|
|
Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
|
|
|
|
A defiant Assistant
Commissioner Clinton Rickards says Louise Nicholas is lying about being
sexually abused and that there was giggling and laughing during their two
"sexual contacts". Rickards, a father of
five and Auckland's top policeman, took the witness stand yesterday to tell a
High Court jury at Auckland that Mrs Nicholas was lying about being raped and
abused with a police baton 20 years ago. The truth, he said, was that he and
his friend Bradley Shipton once watched each other have sex with the then
18-year-old. About a week later, she
gave him oral sex and then he had sex with her flatmate. Rickards said he would
not have remembered Mrs Nicholas' name if rape allegations had not been made
a decade later, and then again a decade after that. Rickards, Shipton and
another former police officer, Robert Schollum, are on trial for charges of
raping and sexually abusing Mrs Nicholas in Rotorua back in 1985 and 1986. She alleges that Rickards
and Shipton used to drop by her Corlett St flat and force her to have sex,
sometimes as a threesome, and that all three men were involved in an incident
where she was taken to a house in Rutland St, forced to have group sex and
indecently assaulted with a baton. "Louise Nicholas
is lying," was the phrase that Rickards, 45, used repeatedly while
giving evidence on the eighth day of the trial. He told the court she had
lied about rape, lied about Rutland St and lied about seeing him in uniform,
as he was a plain-clothed trainee detective at the time. Sex had occurred, but
in mid-1986, later than Mrs Nicholas had claimed. In the mid-1980s, he
had been 24 years old, had a young family and a mortgage, and did not go out
much. Under questioning by
his lawyer, John Haigh, QC, Rickards said Shipton had taken him to see Mrs
Nicholas one evening at a house in Kusabs Rd. After some "jovial
banter", she sat on his knee, kissed him, kissed his ears and rubbed his
back. They all went into a
bedroom, where Shipton watched him have sex with her. He then watched while
Shipton had sex with her. Everybody was happy and "giggling and
laughing", Rickards said yesterday. Seven to 10 days later,
Mrs Nicholas had invited them to her Corlett St flat. She gave him oral sex,
and then he had sex with her flatmate. "The allegations
made by Mrs Nicholas are lies. That's the only way I can describe it,"
Rickards said. In cross-examination,
prosecutor Brent Stanaway asked Rickards: "What was in it for Louise
Nicholas?" during those encounters. He replied: "I
have no idea, Mr Stanaway, you'd have to ask her." Asked what Shipton was
doing while Rickards had sex with Mrs Nicholas, Rickards said he did not
know. "Oh, come
on," Mr Stanaway retorted. Mr Stanaway suggested that
Rickards had been tipped off about the allegations by Shipton in 1994, before
being spoken to by a senior police officer about them, and that the men had
stuck to a "script" ever since. "When you tell the
truth, there's no conflict," Rickards repeatedly told the court. "I
told the truth." When Mr Stanaway put it
to him that he had worn his uniform on the first day of trial in order to
intimidate Mrs Nicholas, Rickards repeatedly said: "I'm proud to be a
police officer and serving my community." Under re-examination,
Rickards said the officers charged over Prime Minister Helen Clark's speeding
motorcade also wore their uniforms. The police had taken a hammering in the
media over the past two years, he said. "I have never been
ashamed." The trial has now been
adjourned till Monday. The jury has been told Shipton will not be calling
defence evidence but that Schollum will. |
