Queensland police commissioner Katarina Carroll ‘attacked by sexual predator’

Queensland's police commissioner has given emotional evidence to an inquiry into the police service about being attacked by a ‘sexual predator’ and harassed early in her career.

Queensland police commissioner Katarina Carroll. Picture: Liam Kidston

Queensland's police commissioner has given emotional evidence to a royal commission-style inquiry into the police service about being attacked by a “sexual predator” and harassed early in her career.

The inquiry has heard shocking claims of rape, racism and bullying inside Queensland police stations as it investigates how cultural issues affect officers’ responses to sexual and domestic violence.

Katarina Carroll, the state’s first female police commissioner, was teary as she told of sexual harassment complaints she made in the 1980s and ’90s.

“I was pretty well attacked by what I’d say was a sexual predator,” she said. “He took me to a forest and started taking my seatbelt off and I started running back towards the station.

“My station protected me.”

The first time she made an internal complaint was after a senior officer told her she did not deserve to be in the job, “that I was taking the job off a male colleague and I was going to fail’.

In another incident, Commissioner Carroll said an officer “kept pinching me on the arse” but again “the men in that station protected me”. “I reported it once, [it] got dealt with, I didn’t report it the other two times because I felt safe in the environment I was in,” she said.

The inquiry has heard a mountain of offensive evidence, including a police officer putting his penis on a female sergeant’s desk and another threatening to rape a colleague.

One detective senior sergeant – the subject of 80 allegations by 26 staff members - followed a female officer into a toilet saying he was there “for a blowjob”.

In another incident, the same detective, who spent time on sick leave before medically retiring, hugged a female officer from behind and cupped her breast.

On Thursday, the inquiry heard written evidence from a female officer who said she knew of five women who had been raped while working in the police service. “I know of no policewoman who has not been offended against in the job in some way or another,” she wrote. “We have minimised the behaviour in order to stay in the job we love.”

Instances of racism were also outlined to the inquiry, including officers referring to Indigenous people as “stupid black c..ts” and “lazy black c..t”.

One sergeant at the police training academy said “You can smell them, before you see them” in reference to First Nations ­people, counsel assisting, Ruth O‘Gorman KC, said.

Commissioner Carroll said she had listened to audio of the incident and described it as “extraordinarily disturbing”.

Police union president Ian Leavers, who described Ms Mc­Murdo’s analysis as “another woke, out-of-touch report”, will give evidence on Friday.