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Allegations of abuse
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Home / police allegations / Rickards,
Shipton, Schollum vs Jane Doe Page 5 - Further Reaction to
Not Guilty Verdict |
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The two police rape trials of Clint
Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum were to have been heard together but
a Court of Appeal ruling said that despite the "remarkable" common
features, a single trial would cause "illegitimate prejudice". The appeal decision had overturned
a High Court judgment that included rejecting a submission from the accused's
lawyers that using an object on a woman for sexual purposes in the 1980s was
not unusual. "I do not accept the
submissions made by the accused that violating a woman with an object was not
an uncommon practice in Rotorua at the time," Justice Tony Randerson had
said in the High Court. Yesterday he lifted suppression
orders relating to the pretrial manoeuvring, widening still further the
information that can finally be published in the wake of Thursday's acquittal
of Rickards, Shipton and Schollum on the last charges they faced. Immediately after the acquittals
suppressions were lifted on the fact of Shipton and Schollum's conviction 18
months ago for raping a woman in Mt Maunganui in 1989, and their sentences of
8 1/2 and eight years respectively. That victim had come forward when
she learned of Louise Nicholas' story. The complainant in the case that
ended this week had not volunteered her evidence. Police investigating Louise Nicholas'
claims found a line in an old notebook belonging to Shipton which said
"Milk bottle," and the woman's phone number. When approached she
made a statement. In evidence she said she was handcuffed and violated with
what she thought was a whisky bottle. In the court decisions released
yesterday, it was revealed lawyers for the three accused tried to get the
charges dropped, and trials relating to Louise Nicholas and the complaint of
another Rotorua teenager heard separately. They also reveal evidence of a
woman who said she consented to being penetrated with a baton during a
threesome with Shipton and Schollum in 1983-84, and the evidence of a former
police officer who said he and Schollum had used a police baton as a sex aid
in a threesome with a woman they met in a bar. Two men who had been police
officers in Rotorua in the 1980s said Shipton told them he had used a police
baton on a woman. In one conversation he said Rickards was involved and that
the woman had been "gagging for it". The High Court had said the
evidence could be used at a single trial, with the proviso that the jury be
told it was not evidence against Rickards who was not present when Shipton
related the story to the witness. Justice Randerson had said that
what the evidence proved outweighed any improper prejudice. "That this kind of activity
is sufficiently unusual or distinctive is emphasised by the reactions of some
of the witnesses who were so repulsed by what they were told that they had a
clear recollection of the relevant conversations," he said. The Court of Appeal noted the
remarkable similarity between Louise Nicholas and the other Rotorua woman's
claims, but changed the scope of the trial -- splitting them into two trials.
The Nicholas jury did hear from the other woman, because of the striking
similarities, but Mrs Nicholas could not be a witness for her. Any greater combining of the
trials ran the risk that a jury would use the evidence wrongly, the Court of
Appeal said. It also avoided the evidence of
the four witnesses who talked about taking part in, or being told about
consensual sex acts with a baton, being heard when it was judged irrelevant
to the second Rotorua woman's case. Sorting out the legal directions
for a single jury raised a real risk of confusion from a "bewildering
array of directions", the Court of Appeal said. |
