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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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The news dropped like a
bomb, its shock waves touching all those affected. When The Dominion Post, on
January 31, 2004, published Mrs Nicholas' story exclusively under the
headline "Police raped me", the lives of hundreds of people -- Mrs
Nicholas, defendants Assistant Police Commissioner Clint Rickards, 45, and
former policemen Bradley Shipton, 53, and Robert Schollum, 47, their families
and friends, police officers, other rape complainants -- were turned on their
head. The allegations rocked
New Zealand Police to the core and prompted prime ministerial intervention.
Within days, Helen Clark announced a commission of inquiry into police
conduct to limit the political fallout. Police, who some years before had
investigated the same allegations, announced they were reopening their
investigation. Rickards was stood down. He has not been back to work since,
but has continued to receive his full salary, estimated to be about $200,000
a year. Operation Austin, under
the control of Superintendent Nick Perry, reinvestigated the allegations. It
took a team of 20 detectives -- the size of a full-scale murder inquiry -- a
year before deciding whether to lay charges. It took a further year to bring
the case to trial. That first year alone
involved 2000 interviews and cost police $1.6 million in staffing costs. The
commission of inquiry, which is still gathering evidence below the radar, has
cost more than $1.4 million. But the real cost, the
human cost, is harder to gauge. What angst has gone on
behind closed doors? What secrets revealed, events explained, promises made
or broken since the news broke? For Mrs Nicholas the
hardest thing was telling her story to her three young daughters, the
youngest of whom was nine at the time. Her husband, Ross, broke down in court
as he gave evidence about buying the dress his wife wore the day she said one
of the rapes took place. The three accused have
been forced to confront their past and watch helplessly as it is told to all
of New Zealand. Their children, parents and partners have sat in court and
listened as their sex lives have been detailed in cold, intricate, grubby
detail. At one stage in the
trial, Shipton's sister sat in the public gallery, head down, her fingers
jammed into her ears, as evidence was given about the police baton. The toll has also been
high on the team of detectives investigating the case. Some have spent months
away from their families, living out of suitcases in motels in Rotorua. For
them, it has been a case like no other. From the day her story
hit the news stands, Mrs Nicholas has remained convinced she was right to
speak out. But she was only able to tell her story thanks to a dogged
investigation by Dominion Post senior reporter Phil Kitchin -- a mammoth
undertaking that spanned nine years. In 1995, he learned of
disquiet within police ranks over three trials involving rape and indecent
assault allegations against a Murupara policeman by a woman -- who he later
learned was Mrs Nicholas -- when she was 14. The first two trials were
aborted because of hearsay evidence introduced by the same police officer.
The third saw the accused, who has permanent name suppression, acquitted. In 1997, Kitchin
received two late-night calls made from a phone box. A police source had more
information, this time claiming that Rickards was involved. At that stage the
reporter still didn't know Mrs Nicholas' name. He was tied up working on
other big stories, which dominated his time. But when Rickards became
assistant police commissioner in 2001, he knew he had to tackle the story. What followed was a
two-year battle to get access to the court documents of the earlier trials. A
paper trail as thick as a phone book shows the amount of effort needed just
to see the documents. It wasn't till October
2003, when he finally gained access to the documents, that he found the name
Louise Nicholas. Things started to fall into place. In November that year
he visited Mrs Nicholas' parents, who were initially hostile but let him
speak. He returned the next week and met Mrs Nicholas, who, stunned by
evidence that in her mind proved she had been duped, agreed to help him tell
her story. There was a lot at
stake. For the next three months, Kitchin worked solidly to ensure the story
was watertight -- you don't accuse one of the country's top policemen of
being a rapist without being sure of your facts. Once the courtroom
battle began, it was game on, a fascinating war of words waged by some of the
country's sharpest legal minds. On day one there was
controversy. Rickards arrived in court wearing his police uniform, against
police regulations. He denied it was to intimidate Mrs Nicholas or remind the
jury of his stature. "I am the assistant commissioner of police,"
he snapped in response to the suggestion. "I have always been proud to
be a police officer." Mrs Nicholas had her
day in court. Crown prosecutor Brent Stanaway coaxed chilling and graphic
evidence from her. She was raped six to 12 times. She told of the
euphemistically described "Rutland St incident", in which she
claimed to have been raped by all three accused and to have been sexually
assaulted with a police baton. Both Crown and defence
lawyers said Mrs Nicholas' credibility was the central issue. Mr Stanaway spent his
time building it up, while the defence trio of John Haigh, QC, Bill Nabney
and Paul Mabey, QC, continually chipped away at it. Mrs Nicholas spent almost
six hours in the stand telling her story over and over, made to explain
discrepancies in the 19 statements she has given over the years to police,
counsellors and courts. She said she had been abused since the age of 13.
"That was the conditioning of my life." Shipton and Schollum
did not take the stand, but Rickards did and was defiant. "Louise
Nicholas is a liar," he told the court. He rebutted Mr Stanaway's
suggestion that he was in cahoots with the other two accused, that they had
concocted their story and stuck to it. "There is no conflict when you
tell the truth." It's a case that has
changed the lives of all those intimately involved in it. It has intrigued
the public, who have watched closely as it has played out through the media.
Everyone has an opinion about who is right, and who wrong, both morally and
criminally. Was Mrs Nicholas raped
and violated with a police baton that day in Rutland St, Rotorua? The jury
says . . . (((((NEED TO FILL IN THIS GAP)))))). --------------- CAPTION: Scene from the past:
Louise Nicholas outside the house in Rutland St Rotorua, scene of the rape
and abuse allegations. |
