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Allegations
of Sexual Abuse |
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The Louise Nicholas
rape trial has dissected events that happened 20 years ago. Rosemary McLeod
looks back on 1986 and remembers the best and worst of times. It was the year of
Desperately Seeking Susan; it was the year of Chernobyl. It was The Year of
the Rat for the Chinese. Boy George was booked on heroin charges, the Mikhail
Lermontov sank in the Marlborough Sounds - and Louise Nicholas had her final
unwilling sexual encounter, she says, with three policemen. It was a time in their
lives, said Deputy Police Commissioner Clint Rickards' lawyer, John Haigh,
QC, of a "freedom of sexuality which may seem astonishing to many of us,
but nevertheless existed". It was a time, he
indicated, when an 18-year-old girl would likely not have balked at servicing
three men sexually at the same time. On the other hand it
was a time, Nicholas said, of being daunted by such authority figures, and
cowed by their sheer physical bulk, to the point where she just could not
resist. It was 20 years ago. Two years earlier,
David Lange's Labour government had begun opening up this country to the free
market, with what we called Rogernomics. So what else was the
backdrop to the times, the context in which three policemen behaving like this
was not only possible, but maybe not all that strange? "It was an era of
huge champagne parties and big entrepreneurs in Auckland," recalls
writer Greg McGee, whose play Foreskin's Lament, challenging male rugby
culture, was a huge hit in 1980. "There was a kind
of economic change which was just brutal, and one thing I reckon that it did
do was loosen moral constraints in lots of ways. "Suddenly there was
rampant consumerism. I wonder if brothels up here changed at the same time to
become a viable business. "It was the
champagne era before the crash of 1987, the couple of years when everyone
felt bullet-proof. The shackles were gone and we could do what we liked. "I knew a woman,
working in one of those huge entrepreneurial companies that later fell over,
who was f–-ing her way through the whole company. She was married at the
time. Along with the champagne there was sexual licentiousness." Historian Jock Phillips
would publish A Man's Country the following year, in which he, too,
challenged New Zealand male stereotyping. He recalls how feminism was not
only a powerful force at this time, but had become institutionalised; the
Lange government set up the first Ministry of Women's Affairs and "Ann
Hercus (the first Minister of Women's Affairs) ruled the roost. "I would have
thought the era of sexual experimentation was 10 years earlier, and that by
1986 people would have found this (group sex between policemen and a teenage
girl) unacceptable. It certainly wouldn't have been acceptable by then."
Phillips recalls a
different kind of challenge at the way our values had changed -the Cavaliers'
defiant tour of South Africa. The team of mostly All Blacks was known outside
South Africa as the Cavaliers, but within the republic as the All Blacks.
Five years earlier, this country had been ripped apart with demonstrations
against a Springbok tour here. It was a time, an old
friend recalls, of "Lady Di sweaters with sheep on them, and shirts with
turned-up collars underneath". A big year for sheep, in fact - the
Footrot Flats movie was released. In 1986, Prince Charles had, we are told,
begun abandoning his wife Princess Diana for assignations with old squeeze
Camilla Parker-Bowles. Prime Minister David
Lange, who triumphed at the 1985 Oxford Union debate -had begun cheating on
his wife, Naomi, with his speech writer. Nobody knew about that
yet, either. What were our sexual
mores? Feminism was having real impact. High fashion had women in big
shoulder pads and masculine-cut jackets; even Vivienne Westwood did them. French feminist pioneer
Simone de Beauvoir died: the sexual antics she indulged in with her lover,
existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, and young women were not yet
public knowledge. Writer Mervyn Thompson,
who McGee recalls being outrageous, wiggling his tongue at women at parties,
faced unsubstantiated charges of sexual abuse and rape, was violently
abducted by a group of feminist vigilantes, and tied to a tree. It was the year of the
Ambury Park pack rape in Auckland, when an 18-year-old woman was taken off a
