Our CLINICAL Team

CONSULTANT FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST 

Clinical Director (Psychiatry)

BSc(Hons) MB ChB MPhil MD FRCPsych FRANZCP

Dr Rajan Darjee is the Forensic Behavioural Assessment and Consultation Services Clinical Director of Psychiatry. 

Dr Darjee has over twenty years experience as a forensic psychiatrist in the UK and Australia. He has worked in secure hospital, prison, and community settings. Recent appointments have included Deputy Statewide Specialty Director for Forensic Mental Health Services in Tasmania, Adjunct Associate Professor at the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science at Swinburne University of Technology, and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at Forensicare. 

He was previously a Board Member at the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, an Accredited Risk Assessor with the Scottish Risk Management Authority, and National Clinical Lead for Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements and Sexual Offending at the NHS Scotland Forensic Network. He has extensive experience of working with people who have committed, or are at risk of committing, sexual offences, stalking, intimate partner violence, homicide and other types of serious interpersonal violence. He has expertise in working with complex clients with personality disorders, sexual disorders and/or serious mental illness. 

Dr Darjee has extensive experience as an expert report writer and witness for cases in criminal and civil courts in the UK and several Australian jurisdictions. He has researched and published over 80 academic papers, book chapters and books on mental health law, criminal law, secure hospital patients, risk assessment, the relationship between offending and mental disorders, paraphilic disorders, sexual offending, online sexual offending, and sexual homicide. He has provided consultation and training for legal, mental health, law enforcement, correctional and government agencies, services and organisations internationally on various areas of forensic practice. 

He is a recognised and accredited specialist in forensic psychiatry in the UK and Australia, and is a Fellow of both the UK and Australian and New Zealand Royal Colleges of Psychiatrists.   

FORENSIC CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST 

Clinical Director (Psychology)  

BAppSc (Hons), DPsych (Clinical-Forensic), MAPS

Dr Rachael Watson is the Forensic Behavioural Assessment and Consultation Services Clinical Director of Psychology. 

Dr Watson received her postgraduate training at Monash University, and has experience working at Corrections Victoria's violent offender program, Latrobe community mental health, and Forensicare's Thomas Embling Hospital, within-prison mobile mental health team, and Problem Behaviour Program. She has also worked as a researcher at Swinburne's Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science.

She has experience in assessing and treating specialised problem behaviours including violence, fire setting, stalking, threatening, fantasies to harm, and sexual offending. She has specialist skills in the assessment and treatment of clients with complex presentations, including personality disorders, and significant mental illness, as well as people who have low motivation for treatment. She has worked with serious violent offenders (including  people who have committed sexual and family violence offences), clients on corrections orders or parole, and clients with significant mental illness. She has extensive experience in writing legal reports, utilising both mental health and risk assessments.

Dr Watson has conducted doctoral level research on the treatment of people who have committed sexual offences, including the topics of engagement, therapeutic alliance, ruptures in the therapeutic relationship, and offender/therapist interpersonal style, and has published a number of articles on this topic. 

She has experience of delivering training on the treatment of sexual offending, engaging clients who have challenging behaviours, and working with denial. She is also a DUNDRUM trainer, which is a structured tool to assess level of security and treatment need in inpatient services. 

She is a board-approved supervisor.

FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST 

BSc (Hons), MSc, DForenPsy, CPsychol

Dr Dawson commenced her career in Forensic Psychology 10 years ago in the UK, before moving to Australia in 2022 and becoming registered and endorsed with Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Authority (AHPRA). She has worked in secure hospitals, and in both forensic and clinical community settings.

Dr Dawson received her doctoral training at the University of Nottingham (UK), and has experience working within private practice, as well as NHS secure services, Offender Personality Disorder treatment pathways, the Tasmanian Health Service forensic team, and providing reports within the Victorian legal system.

Dr Dawson can provide assessment and treatment of specialised problem behaviours, including violent and sexual offending. She has also had experience in the assessment and treatment of clients with complex presentations, including personality disturbance, significant mental illness, developmental disorders, serious violent offenders, and clients on Corrections Orders or parole. Over the last six years, Dr Dawson has been specialising in assessments and reports for child protection and generally within Family Law, assessing parenting capacity, risk, and protective factors.

Dr Dawson's doctoral research focused upon non-offending partners, personality assessment, and adverse childhood experiences, and she has published in relation to both offenders and victims.

She has accreditation in the use of ACT and CFT, and has provided individual and group therapies with CBT and DBT informed approaches.  Dr Dawson also has experience in offering consultation to practitioners working with high-risk offenders on Forensic/Correctional Orders, presenting with personality difficulties. 

Dr Dawson is additionally registered as a Forensic Psychologist with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) in the UK and is a Chartered member of the British Psychological Society - the Division of Forensic Psychology.  She is also a member of Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL), the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers (NOTA), and Mersey Care NHS Mental Health Trust.

FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST 

BA (Psych), LLB, Grad. Dip. Psych, DPsych (Forensic)

Dr Melissa Tso received her doctoral training at Deakin University, and has experience working at Corrections Victoria's sexual offender program, at Eastern Health's Child and Youth Mental Health Service, at the Children's Court Clinic, and Forensicare's community services, including the Problem Behaviour Program. She also has clinical experience working in private practice within the field of clinical psychology. 

Dr Tso can provide assessment and treatment of specialised problem behaviours including violence, intimate partner violence, stalking, fire setting, sexual offending (including child exploitation material offences). She has also had experience in the assessment and treatment of clients with complex presentations, including personality disorders, significant mental illness, serious violent offenders, and clients on corrections orders or parole. Within these roles she has also co-facilitated group programs such as Corrections' Sex Offender Program, and Forensicare's Problem Behaviour Program's Handling Anger Wisely and CEM-COPE (for those who have engaged in accessing child exploitation material). She also has experience in writing legal reports, utilising both mental health and risk assessments. 

