By June Ramli
Perth, Oct 14: For 27 years, Narelle Fraser walked into the worst moments of other people’s lives. The Policewoman asks what it costs a person to do that, and the answer is unflinching.
The documentary follows the former Victoria Police detective through 15 years in the Rape and Homicide Squads and the Missing Persons Unit.
It gives a rare, honest look at what detective work in Australia demands from the people who do it – the long hours, the trauma and the cases that never leave you.
Fraser revisits some of Victoria’s most notorious crimes, including the Wales-King “Society Murders,” the Maria Korp “body in the boot” case and the hunt for the Box Hill rapist.
The hardest to watch is the case of John Sharpe, the so-called “Mornington Monster,” who murdered his wife, Anna, and their toddler daughter, Gracie. Fraser’s account of that investigation is quietly devastating.
The film’s real strength is its focus on her empathy when she got close to victims and suspects when the job usually demanded distance.
That made her a formidable investigator, and it is also what broke her.
In 2012 an unexpected PTSD diagnosis ended the career she loved.
Rather than stopping there, the film follows her rebuilding.
She became a trainer, a lecturer in investigation technique and human rights, and one of Australia’s best-known true crime podcasters.
Her story is told partly through detailed miniature dioramas, an inventive device that suits a woman piecing her own life back together.
“We need to normalise mental illness, not stigmatise it,” Fraser says.
The film makes that case powerfully.
The Policewoman is a must-watch for anyone who wants to understand how hard our police work to keep the community safe, and what that work can take from them in return.
The Policewoman is in cinemas nationally from 5 November.
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