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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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Clint Rickards' eyes
follow the action. Sitting low in the dock
of the High Court at Auckland's courtroom 12 he eyeballs his questioner, his
granite face fixed in concentration. Only when he speaks do
his heavy eyebrows lift and the sternness evaporates. He speaks clearly and
forcefully about his long career, his meteoric rise to assistant police
commissioner, life in Rotorua in the 1980s. It is the most important evidence
he will ever give. Rickards -- Auckland's
top-ranked police officer -- has taken the witness stand in his defence,
denying Louise Nicholas' claims that he raped and sexually assaulted her 20
years ago. The public gallery is
packed as the man who would be police commissioner speaks for the first time
about the allegations that drove him from his job. His tale is one of
defiance as he rages against the lies he says have been told about him, about
the biased treatment he, and all police, have received at the hands of the
media since he was accused of raping Mrs Nicholas. "Mrs Nicholas is
lying," he repeatedly tells the court. Only under
cross-examination, when he has to describe the sexual episodes with Mrs
Nicholas that he insists was consensual, does his speech quicken, his words
muddle. He takes deep breaths before answering. But he keeps his eyes on his
questioner. You can't see the
weighty pounamu pendant that hangs around his neck. Just the shoulders of his
crisp white shirt and the tight knot of his blue-green tie rise out of the
dock. There is the occasional glimpse of a silver watch peeking out from
beneath a shirt cuff and the jagged tips of the tattoos that adorn his right
arm. During his four hours
giving evidence, only once does he smile, a fleeting grin, when he is asked
to identify an old photo of him with his young daughter taken on her
birthday. As it is passed along
the jury, he squints across at each of them, his detective's mind carefully
analysing their reactions to the cherished image of father and daughter. They too have been
gauging his reactions, and it is they who will decide his fate. |
