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Home / police allegations / Rickards,
Shipton, Schollum vs Jane Doe Page 1 - 2007 Trial of Rickards,
Shipton, Schollum Week 1 |
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The lawyer for a former policeman
has told a court that the woman at the centre of sex allegations against him
and two other men made up details to ensure the three would be convicted in
the wake of the Louise Nicholas verdict. Suspended assistant police
commissioner Rickards, 46, and former policemen Brad Shipton, 48, and Bob
Schollum, 54, face one charge each of kidnapping and one charge each of
indecent assault on a 16-year-old girl in Rotorua between November 1983 and
August 1984. The three were acquitted by a High
Court jury last March of the rape, sexual violation and indecent assault of
Mrs Nicholas when she was a teenager in Rotorua in the 1980s. The woman spent part of a second
day being cross-examined in the High Court in Auckland yesterday. Schollum's
lawyer, Paul Mabey, QC, asked her about discrepancies between the statements
she made when police first contacted her in 2004 and more recent comments. He asked why, in 2004, she had not
mentioned that she had three or four drinks at the house where she alleged
the incident took place. Under strained testimony, the
woman said she had many things going on in her life at the time, including
looking after children and dealing with the break-up of a relationship, for
which she had been receiving counselling. "You come here to court, to
this trial ... you give this jury very detailed accounts of things you say
occurred. I'm interested to know why you did not give police that detail when
you had the chance," Mr Mabey said. "They did not ask me how much
I had. If they had asked me, I probably would have told them," she
replied. Mr Mabey asked why her
recollection during this trial was different from earlier comments. She said "poor Louise
Nicholas" had lost her case, and "I'm trying damn hard to make sure
these guys are done for what they've done." Mr Mabey asked if that included
making things up. She responded that she would only say the truth. Mr Mabey said her evidence was
embellishment and lies in the wake of the Nicholas verdict. He said her
evidence was a "lie by you to impress these people (the jury)". She replied: "No, it's
not." Mr Mabey also asked why there was
no mention in initial statements to police of her claims that Schollum had
threatened her after the incident. She replied that she thought no one would
believe her and she was scared. Mr Mabey asked her why then she
had allegedly sat in the back of Schollum's car two weeks later when he had
visited her house. "It was my chance to tell him what I thought of him
and tell him never to come back," she said. Mr Mabey also challenged her over
injuries she had received after the alleged attack, saying if she had struggled
in handcuffs the marks would have been obvious. The assault "just did
not happen". "Yes, it did," she said.
When re-examined by crown
prosecutor Brent Stanaway, she was asked if she had fabricated or embellished
any details. She replied that she had not. Earlier, Shipton's lawyer, Bill
Nabney, asked the woman why, given her statements that she had not seen
Shipton after the incident, her number was still in his notebook in 1987. She said she did not know why but
was not in contact with him. Asked if she remembered going to
Rotorua police station in 1985 when her boyfriend was in trouble with police,
she said she remembered that she was not allowed to see him. Mr Nabney asked whether she
remembered asking to see Shipton after she was denied access to her
boyfriend. "No, not that I can recall," she said. NZPA |
