One News
March 21, 2004
Broken trust in search for justice
Lost police files
and connections between investigators and alleged perpetrators are adding fresh
controversy to Louise Nicholas' claims of police pack rape.
Nicholas has accused Assistant Commissioner Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton, now a
district councillor in Tauranga and Bob Schollum, now a car salesman in Napier,
of pack raping her and violating her with a police baton.
"My protests just went straight out the window," Nicholas says.
The accused men strongly deny the allegations but serious questions remain -
including the conduct of the chief investigating officer, Detective Inspector
John Dewar.
"Hindsight is a marvellous thing and if I knew then what I know now I
would never have pursued anything with him," Nicholas says. "I was
vulnerable..."
Dewar took charge of the case after a personal request by one of the accused
men Brad Shipton.
Dewar and Shipton were friends close enough, a Rotorua woman alleges to have
consensual group sex with her. She also says she indulged in group sex with
Rickards and Shipton while they were on duty.
Nicholas was unaware of the connection and says that at the time she was
convinced Dewar was fairly representing her case.
"As far as I was concerned the man was God and the reason I say that was
because my loyalties lay with him simply because he had broken down some of the
barrier I had about the police because finally there was a policeman that was
helping me and not hurting me."
That was Nicholas' belief until a few months ago when she re-examined the way
her case had been handled by Rotorua's then-CIB
chief.
Now she says: "He has shafted me big-time. He was protecting his mates
just like they did in Murupara."
The Murupara incident relates to a complaint of rape
Nicholas made against a policeman when she was 13. The complaint went through
three trials in the early 1990s and the accused policeman was acquitted. He has
permanent name suppression.
It was during those three trials that the allegations of pack-rape involving
Rickards, Shipton and Schollum first emerged.
Suppression orders have finally been lifted for the three trials and those
court notes show that Dewar failed to properly pursue the allegations of
pack-rape.
One of the presiding judges, Michael Lance, had a stinging rebuke for the
inspector, saying: "I am of the view that the failure to record and detail
these allegations was not only remarkable, it was
utterly incredible".
Dewar had, according to the judge, not only failed to record Nicholas'
allegations but had also "deliberately advised" her not to write a
formal statement about the alleged pack-rape.
"Such disclosures should have triggered alarm bells that would have
permanently silenced Big Ben," said Lance.
One report even cites one of the Murupara policeman
involved as threatening to lie on oath if that meant protecting his colleague
from Nicholas' rape allegations.
Magaret Caig, Nicholas'
sexual assault counsellor in Rotorua, says she never doubted her client's
story.
In her 15 years as a health professional, Craig says she's heard many stories -
but nothing like this.
"You hear many stories about teachers...members of the clergy... but to
have the New Zealand Police Force associated with something as debauched and
really disgusting as this was absolutely horrifying," says Craig.
She also had serious concerns about Dewar's working relationship with Nicholas
during his investigation of her rape complaints.
"I felt that it was unhealthy, that it breached a lot of the known mores
about behaviour between professionals and clients."
Craig says she was concerned Nicholas was being manipulated by Dewar during his
investigation of her claims, but the Police Complaints Authority cleared Dewar
of any criminal or disciplinary offence.
Nicholas alleges that when she went to the Rotorua police to write a complaint
in 1993 she was talked out of it by Dewar. She had earlier repeated her
allegations to a police sergeant, she says.
However, the notes from that conversation mysteriously disappeared from the
sergeant's desk.
About two years later Inspector Dewar finally took a statement from Nicholas,
but contrary to everything she now claims, the statement suggested the sex had
been consensual.
The statement is not the only mystery surrounding the case.
A letter dated June 1997 explained that the entire police file relating to the
Louise Nicholas case had gone missing. Police have so far failed to reply to
questions about whether the files have been recovered.
A police notebook is also missing, along with a diary of Inspector Dewar's that
refers to an interview with Brad Shipton.
Reliving trauma in the spotlight
Twenty three years after she alleges she was raped by three police officers,
Louise Nicholas and her family have been reliving the trauma - as
publicly as it gets.