Dr Tso has conducted high-level research examining the correlation between overweight/obesity and aggressive behaviours in children and adolescents. She has also participated in research examining the moral development of children and adolescents and the implications this may have on the age of criminal responsibility in Victoria.

CONSULTANT FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST  

  MB BCh BAO FRANZCP Adv. Cert. Forensic Psychiatry 

Dr Donal Hanratty is a consultant psychiatrist with experience working in forensic psychiatry in New Zealand, Victoria, and Western Australia.

Dr Hanratty has experience working in remote and urban areas in inpatient and community settings as a consultant psychiatrist. Current appointments include Consultant Psychiatrist at the Frankland Centre, the State Forensic Mental Health Service’s inpatient psychiatric unit in Western Australia and as a contractor to the Department of Justice, providing expert evidence in Courts in Western Australia.

Dr Hanratty can provide medico-legal reports and expert evidence in criminal matters of fitness to stand trial, mental impairment, pre-sentence mitigation and risk assessment. He has experience giving oral and written evidence to the Supreme Court in Victoria and to the Magistrates and District Courts in Western Australia.

Dr Hanratty received his medical degree from University College Dublin in 2013 and he became a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) in 2020. In 2023 he completed the Graduate Certificate in Forensic Mental Health at University of New South Wales, and he completed the requirements of the RANZCP advanced training certificate in forensic psychiatry.

Dr Hanratty has published research and presented at national and international psychiatric conferences. He is a current member of the Western Australian RANZCP Committee for Forensic Psychiatry. 

CLINICAL AND FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST

BA (Hons) Clin Psych, PhD Clin Psych

Dr Jennifer Wright is a Clinical and Forensic Psychologist with over 20 years of experience working in Correctional and Forensic Mental Health settings. These have included as a Psychologist in the Forensic Mental Health Service in Tasmania, as a Senior Psychologist for Corrections in Brisbane and as the Psychology Professional Lead for the Forensic Mental Health Service in QLD.  Dr Wright has extensive experience in clinical and forensic assessment of people whose behaviour has placed them in contact with the Courts.  

The types of assessments Dr Wright has provided in QLD and Tasmania include:

• Fitness for trial

• The role of mental impairment in offending behaviour 

• Addressing the Verdins Limbs

• Psychometric assessment of intellectual disability

• Assessment of personality 

Dr Wright has training in the use of a variety of risk assessment tools and can provide assessment of general violence risk, sexual violence risk, stalking, fire setting, and querulous behaviour.  

She also has training in the assessment of risk related to terrorism, and ideology/grievance motivated violence. Her passion for this work brings her flexibility to perform assessments either remotely or face-to-face to optimise assessment accuracy.

CONSULTANT FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST

MBBS GCFPP MRCPsych (UK) FRANZCP Cert. Forensic Psych.

Dr Trainor is a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK, a Fellow of the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, and an accredited member of the RANZCP Forensic Faculty.

Dr Trainor completed a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery at King’s College London in the UK. He has since worked in a variety of medical and psychiatric specialties, gaining experience across healthcare settings in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Dr Trainor has over thirteen years’ experience as a doctor, which includes extensive work in the assessment and treatment of people with serious mental illness. After working as a senior registrar in neuropsychiatry at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, he subspecialised in forensic psychiatry, obtaining the Graduate Certificate of Forensic Psychiatric Practice at Swinburne University, and an Advanced Certificate of Forensic Psychiatry with the RANZCP. 

In addition to working at FBACS and having his own private practice, Dr Trainor is employed as a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at Forensicare, the Victorian based forensic public mental health service. He has provided clinical supervision to psychiatrists in training, and psychiatry lectures to medical students at The University of Melbourne. As well as working as a treating psychiatrist, he regularly provides expert evidence to the criminal Courts for matters including sentencing, specialised risk assessment, mental impairment, and fitness to stand trial.

FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST

BA (Hons), DPsych (Forensic)

MAPS

Dr Narda Arndt undertook her postgraduate training at Melbourne University, and has over twenty years of experience working within various aspects of the Victoria’s justice system. This includes prior clinical work with Corrections Victoria’s (CV) and the Royal Children’s Hospital, Adolescent Forensic Health Service, as well as more recent work in adult forensic community mental health, and the Victorian Courts system. Dr Arndt is endorsed with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Authority (AHPRA) and is a board approved supervisor. She is also a member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL), and Asia Pacific Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (APATAP).

Dr Arndt has considerable experience assessing and treating general, as well as specialised forensic behaviours, in adults and adolescents. This includes assessment and intervention in general and intimate partner violence, stalking and threatening, sexual offending (including child abuse material offences), and fire setting. She also has experience in intervening with clients involving complex and high risk clinical and forensic presentations, including acute mental illness and personality disorders. In her various roles, Dr Arndt has consulted with multiple agencies within the health and justice arenas, inclusive of Corrections Victoria, Area Mental Health Services (AMHS), Victoria Police, and the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH), Child Protection (CP). She also has extensive experience in writing psychological risk assessments, and Court reports (i.e., Magistrates, County).  

Dr Arndt has a particular interest in stalking and intimate partner violence concerns, and extensive assessment experience in these domains. Her doctoral research focussed on female perpetrators of child sexual abuse, and she has experience in working with clients with complex trauma backgrounds, inclusive of children. Dr Arndt also has significant experience in undertaking complex Court assessments, with individuals, as well as families, including children, where the focus is upon risk and protective concerns.