street in Mangere, Lange's electorate, to a Mongrel Mob convention. There she
was repeatedly raped and assaulted before her attackers poured petrol over
her, and urinated on her. Seven mobsters were
charged. A group called The
Circle Jerks released an album called Group Sex, and a writer called Ann
Arensberg published a novel with the same name. Madonna released
"Papa Don't Preach", a song about an unmarried girl who says she's
going to keep her baby. We legalised
homosexuality between consenting adults. Among Playboy magazine's sex stars
of the year were Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Penn, Madonna, and
the Duke and Duchess of York. The book Sex For One, a
handbook for masturbation, was published to apparent acclaim. At the
Centrepoint commune in Auckland, where Bert Potter was spiritual leader,
there was a mild controversy over commune members' involvement with an
abortion clinic. Potter said he was
still unhappy with abortion, and that it fitted "only vaguely" with
his philosophy. He would be jailed a few years later over his philosophy,
convicted of indecently assaulting minors. Potter would also be
jailed for possessing drugs for supply. The first woman was
diagnosed with Aids in New Zealand. Eve Van Grafthorst, a child with HIV,
escaped to New Zealand from persecution in Australia, to be a future fixture
on the Holmes show. In England, Rolling
Stone Bill Wyman, 50, was three years into a relationship with 16-year-old
Mandy Smith. He'd begun having sex with her when she was 13, with her
mother's approval. Dr Aloma Parker (then
Colgan) was a sexologist through the 70s and 80s. She, too, remembers the era
of sexual experimentation being earlier. "By the late 70s
the pill was pretty well established, STDs were far less common than they are
now, and they weren't as dangerous as HIV," says Parker. "I wouldn't say
group sex was common, but it was common for people to be more experimental
sexually than they had been. "There was also
the rugby team kind of thing, where mates share together and the women are
quite peripheral to it. It's almost latent homosexuality. It's about the
closest they can get to homosexuality in their mateship." Voyeurism was not so
uncommon, Parker says, though, "there was less pornography around, and
it was less explicit than it is today. I think it was in the 80s that what
they call beaver shots first appeared in Penthouse and Playboy. "I guess this
(Nicholas) case highlights a kind of exploration that was probably more
mainstream than it is now. "But that was
definitely waning by the mid-80s." There were disasters in
1986. A nuclear reactor exploded at Chernobyl in the Ukraine; the space
shuttle Challenger exploded soon after takeoff, killing seven American
astronauts. Cruise ship the Mikhail
Lermonotov sank in the Marlborough Sounds, miraculously with the loss of only
one life. Careers were taking
off. Dr Don Brash was
managing director of Trust Bank Group. He had dark hair, slightly duck-tailed
at the back, and a receding hairline. He had recently been with the Kiwifruit
Authority and, reportedly, "amused himself with a small kiwifruit
orchard at Pukekohe". Canadian Genevieve
Westcott was TV's star reporter. Judy Bailey began a career as news anchor
for TV One. Maggie Barry hosted the morning show on National Radio. The Nobel Prize for
Literature was awarded to Wole Soyinka, of Nigeria. Scientology founder L Ron
Hubbard and actor Cary Grant died. The Herbs and Dave
Dobbyn had a hit with "Slice of Heaven". Blue Velvet, a noir study
in sexual masochism, was a hit at the movies. So was Out of Africa, a movie
based on the life of Karen Blixen, who famously contracted syphilis - then
incurable - through her husband's infidelities. William Hurt won an
Oscar for best actor in Kiss of the Spiderwoman, and Russell Crowe was busy
touring New Zealand and Australia as Dr Frank N Furter in The Rocky Horror
Show. Former prime minister
Rob Muldoon, ousted that year as National's leader by Jim Bolger, appeared
with him on stage in the role of narrator. Michael Jackson struck
a $15 million promotion deal with Pepsi, the biggest sum paid for wholesome
product endorsement by a celebrity. The Rolling Stones
released Dirty Work, the first of their albums in 17 years not to go to No1
in the UK or the US. A new period of more
wholesome entertainment was nearly upon us. Thankfully, the
Japanese brought out Game Boy. |
