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Home / police allegations / Rickards,
Shipton, Schollum vs Jane Doe Page 3 - 2007 Trial of
Rickards, Shipton, Schollum - Verdict Not Guilty |
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Two juries that acquitted former
policemen Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum on sex charges did not know the pair
were already in prison for raping a 20-year-old woman. Shipton and Schollum - and
suspended assistant police commissioner Clint Rickards - were today acquitted
of kidnapping and indecently assaulting a 16-year-old girl between November
1983 and August 1984. The latest trial was the third
involving sex crime allegations against Schollum and Shipton and the second
against Rickards. What the juries could not be told,
to ensure a fair trial, is that Schollum and Shipton have been in prison
since July 2005. With the suppression orders
lifted, Shipton and Schollum can finally be named as the two
"corrupt" policemen convicted in 2005 of raping a 20-year-old woman
at Mt Maunganui in 1989. Rickards, an assistant police
commissioner, was suspended on full pay three years ago, after The Dominion
Post revealed Mrs Nicholas' claims that Rickards, Schollum and Shipton raped
her. He has now been acquitted of all charges against him. Shipton and Schollum will continue
to serve prison terms of 8-½ and eight years respectively for rape, abduction
and sexual violation. The Mt Maunganui complainant came
forward after Mrs Nicholas went public on her allegations Justice Ron Young lambasted
Schollum and Shipton at their High Court sentencing in August 2005. They were corrupt, he said, and
their deeds were "deeply disgraceful" and their arrogance
"knew no bounds". "You were confident you could
commit a serious crime and get away with it because you were policemen - and
you almost did." In the Mt Maunganui trial Shipton
and Schollum were acquitted on a charge of using an object for sex purposes -
a claim also made by Mrs Nicholas against Schollum, Shipton and Rickards. In the latest trial, Rickards,
Shipton and Schollum were acquitted of kidnapping a 16-year-old girl,
handcuffing her to a bed and indecently assaulting her with a whisky bottle. In the Mt Maunganui case, the
victim was a young woman, barely out of her teens. Enamoured with Shipton,
then aged 30, she sought a lunch date but was instead lured to a beach-side
hut where she said she was raped by five men. The Mt Maunganui convictions meant
Shipton and Schollum were already sentenced prisoners by the time of the
Louise Nicholas trial last year. In that case, Schollum, Shipton
and Rickards denied raping, indecently assaulting and sexually violating Mrs
Nicholas when she was a teenager in Rotorua in 1985 and 1986 - allegations
that first came to light in a Dominion Post investigation in 2004. |
