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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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Louise Nicholas testified that the three men would turn up
uninvited to her house and force her to have sex. The woman who has
accused one of the country's highest-ranked police officers of rape is today
expected to face gruelling cross-examination from lawyers for the suspended
Assistant Commissioner Clint Rickards and his two co-accused. Louise Nicholas
yesterday broke down in tears as she described an alleged rape by Rickards
and two other police officers 20 years ago. Hers was the first
evidence to be aired in the High Court trial of Rickards and former officers
Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton, who worked together at the Rotorua police
station in the 1980s. The three deny 20 charges of rape, indecent assault and
sexual violation of Louise Nicholas between 1985 and 1986. Crown prosecutor Mark
Zarifeh said the men had treated the-then 18-year-old like
"playdough". Defence counsel for the
three, John Haigh, QC, for Rickards, Paul Maybe, QC, for Schollum and Bill
Nabney for Shipton, said their clients admitted consensual sex with Mrs
Nicholas and Shipton and Rickards admitted they had consensual threesomes
with her. All men denied any incident involving a police baton. Mrs Nicholas, now 38,
weighed about 47kg, and she was intimidated by Rickards and Shipton when she
met them one night in the police bar. "They were big men
and rather, because of their size and stature, quite intimidating." After the meeting they
routinely went to her flat uninvited for sex. Rickards or Shipton would
turn up during the day when she had the day off work from the BNZ or was
sick. Sometimes the men wore police uniform, sometimes they were in suits. "I didn't want
them there and when they would turn up my heart would just drop. I just
didn't want them there." Scared of the men, she
said she told them she did not want to have sex. There was often no
conversation, she said, other than maybe a "sleazy" remark from
Shipton who would say "Gee you're looking good" or something like
that. The men took turns
having sex with her, she said, in the lounge of her flat, making her perform
oral sex on them as well. "When this is
going on I'm telling them 'no I don't want you to do this, I don't want you
here'." Mrs Nicholas described
an alleged incident at a police house where the three accused are said to
have taken turns at raping her before allegedly using a police baton to
indecently assault her. She broke down and
Justice Tony Randerson had to adjourn proceedings to give her some time to
compose herself. Schollum had picked her
up in his tan-coloured Triumph as she walked home from work, she said. She knew him through
her parents and was not scared to get into his car, but then they went past
Corlett St where she lived and turned into a street where she saw Rickards
and Shipton standing on the balcony of a house. There was a fourth man
at the house she did not know and she was eventually led to a bedroom. "I said straight
off that I didn't want them to do anything; 'I don't want you to do
this'." The three accused took
turns at having sex with her, and forced her to perform oral sex on them, she
said. "Then it was all
finished and they were gone and there was no one there and as I looked up I
saw Shipton with a police baton, this, this baton, this wooden baton in one
hand," she cried. He had a pot of Vaseline in his other hand. She told him "no f
... n way" as she backed down the bed away from him. "The bedroom wall
was there and I could go no further, I couldn't go anywhere, he had this
dirty smirk on his face, this smirk." She was indecently
assaulted with the baton and Schollum caressed her, trying to make her feel
better, she said. Schollum eventually
called "that's enough guys". "Then that was
enough, they'd finished, they'd finished ... " she said over and over,
crying into a handkerchief. She said Schollum told
her to have a shower, which she did, and he drove her back to her flat. "I was getting out
and he just turned and said 'sorry Lou'. I just kept walking." She bled for a few days
afterwards but did not go to a doctor because she doubted anyone would
believe her. After the incident
Rickards and Shipton still visited her flat wanting sex. The three men sat
stony-faced throughout her evidence yesterday, Shipton and Schollum only
passing occasional comment between themselves or Schollum shaking his head
and taking notes. Rickards sat further away from them dressed in a suit after
having being reprimanded by the Police Commissioner's Office for wearing his
police uniform to court on Monday. The Crown will call 44
witnesses in the case. |
