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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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Two juries that acquitted
"corrupt" 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 -- along with
suspended Assistant Police Commissioner Clint Rickards -- were acquitted
yesterday 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. Both will be eligible for parole from next year. The Dominion Post successfully
challenged the suppression orders, which means 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. That the pair were earlier found
guilty of similar historic sex charges was withheld from the jury in this
most recent case. The jury that acquitted them and
Mr Rickards last year of raping and sexually assaulting Rotorua woman Louise
Nicholas also did not know of the convictions. The officers' history of
offending was kept from jurors and the public -- hidden behind comprehensive
suppression orders -- to allow them fair trials. Mr Rickards was suspended on full
pay three years ago, after The Dominion Post revealed Mrs Nicholas' claims
that he, Schollum and Shipton raped her. Yesterday's verdict, after a jury
trial in the High Court at However, the others remain in
prison. Shipton was sentenced to 8 1/2 years on two charges of rape, one of
abduction and one of sexual violation. He will be eligible for parole from
May next year. His sentence end date is January 2014. Schollum was judged to be slightly
less culpable and received a shorter sentence: eight years for one charge
each of rape, abduction and sexual violation. He will be eligible for parole from
March 2008 and his sentence end date is July 2013. Both can apply for home detention
from five months before they first become eligible for parole. Two more men from the Mt Maunganui
case -- Peter Mana McNamara and Warren Graham Hales -- were convicted of
abduction and rape. Hales' convictions were later reduced to abduction after
an appeal. The Mt Maunganui complainant came
forward after Mrs Nicholas went public with her allegations. Justice Ron Young lambasted
Schollum and Shipton, both former officers, at their High Court sentencing in
August 2005. They were corrupt, he said, 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 Mr
Rickards. In the latest trial, Mr Rickards, Shipton
and Schollum denied kidnapping the 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 beachside
hut where she said she was raped by five men. Shipton and Schollum were in
uniform and a police car was parked nearby. The Mt Maunganui convictions meant
Shipton and Schollum were already sentenced prisoners by the time of the
Louise Nicholas trial last year. That is why they did not join Mr Rickards
outside the High Court at In the Nicholas case, Schollum,
Shipton and Mr 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. Mrs Nicholas said the men
repeatedly forced her to have intercourse and oral sex, on one occasion
sexually assaulting her with a baton. The acquittal of the men on all
charges sparked a controversy as demonstrators in A series of suppression orders, by
various judges and relating to all three cases, remain in place. --------------- CAPTION: End of a 'nightmare': Suspended
Assistant Police Commissioner Clint Rickards outside the High Court in Picture: GETTY IMAGES |
