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Allegations of abuse
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Home / police allegations / Rickards,
Shipton, Schollum vs Jane Doe Page 2 - 2007 Trial of
Rickards, Shipton, Schollum Week 2 |
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Clint Rickards The fate of one of New Zealand's
highest ranking police officers and two of his former colleagues remains
uncertain this morning with a jury resuming its deliberations on whether they
are guilty of historic sex charges. Suspended assistant police
commissioner Clint Rickards, 46, and ex-police officers Brad Shipton, 48, and
Bob Schollum, 54, have pleaded not guilty in the High Court in Auckland to
kidnapping and indecently assaulting a then 16-year-old girl between November
1983 and August 1984. The jury of eight men and four
women began deliberating at 2.30pm yesterday, and retired for the night at
9.30pm. They were due to resume
deliberations at 9am today. The woman says when she was 16 she
was taken screaming and struggling to a bedroom in a Rotorua house,
handcuffed to a bed and indecently assaulted with a bottle by the three
policeman. The men all claim she is lying about
the attack and Rickards has said he did not even know the girl. While summing up the case to the
jury Justice Judith Potter told them to consider each charge separately and
the case of each of the accused men separately. She said they had to consider
whether the complainant was telling the truth and be satisfied she had
correctly identified each of the men. She told them what they may have
heard outside the courtroom about the trial was "utterly
irrelevant". The charges carry maximum jail
terms of seven years for indecent assault and 14 years for kidnapping. The men are the same three who
were acquitted in March last year of raping Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas,
also in the 1980s. |
