Allegations of abuse
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Shipton, Schollum vs Jane Doe Page 5 - Further Reaction to
Not Guilty Verdict |
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It all starts with Shipton. He was
a 25-year-old detective, she was the Rotorua 16-year-old without School
Certificate, whose first job was in a cafe frequented by policemen. He soon charmed her, when she was
serving pies and cakes, or down at the Cobb and Co when she snuck out from
her conservative English immigrant mother and snuck in as an underage
drinker. He'd "chat me up", she
said. It was easy for him - he'd just say she looked nice. "I thought it
was neat." She was naive. She thought he was
her boyfriend. The boyfriend with the wedding ring on sometimes. She was in love with him. He'd pick her up in his car. There was no dinner and no movies,
she said - just trips in his car to Sulphur Point on He was bored. He wanted his mate
"Bob" to join in. Shipton would suggest it, implying he thought it
was a good idea if she "experimented". But she would say no, she
was interested only in him. She knew Bob Schollum, too, the
nice guy with the moustache with grey in it. He bought cigarettes from her
work. The nice guy would turn up uninvited and ask her out, saying how he'd
been told she was good at head. Shipton was persistent.
Eventually, he would bring Schollum along on their trips. They would grope
her in the back of the car - and again she'd say no. On one occasion Shipton took the
tearful teenager home, gave her an apology, and she thought that was that -
because she wasn't up for it, she wouldn't see them again. Shipton never denied any of this
in the trial that took place last week. What he did deny was the indecency
she said happened afterwards. Schollum denied it too, but did
not deny knowing the woman. The third accused, Clint Rickards, said he had
never seen her in his life. The woman testified that there was
a phone call. She went to a house, Shipton was there, Schollum, the guy she
knew as "Clint" and two other policemen. There was "a party
scene". She had some whisky. The house was
pretty empty, as if no one lived there. Shipton soon suggested having sex,
and she said, "Not with all these guys around we're not." She claimed Shipton would say,
"She's not going to come willingly," laughing like it was a joke to
them. She was picked up by two men and
taken to a room, grabbing at the door frame and trying to bite. "For such a little thing
she's quite a fighter," she claimed they said. A bed, all made up, in the empty
house. Shipton straddled her, she said.
Schollum was on one side and Rickards on the other. She said it was Shipton who pulled
the handcuffs out, Shipton who told someone to get something from the lounge.
She did not know who performed the indecency because she could not see past
Shipton. The sign on Brad Shipton's locker
at the Rotorua police station read Big Bad Brad. It was the early 1990s and
Shipton was quick to befriend a young woman journalist, who saw the sign,
when she arrived in town to work at the newspaper. "Shipton made it his business
to get to know me. He took me on a tour of best places to live - "How the other officers
smirked when he turned up with me in the car," she recalls. "It was
some sort of domestic in an area noted for gang problems. He pointed out the
gang HQ, that sort of thing, before going in to help arrest the guy." The woman, who does not want to be
named, recalled Shipton, then a sergeant, as a pretty impressive sort of guy,
"built like the proverbial brick shithouse". "He seemed pretty
friendly and well-liked. After that first tour he took me out on his Intruder
motorbike once, then dropped me back at my place." They kissed. A week later she heard
he was married. "Being a moralistic type I wasn't too impressed about
that." Their contact remained professional after that. A lawyer who associated with
Shipton and Schollum in the 1980s remembers both men as
"promiscuous", despite being married. Shipton "generally seemed to
constantly be with a different woman," said the lawyer, who had no idea
Shipton was married despite the pair socialising. He thought Sharon Shipton was a
blood relative and was shocked to learn she was his wife. "I thought, 'Bloody hell,
he's married?'". Schollum was somebody who seemed
to make it his business to get as much sex from different women as he could,
the lawyer said. "He was one of those guys
who'd skite about how he managed to shag this woman last night. He was a shocker." The lawyer did not agree that the
behaviour was part of a prevailing culture at Rotorua police station. "It might've been the way
those guys operated, but it certainly wasn't the way everyone operated in
those days." One person who was at parties in Rotorua
involving Shipton, Schollum, Rickards and other police in the early to
mid-1980s recalls: "There was a real sense of their power and it was
definitely a very sexually charged scene, that much was quite evident. "It was a very heavy kind of
a scene actually, below the surface a bit. "I remember one instance of
[the party host] having to run a young girl home. Some of these women were
intimidated by them. We would often say, 'Should we drive them home?' and I
can remember [name] advising them on more than one occasion to go home. "But I did not ever see
anything that would be hard evidence. There was always lots of talk about
batons and all that sort of stuff. It's like you can see how the court cases
have been intensely grey areas." A detective who worked with
Shipton at Rotorua described him as "a good leader and motivator"
but questioned whether he had the respect of colleagues. Shipton and Schollum received a
lot of female attention. "Brad was a good looking guy ...
