This former police officer wanted to create change. She endured cruelty and racism.

Every now and then, a story comes along that astonishes with its degree of truth, trauma and resilience. Veronica Gorrie’s memoir, Black and Blue, is one such, chronicling a life of inconceivable pain, abuse and discrimination.

On November 22, 1941, Gorrie’s grandmother was taken to the Neglected Children’s Depot in Melbourne. When men turned up, the girls and women, including her grandmother, would put sand in their vaginas “… so that when the white men tried to rape them, it would hurt”. Immediately after she gave birth to Veronica’s father, the hospital sterilised her without her consent.

Veronica Gorrie wanted to make a difference when she joined the Queensland police. Instead, all she encountered was racism and appalling treatment.Credit: Justin McManus

Gorrie was raped at 13. Her mother called her a “little black bitch”. When Gorrie came home from school, her mother would be drunk. Gorrie was surrounded by alcohol abuse, drug abuse, neglect and hunger. Her mother was regularly attempting suicide. “We would have to be on suicide watch with her,” Gorrie writes.

The family floated from place to place, never finding a secure home: “I never put my PJs on. I always had to be on the ready.” What does that do to a child, to grow up with that level of vigilance, mistreatment and insecurity?

As an adult, Gorrie experienced enormous violations at the hands of men. She was punched in the back of the head by one partner so often it left a permanent bump on it. Each time she reported him to the police, she was told that they could do nothing.

Veronica Gorrie’s memoir Black and Blue.

In this country, there continues to be a lack of social infrastructure to support vulnerable women — and, according to Gorrie, the police are not the answer. But she didn’t always think so – in fact, she became a cop in her 20s, entering the force as a single mother-of-three because she wanted to change the attitude of the Aboriginal community towards the police.

The first half of the book (“Black”) contains so much suffering, abuse and neglect, I kept asking: how could one person put up with so much?

And just when I thought she’d reached the limit of what a woman could endure, the second half, “Blue”, about being a constable of the Queensland Police Service — well, the cruelty she endured from other cops is staggering.

Gorrie is direct in her opinions about her former workplace: “Racism lives and breathes in the police,” she writes. “Sudanese were called skinnies; Samoans and Tongans were called Pac Islanders. Aboriginals were called ‘Abo’.”

Her book should be mandatory reading material for all emerging and current cops. “Police as an institution in Australia is mainly white, dominated by men, and built on systemic racism, misogyny, homophobia, and bullying. Police target not only my people but also other minority people in the community, which explains the higher recidivism rate these communities often display.

“During the time I spent in the police I witnessed brutality, excessive use of force, black deaths in custody and ongoing racism. This was soul-destroying, and I lost 10 years of my life that I can never get back.”

Within the police department, random breath tests were administered and Gorrie found that they would always give the test to the Aboriginal cops first. “Not only do police racially profile their arrests, they also racially profile minority police officers – black cops.” When she wanted to complain, she was met with a hand to the face. “When you do that, you’re considered a dog. Complaints in the job never went anywhere.”

When she sought assistance from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander worker in the ethics and diversity unit at the police headquarters, she was told to quit her job – but Gorrie didn’t. She went back to her desk and placed the Aboriginal flag in the middle.

Gorrie is a Gunai/Kurnai woman, but as she writes at the end: “My story isn’t unique or rare, but what sets my story apart from others is that I have written about it.” Women who have historically been silenced: now more than ever, we need to be reading their stories.

Veronica Gorrie’s Black and Blue is published by Scribe, $32.99.

Crisis support is available from Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue 1300 22 436.

This review is supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund and the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

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