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The Evening Post
July 8, 2000
The accused
by Diana Dekker
Prisons are full of people who say they are
innocent. Sometimes they are.
By Diana Dekker.
LAWYER Nick Wills sometimes wakes up in a sweat after nightmares in which
police are at the door. Five years ago he was falsely accused of rape. He was
22, had been head boy at Te Puke Boys' High, was popular, had, as his mother,
Viv d'Or says, "lived a pretty blessed life".
When the accusation was made, he was "chucked in the cells and treated
like a common criminal".
It took three months for his name to be cleared and for the woman who made
his life and the life of his family a misery, to be put in the dock.
"She has no idea of what she put us through," say d'Or, who tries
to be charitable and remember the woman had a history of psychiatric
problems. "It was a nightmare for a lot of people."
Wills is one of the unsuspecting people going about minding their business
when they're suddenly charged with rape, or murder, or sexual molestation and
become outcasts.
Like the Wainuiomata man who was this week awarded $88,000 from a woman who
falsely accused him of sexually attacking her. He probably won't see any of
it. She doesn't have it. She got the attention she craved and he spent two
weeks in jail and still lives with the stigma.
A psychiatric report chronicled his depression, sleeplessness, nightmares,
loss of appetite, loss of weight, fear and chest pain. He thought of suicide.
His marriage was nearly destroyed. His life, he says, has certainly been
ruined. People react to him as if he did rape his accuser.
People always wonder if disproved accusations of a sexual nature might still
just be true - the "where-there's-smoke-there's-fire" theory of
moral condemnation. A murder is black and white. If there is no body, there
was no murder.
Wills qualified as a lawyer three years ago, worked as a patent attorney in Hamilton and then Auckland,
and recently left for an OE to London.
The rape accusation was made when he was a student at Waikato University
by a woman who lived in the same hostel. She told variations of her story to
police, to Rape Crisis and to friends. She also spread the rumour he had
committed other rapes.
The inconsistencies took three months to surface and she finally confessed
she had lied. By then, Wills' name was emblazoned everywhere. The woman's
name is suppressed. Wills' lawyer, Warren Scotter, says Wills suffered in a
way "comparable to the suffering undoubtedly experienced by the victim
of a genuine brutal rape".
The anguish of Wills' mother can hardly be imagined. She has put decades of
energy into a fine young man and there he was accused of rape.
"In my heart I didn't believe he had done it," she says. "But
we didn't have all the facts and I certainly wasn't going to say 100 percent.
You would always hope your son was not a rapist, but you couldn't not consider
it."
Wills and his family experienced "the wrath of society".
"At the time is was quite devastating," says d'Or. "I would
say `My son has been falsely accused of rape', and you could just see them
looking at you thinking `That's what a mother would say'."
D'Or says the family saw they could either let the experience poison their
lives or see it as a terrible experience from which they could grow. They
supported each other, family wounds were healed and respect engendered. D'Or
says Wills, as a lawyer, is able to empathise with clients.
"We're through the other side of the emotional pain."
She is often rung by parents who believe they are in the same situation as
she, their children wrongly accused. There is, she says, no handbook for
people wrongly accused.
NIGEL FAIRLEY, director of forensic psychiatry for Capital Coast Health, says
there is very little research in the area and little literature.
He believes people wrongly accused of serious crime probably suffer some form
of post-traumatic stress disorder similar to that suffered by victims. They
could become depressed, withdrawn, uncommunicative and irritable, and have
problems with sleep and mood swings - up when they are in fighting mood, then
down again.
He agrees the stigma from being wrongly accused of serious sexual crime
sticks in a way being accused of murder does not.
Lawyer Roger Laybourn, who acted for Hamilton
teacher John Edgar two years ago when Edgar was accused of indecency
involving pupils at Hukanui
Primary School, confirms
this. Laybourn says Edgar's teaching career - "and he was considered a
remarkable teacher" - was destroyed.
"He didn't have a chance to get his name suppressed, and under pressure
he resigned from his job. He had to wait 12 months for trial and during the
trial, two weeks, he was kept in custody one or two nights. It was just so
traumatic. After the first night in prison he came out an absolute wreck and
he was meant to be giving evidence and instructing us.
"It just shows you can have two or three children saying something and
the system doesn't have the screening process any more."
Police once felt confident to disbelieve allegations, says Laybourn. Now
there's such pressure from organisations like Rape Crisis, that even cases
with no foundation, like that of Edgar, go to court. "It blighted his
life and the lives of so many close to him."
After his trial, Edgar described his ordeal as "six months of
hell".
Laybourn says he believes Edgar, now writing educational books in Auckland, will "never,
ever place himself in that vulnerable position again".
Laybourn still has very strong feelings about the case. "It was an
extremely big effort to get him acquitted when it should have been
easy."
New Zealand's
most famous case of an innocent man living with the aftermath of accusation
is Arthur Allan Thomas, twice wrongly convicted of murdering Harvey and
Jeanette Crewe at Pukekawa in 1970. He spent five years in prison, was
pardoned and received $1 million in compensation. His wife, after campaigning
for him, left. He now farms with a new wife - who also campaigned for his
release - and family.
He won't talk about his feelings at the time because he's "soon"
going to write a book about it. He does say that after his arrest, "I
thought it would come right", and was horrified and depressed when he
went to trial.
He later told a Royal Commission of Inquiry into his case he "put my
faith in 12 good members of our jury".
On remand in prison he became depressed. "I could not see anything. The
window was too high. It had its own smell. There was a hole in the wall for
the air conditioning, but not much air was getting through."
He worried about his case and his farm and sometimes woke at night wondering
where he was, and praying to God.
When the guilty verdict was announced at his second trial, he yelled that he
was innocent and at home at the time of the crime.
At Paremoremo prison hospital he was drugged and unable to sleep.
Auckland lawyer
Murray Gibson acts for Douglas Dougherty, who was wrongly imprisoned for
3<<1/2>> years for the 1993 rape of an 11-year-old girl. He can't
talk about the case while compensation is being considered.
But Gibson said at the time his client's innocence was proven that he had
nevertheless "lost his life". *
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CAPTION: RAPE OF JUSTICE - Nick Wills, now a lawyer, reflects on the hell he
endured.
Picture: WAIKATO TIMES DESTROYED - John Edgar's career.
HORRIFIED - Arthur Allan Thomas "put my faith in 12 good members of our
jury".
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