Dashboard corrupt after hacking

A site I am managing for my client was recently hacked, and since the dashboard has been unavailable. I’ve just started managing the site and am pretty new to WordPress, so I’m trying to be very cautious and well read, but I still can’t restore functionality to the dashboard.

The owner doesn’t have backups and the former webmaster is no longer contactable. We’re trying to restore functionality without rebuilding completely.

The dashboard only shows recent posts and WordPress news. I’ve gone through all tutorials (reinstalling, manually uploading wp-admin and wp-includes, modifying keys in wp-config.php, resetting cache, different browsers, changing themes in phpmyadmin) and still can’t restore a working dashboard. I’m worried it is a database issue, which I don’t know much about, but could be mistaken.

The site (www.mag.net.au) doesn’t have many posts, so I’m not worried about losing blog content, but more the overall structure of the site as I’m not exactly well experienced in WordPress.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what I can try?

Thanks! ??