The Queensland police commissioner, Katarina Carroll, will be recalled to front a state inquiry into police responses to domestic violence.
Carroll’s second appearance at the inquiry on Wednesday is viewed by many as an interview to keep her job. The first was something of a public relations disaster for the commissioner and the Queensland police service.
She had initially rebuffed a request to attend the inquiry in person. Once there, she faced a series of questions about the way the QPS had handled instances of bad behaviour by senior officers, including the use of the phrase “vagina whisperer” and other lewd comments at police events.
In the aftermath, a deputy commissioner resigned and another senior officer has taken extended leave.
More than 200 late submissions were received, many from serving police officers, prompting the commission of inquiry to recall Carroll. It seems inevitable that today’s hearings will contain more revelations.
Carroll’s suggestion at her first appearance that police cultural issues are not “widespread” is becoming an increasingly difficult line to hold.
This week, Guardian Australia revealed details of a case, not related to domestic violence but involving multiple serious historical sexual assault allegations, that police apparently never investigated. Karen Iles was 14 when she was allegedly raped by a gang of up to 15 men while holidaying on the Gold Coast with her family.
Suspects and witnesses were named (and in one case photographed) in a statement, which police lost for more than a decade and told the alleged victim had been shredded. There’s no evidence that anyone has ever been interviewed or even contacted.
“This is an issue of widespread concern, but despite the rhetoric, it’s clear our system does not treat sexual violence as a priority,” said Angela Lynch, from the Queensland Sexual Assault Network.
As the Queensland women’s safety and justice taskforce found, when a woman seeks help she enters “a raffle”. Sometimes the most serious cases are simply not investigated.
The evidence of deep-lying cultural issues continues to mount. A detective shredded Lyla’s* rape statement and told her he couldn’t “wave a magic wand and fix all of your problems”.
Police refused to prosecute Dani’s* former partner, who doused her with petrol and threatened to burn the house down, claiming there was “a low level of public interest” to pursue the case. She hired a lawyer and prosecuted the case herself.
The Queensland police service fought Julie in a tribunal in an attempt to deny her compensation for a breach of privacy. A police officer had hacked into a confidential database, accessed her address, and leaked it to her violent former husband.
Police admitted to systemic failures to protect Kelly Wilkinson and Doreen Langham, who both sought help multiple times in the weeks before they were murdered.
Then there’s the evidence presented to both the women’s safety and justice taskforce, and subsequently the commission of inquiry. They include claims that police failed to adequately investigate the deaths of Indigenous women who had previously been subject to repeated domestic violence.
The inquiry heard how female detectives were treated – referred to as sitting in “cunt corner”, or described as “a good operator until her arse got fat”. It heard how officers would actively avoid attending domestic violence incidents, question whether sexual assault complaints were “real” rapes and discourage women from pursuing complaints.
It heard how an intelligence report warned that deaths were “likely” due to police inaction in serious domestic violence cases in the Torres Strait.
Back in 2020, a year after Carroll was appointed, she told the Courier-Mail she wanted domestic violence reform to be one of her “legacies”.
“I want to be known as a person who has actually opened the conversation up” on domestic and family violence, she said.
There is an irony – a very uncomfortable one – about the notion that Queensland’s first female police commissioner might find herself personally held to account for the deeply embedded and problematic behaviour of men in uniform.
For that reason, many female police officers and others agitating for change will back Carroll to lead necessary reforms.
But officers have told Guardian Australia that change can’t occur unless problems are acknowledged; and that Carroll must front today’s hearings and finally admit these cultural issues are “widespread”.
* Names changed for privacy
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
