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Allegations of abuse
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Home / police allegations / Rickards,
Shipton, Schollum vs Jane Doe Page 4 - Initial Reaction to
Not Guilty Verdict |
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The conclusion of the latest
police sexual assault trial has cleared the way for a three-year-old
commission of inquiry into police conduct to report its findings. It intends to report at the end of
the month. The Government ordered the inquiry
in February 2004 after historical allegations of sexual misconduct among
police surfaced surrounding the case of Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas. Since then it has been granted
five extensions to its original report-back date, racked up nearly $4 million
in costs and had its scope altered. It is understood the repeated
delays have been to avoid prejudicing a series of prosecutions that followed
the Nicholas rape allegations. These included the indecent
assault case which ended in today’s not-guilty verdicts for assistant police
commissioner Clint Rickards and his former colleagues Brad Shipton and Bob
Schollum. It became public for the first
time today that Schollum and Shipton are already in jail after being found
guilty in 2005 of raping a Mt Maunganui woman in 1989. All three men were
found not guilty in a separate trial last year of raping Mrs Nicholas when
she was a teenager in Rotorua in the 1980s. The inquiry, headed by former
secretary of transport Dame Margaret Bazley, was charged with examining how
police responded to sexual assault allegations and whether the people making
them were treated appropriately. Mrs Nicholas had publicly accused
police of deliberately mishandling investigations of her complaints of sexual
assault against officers. The inquiry was later asked to
look at police culture as well, but was instructed not to deal with any allegations
that were the subject of criminal proceedings or active police
investigations. The inquiry has already heard
evidence and its current deadline is the end of this month. A spokesman for the commission of
inquiry, which is run out of the Department of Internal Affairs, said it
would be reporting to the Governor-General on March 30 and would not be
seeking another extension. |
