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The Press
March 4, 2004
Judge lambasted detective
Fresh revelations about the background of Louise
Nicholas's pack- rape allegations show she admitted making up a rape complaint
against a group of Maori youths.
Details about Nicholas's claims were aired in three trials held in Rotorua
during 1993 and 1994, although they were covered by suppression orders lifted
only yesterday after an application by the Dominion Post newspaper.
Under cross-examination in the third trial, Nicholas admitted telling a
teacher that she had been raped by a group of Maori youths out riding their
horses.
"I don't know why I had said that. Obviously I did but I have never been
raped by any Maori on horseback."
The trials related to a former policeman accused by Nicholas of indecently
assaulting and having sex with her in the mid-1980s, when she was 15 and
boarding with him and his family.
The first two trials were aborted because of inadmissible evidence given by
Detective Inspector John Dewar. The third jury acquitted the former
policeman, whose name remains suppressed.
During the trial a separate allegation by Nicholas came to light, that she
had been pack raped and violated with a baton by three other police officers:
Clint Rickards (who has been stood down as district commander of the Auckland
police), Brad Shipton (now a Tauranga District councillor and bar owner) and
Bob Schollum (now a Napier car salesman). All three strongly deny the allegations.
Nicholas's allegations are the subject of a commission of inquiry and a
top-level criminal investigation, ordered after she went public in January
claiming that the pack-rape complaint was covered up by Dewar.
The trials were told that in January 1993, after counselling, Nicholas told
her parents what had happened. Her father contacted a policeman he knew, then
Senior Sergeant Ray Sutton.
Dewar assumed responsibility for the complaint and took two statements from
her that year, although they only related to the former policeman eventually
charged.
At the time, she had accused several other policemen.
Nicholas also named Rickards, Shipton and Schollum, but Dewar said he advised
her not to make a statement because the allegations were not specific in time
and event.
Court documents show Judge Michael Lance made a stinging rebuke of Dewar's
conduct.
"I am of the view the failure to record and detail these allegations was
not only remarkable, it was utterly incredible," the judge said in his
decision granting costs against the police. "After all, here was an
experienced detective inspector investigating allegations of serious sexual
offending.
"During his interview with the complainant, he is told of allegations of
potentially serious sexual offending by three other named and currently
serving police officers.
"Such disclosures should have triggered alarm bells that would have
permanently silenced Big Ben, no matter how vague in terms of time and event.
"Even more surprising than the failure to record is the officer's
deliberate advice to the complainant not to make a statement about her
allegations against these officers," Lance said.
At the second trial Dewar was also criticised by the court. Judge Philip
Evans questioned Dewar's motives in giving hearsay evidence at a similar
point in the trial to where he gave hearsay evidence at the first trial.
Dewar, as officer in charge of the case, also arranged for Schollum, Shipton
and Rickards to give evidence for the prosecution at the third trial.
The three men said in a closed court session at that trial that they had
consensual sex with Nicholas on different occasions but they denied using a
baton to violate her.
He eventually took a statement about Rickards and the other officers in
February 1994.
The allegations against the officers accused of interfering with Nicholas as
a teenager were found to have been not proved -- a decision backed up by the
Police Complaints Authority at the time. Another Police Complaints Authority
investigation criticised Dewar's handling of the pack-rape complaint.
Nicholas alleged seven officers committed sexual offences against her but
when she sought to make a formal complaint to police in 1993, Dewar had
discouraged her from making official accusations against six of them.
In her evidence against the seventh, Nicholas said that he first had sex with
her while she was a 13-year-old.
Nicholas' mother, Barbara Crawford, told the court that in 1983, the former
policeman offered to let Nicholas board with his family in Rotorua. But the
former policeman and his wife said Nicholas's parents had asked if she could
stay with them.
Nicholas said she protested about going, and alleged that the abuse continued
during the two to three months she was boarding there.
The former policeman denied all sexual contact.
She returned home after the former policeman confronted Crawford and said
that her daughter was saying he was having sex with her.
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