But while Nicholas is embarrassed about having to tell people exactly what
happened she is not ashamed.
Nicholas says all she wants is for it to be proven that she is telling the
truth. She says she does not regret going public, even though she has faced a
blaze of publicity.
Nicholas is now aged 36 and a mother of three, but the events that have caused
this scandal began when she was 13 years old and living in the small logging
town of
She says she was an average teenager, certainly not rebellious or wordly.
One day she was walking past the Murupara police
station when someone opened the window and called her in.
"No problem really. I went and he closed the door behind me [and] locked
it, which I thought was a bit strange at the time."
She says that's how it all started and was her first introduction to sex.
"He raped me on the kitchen table in the meal room of the police station
and that happened on several occasions."
Nicholas alleges this happened about half a dozen times and says she suspects
word got around the station.
"There was one other officer at Murupara at the
time. An incident I recall at his house, babysitting. He came home earlier than
his wife and got me into his bedroom and did exactly the same thing in
there."
Nicholas kept it to herself, fearing her parents'
reaction.
"It's not because I didn't think they would believe me because I'm sure
they would have. But I was worried sick that Dad would go nuts and do something
stupid and probably [I would] be visiting him in jail today. That was what
really worried me."
Nicholas' father, Jim, helped set up the Murupara
search and rescue unit and got to know the local police. They would often come
around to the family home for a barbeque. They were his mates.
"I just cannot believe that the people that have done this to Louise were
actually friends of ours policemen. People that people trust," Jim says.
Nicholas alleges that the abuse continued for some years, first in Murupara and later in Rotorua.
By 1986 Nicholas was 18 years old and working in Rotorua as a receptionist.
Early one evening Bob Schollum, an old family friend and one of the Murupara police she accuses of indecent assault, offered
her a lift home.
It was a decision she finds hard to explain.
"I can't quite get my head around [it]. He wasn't as bad as these other
guys and so I felt probably safe with him."
But Schollum didn't take her home, instead she says
she was taken to a police house in suburban Rotorua.
"We pulled up into this house and I looked up and here they were all
sitting on the balcony and I knew straight away."
At the house, she says, were Rickards, Shipton and Schollum. There was another
man there too, she says, but he has never been identified.
"He said: 'Come in. It'll be right. Come in, Lou..
she'll be right.' So I did and got inside. I was
offered a drink and I declined and the next thing I was being led to a
bedroom."
Nicholas says she was not forcibly taken into the bedroom, but did object to
being led there.
The 'incident' she alleges involved three of the men raping her and one of them
violating her with a police baton. They all strenuously deny this, but have
admitted having consensual sex with her.
Nicholas also alleges earlier rapes by Rickards and Shipton sometimes on their
own, sometimes together. Also claims the two men deny.
She says: "Every time it happened I would ask them not to do it, tell them
not to do it, swear at them, get angry. Didn't matter. So it got to the stage where the sooner they
get it over and done with and get the hell out."
Nicholas says there is not way they could have mistakenly thought she was a
willing participant.
"I don't think so. What part of 'no' did they not understand?"
The abuse stopped, Nicholas says, only after she met her future husband Ross.
Nicholas says that to this day she can't really explain why she tolerated the
alleged abuse, but her counsellor says she can.
"She was a hostage. Things were done to her that were
beyond anything that she would have ever imagined or experienced in her life
because she was so young. She was silenced which is what happens when people
are taken hostage- they're silenced out of fear."
"I think that there was no way that Louise could have got out of the
situation she was in because she was entrapped."
Craig says what Nicholas described was "a pack of male predators taking
advantage of someone really very young".
Nicholas says she is aware of the pressure she is putting on the men she
accuses, but carries on because she knows she is telling the truth.
"I know these people have families and they've got children. I have [too].
It hasn't been easy for my children, so it can't be any easier for theirs'.
That's as hard for me because I'm upsetting a lot of people's lives. But at the
end of the day I didn't ask for this to happen."