be an ethical minefield─especially regarding questions of ownership. Who owns the story, the subject or the author? The easy answer to this is the subject owns the story and the author the text, but on closer examination this may not necessarily be so. Then there are those other stakeholders who claim ownership of story: people who embrace a narrative because of its similarity to their own lives. Published stories about institutional abuse have resonated for adults who as children were placed into the care of churches or the state. Another kind of ownership is claimed by readers who accept a version of a story and dismiss any counter-story as being invalid. What I call the “Plath Phenomenon” is an example of this. I will examine these kinds of ownership of story with particular reference to the work of Janet Malcolm on biography and then will look at gaps and silences in “official” stories, those created in police stations and courtrooms.

Abstracts THE TAINT This is a memoir of Ray “Poss” Ide, a man who has carried the taint of a horrifying crime since he was seventeen years old─a crime he claims he did not commit. The crime was the rape of a fourteen-year-old girl. The Taint looks at the time leading up to his conviction for rape, including the years he spent in Westbrook Boys’ Reformatory and Boggo Road Gaol as a minor, and then his sentence served in NSW gaols with such inmates as Stephen Bradley, the man who kidnapped and murdered Graham Thorne, and the bizarre but rather likeable Dave Scanlan, known for his exploits as “the Kingsgrove Slasher”. In prison, Scanlan encouraged him to become an elite sportsman and released, Poss was recruited by Canterbury Eels football team; but just on the point of making a name for himself in Sydney, someone discovered that he had been gaoled for rape, and humiliated, he left the team. He moved back home to Queensland via Grafton, NSW (where he met and later married the Jacaranda Queen) and continued his sporting career, but never again in the Big League. He became the Manager of the Waterside Workers’ Club and helped prevent a turf war between the Wharfies and members of the Painters and Dockers. Poss is now working with lawyer Robert Bax to have his case re-opened. He believes his story to be a cautionary tale for young men. It is a chronicle of social change, including the sexual revolution of the sixties, the confrontations with “the demons” in the streets of Brisbane during the Joh era of Bible-bashing fundamentalism and police corruption. It’s a story about what really went on behind closed doors in institutions where vulnerable children were preyed upon, in gaols where men were expected to become beasts. It is a story of how the taint of a terrible crime affected a man’s whole life. “QUESTIONS OF OWNERSHIP” Writing someone else’s story can be an ethical minefield─especially regarding questions of ownership. Who owns the story, the subject or the author? The easy answer to this is the subject owns the story and the author the text, but on closer examination this may not necessarily be so. Then there are those other stakeholders who claim ownership of story: people who embrace a narrative because of its similarity to their own lives. Published stories about institutional abuse have resonated for adults who as children were placed into the care of churches or the state. Another kind of ownership is claimed by readers who accept a version of a story and dismiss any counter-story as being invalid. What I call the “Plath Phenomenon” is an example of this. I will examine these kinds of ownership of story with particular reference to the work of Janet Malcolm on biography and then will look at gaps and silences in “official” stories, those created in police stations and courtrooms.

Abstracts THE TAINT This is a memoir of Ray “Poss” Ide, a man who has carried the taint of a horrifying crime since he was seventeen years old─a crime he claims he did not commit. The crime was the rape of a fourteen-year-old girl. The Taint looks at the time leading up to his conviction for rape, including the years he spent in Westbrook Boys’ Reformatory and Boggo Road Gaol as a minor, and then his sentence served in NSW gaols with such inmates as Stephen Bradley, the man who kidnapped and murdered Graham Thorne, and the bizarre but rather likeable Dave Scanlan, known for his exploits as “the Kingsgrove Slasher”. In prison, Scanlan encouraged him to become an elite sportsman and released, Poss was recruited by Canterbury Eels football team; but just on the point of making a name for himself in Sydney, someone discovered that he had been gaoled for rape, and humiliated, he left the team. He moved back home to Queensland via Grafton, NSW (where he met and later married the Jacaranda Queen) and continued his sporting career, but never again in the Big League. He became the Manager of the Waterside Workers’ Club and helped prevent a turf war between the Wharfies and members of the Painters and Dockers. Poss is now working with lawyer Robert Bax to have his case re-opened. He believes his story to be a cautionary tale for young men. It is a chronicle of social change, including the sexual revolution of the sixties, the confrontations with “the demons” in the streets of Brisbane during the Joh era of Bible-bashing fundamentalism and police corruption. It’s a story about what really went on behind closed doors in institutions where vulnerable children were preyed upon, in gaols where men were expected to become beasts. It is a story of how the taint of a terrible crime affected a man’s whole life. “QUESTIONS OF OWNERSHIP” Writing someone else’s story can be an ethical minefield─especially regarding questions of ownership. Who owns the story, the subject or the author? The easy answer to this is the subject owns the story and the author the text, but on closer examination this may not necessarily be so. Then there are those other stakeholders who claim ownership of story: people who embrace a narrative because of its similarity to their own lives. Published stories about institutional abuse have resonated for adults who as children were placed into the care of churches or the state. Another kind of ownership is claimed by readers who accept a version of a story and dismiss any counter-story as being invalid. What I call the “Plath Phenomenon” is an example of this. I will examine these kinds of ownership of story with particular reference to the work of Janet Malcolm on biography and then will look at gaps and silences in “official” stories, those created in police stations and courtrooms.