The Dominion Post
January 31, 2004

Policeman admitted protecting his mates

A police officer who received a complaint from a woman that she had been raped by other officers said he did nothing about it in order to protect his colleagues, a police document shows.

The Dominion Post has obtained a job sheet written by former Rotorua CIB chief John Dewar, outlining a secretly taped interview with former police officer Trevor Clayton, who had by then left the police.

The job sheet related to another matter being investigated, but it says that, when Mr Clayton was a Rotorua policeman in late 1986 or 1987, Lousie Nicholas complained to him about what some policemen were doing to her.

Mr Dewar says in his job sheet: "I asked him if there were criminal implications and he said there could have been.

"I asked him what he did about it as a serving member of the police and he said that he took no action.

"I asked him why and he said to protect his mates."

Mr Dewar claimed Mr Clayton said he would be prepared to lie in court about Mrs Nicholas.

Mr Dewar said to Mr Clayton: "Well . . . I expected this reaction, particularly from an ex-member of the police. Would it surprise you to learn that I have a tape recorder in my jacket?

"He replied, `Oh shit, thanks very much . . . thanks very much.' "

Mr Dewar criticised Mr Clayton during the interview for not acting on serious allegations against serving police officers.

But Mr Dewar appears to have been playing a double game. At the time of the interview he had advised Mrs Nicholas not to make a written complaint.

Another police document obtained by The Dominion Post makes Mr Dewar's investigation look even more peculiar.

That document shows that the day before secretly taping Mr Clayton, Mr Dewar interviewed one of the accused, Bob Schollum, who was then a serving policeman.

Nothing in the document indicates that Mr Dewar asked Mr Schollum if he had ever had sex with the woman making the allegations.

When she was first spoken to by The Dominion Post last year, Mrs Nicholas still believed Mr Dewar had done everything he could to investigate her complaints.

But a former Rotorua sexual abuse counsellor, Margaret Craig, was so worried about the "unprofessional" relationship she saw Mr Dewar developing with Mrs Nicholas at the time she was counselling her in the 1990s that she wrote to the then head of Rotorua police, former assistant commissioner Bruce Scott.

Mrs Craig said she also raised her concerns with Mr Dewar after she learned he had been taking Mrs Nicholas out for meals before bringing her to counselling sessions.

Mrs Nicholas admits now that she was hostile and reluctant to cooperate with police investigating how her earlier allegations were handled by Mr Dewar. She had thought he was her friend.

Such was her loyalty that she kept him ahead of the investigation by acting as an informant, telling Mr Dewar what the investigators had asked her.

Police documents say there was "no doubt" Mr Dewar was aware the group rape allegation should have been properly documented and investigated.

The "unprofessional" statement Mr Dewar obtained from Mrs Nicholas says she did not tell him about the alleged rape, after he first told her she did not need to tell him about "embarrassing" sex she had as a consenting adult.

In making that statement, Mrs Nicholas now realises she compromised the police investigation into Mr Dewar's handling of her allegations because she had fudged the issue of consent.

The statement is an extraordinary document. It is written in language that appears more like the way Mr Dewar speaks than the way Mrs Nicholas speaks.

Police documents described the statement as an attempt by Mr Dewar to vindicate his actions, or his failure to investigate the allegations.

The documents say it was unprofessional, offensive and showed a lack of judgment.

After seeing other police documents, Mrs Nicholas now says the statement reinforces her belief that Mr Dewar was involved in a conspiracy to keep her allegations out of court.