All the girls used to be attracted to him. Bob was the same. Women swarmed to
him." A woman who had an affair with
Shipton while he was working at Rotorua said he did not hide the fact that he
was married. She found the allegations made by Louise Nicholas and the other
Rotorua woman hard to believe, and said that in the several years she knew
Shipton he was always pleasant and never violent towards her. "I had actually said no to
him a couple of times and that was okay," the woman said. In 1985, Louise Nicholas was
walking home from her job as a receptionist in Rotorua when Schollum pulled
up and offered her a lift. She knew him from her childhood in Murupara where,
as a family friend, he took her on long drives. He introduced her to Shipton
and Rickards. In 2004, she alleged that between
September 1985 and December 1986 Shipton and Rickards visited her Rotorua
flat between six and 12 times for sex she did not consent to - sometimes
wearing uniform and sometimes in plain clothes. On one occasion Schollum took her
to a police flat in Rotorua where he, Rickards and Shipton pack-raped her and
violated her with a baton, she alleged. They maintained the sex was
consensual and, last March, were found not guilty of 20 charges of rape,
indecent assault and sexual violation. Like the earlier Rotorua woman,
Nicholas was under 48kg. Shipton and Rickards were big boys. They'd take turns having sex with
her. There was often no conversation, she said, other than maybe a sleazy
remark from Shipton who would say "Gee you're looking good", or
something similar. Nicholas' flatmate also testified
to having sex with Shipton during his visits at that time. She said it was
consensual. Shipton did not take the witness
stand to defend his actions, leaving it to his lawyer to say that the trial
was not about a married man having extramarital sex with a young woman.
"It's a bunch of people having fun." While he admitted the sex, he
completely denied her claims that he wielded a baton in the " Shipton and the others were
acquitted on all charges, including this. The victim of the Mt Maunganui
rape had the misfortune to be attracted to Shipton, the handsome bodybuilding
policeman whose beat was the Mount during the summer months of 1988-1989. Shipton had seen the interest such
woman showed in him as an opportunity for sex, not just for him but his
mates, and, according to the allegations, was prepared to press ahead despite
the women's protests. The complainant in the Mt
Maunganui case told the court of being taken to a surf lifesaving tower by
Peter McNamara, a lifesaver and associate of Shipton, under the pretext of
taking her to meet Shipton for a lunchtime date. They rode a quad bike down the
beach to the tower, where she saw another quad bike parked. From the top of
the stairs she could see a police car parked on the road. Inside the tower were Shipton and
Schollum. There was a lifesaver on the verandah and McNamara followed her inside
and shut the door. "At that point I just remember thinking, 'Oh my God.'
I just knew that they were not there to set up a date. A mattress was the
only thing in the tower. She recalled "Bob"
saying to Shipton, "don't hurt her". She was told to lie on the
mattress and she did so because she was petrified and felt she had no choice. One of the policemen, Shipton, she
believes, handcuffed her to a wooden post in the tower. "I was lying on
my back with my arms above and behind my head. "Shipton was doing the
talking, saying things like, 'It's okay, we're not going to hurt you'. I
panicked and told them, 'No, no I don't want to do this'. A young guy who was
on the balcony looked petrified but he stayed there. I felt by his look that
he was there under pressure. "The others had weird looks
on their faces ... like a pack of animals looking at raw meat." Shipton removed her clothes below
the waist and pulled her top up. She tried to draw her legs up to cover
herself. "Shipton dropped his pants.
He was saying things like, 'Come on baby, I know you like a good fucking'. He
was forcibly kissing my neck." She said she thought there was
nothing she could say or do to stop them and was afraid they would hurt her
if she screamed. Schollum masturbated through the zip in his police pants
while Shipton raped her. Shipton got off and said, 'Here you go man, your
turn'. "I said, 'This is not funny
... please don't.' It didn't make any difference." While Schollum raped her, Shipton
masturbated. At one point Shipton forced his penis into her mouth. Then Shipton violated her with a
police baton. "I started crying. My whole
pelvis hurt." That's when Schollum said to Shipton, "Don't hurt her
mate." She said Shipton was almost frenzied.
After he withdrew the baton, Shipton raped her again. "He called me 'a dirty whore'
and said, 'You like this, don't you'?" McNamara raped her next, followed
by another (unidentified) lifesaver. Shipton then removed the handcuffs
and they left her with a fifth lifesaver, aged about 18 or 19 who, although
he seemed scared and embarrassed, also raped her. She went home and showered and
returned to work because she didn't know what else to do. She didn't go to
the police. Because she had arranged a date with Shipton she thought she
might be considered to be in the wrong, and it was her word against the word
of policemen. The next morning Shipton and
Schollum turned up at her work and talked to her as thought nothing had
happened. "That made me feel pretty damned scared ... I felt they were
letting me know that they couldn't be touched." A day or two later Shipton arrived
in a marked police car at the motel where she was staying. She told the jury
she thought he was "sussing me out" to gauge whether she was likely
to make a complaint. Very soon after he arrived her
telephone rang. She said a female voice said she was ringing from the Mt
Maunganui Police Station and asked to speak to "Brad". The complainant said she believed
Shipton had set this up to make it appear as though they were in a
relationship. She said the rape was the reason
she left She said she was too afraid to
make a complaint until 2004 when, while on holiday in At the time of the incident she
was 20. Shipton was 30, Schollum 36, McNamara 30 and Hales 21. Further evidence of Shipton's
sexual behaviour surfaced following the Nicholas allegations. He had been
involved in a police investigation into a family tragedy suffered by a
Rotorua woman. She said she agreed to group sex
with police officers in the mid-80s but now believed they had abused a position
of trust. "I was vulnerable and really
upset at the time and they preyed on that emotion and that is what got me
into that situation," she said. Shipton has also been accused of
"keeping track of his liabilities". That was how the Crown
explained why the Rotorua complainant's name and number were in his police
notebook from a couple of years later. They were inferring that he would keep
track of any problems that could arise. Shipton was 18 and working as a
lineman for the Electricity Board when he married Sharon Cavanagh, who was
four years older. They have heard their husbands
acknowledge infidelity, of being involved in group sex sessions together,
with young women. They have listened to allegations of rape and depravity. In the case of Shipton and
Schollum, the wives maintain their husbands' innocence despite convictions
for kidnapping and raping a woman in Mt Maunganui in 1989. "What he did previously is
not up to us at all," said Howard Russell, Caron Schollum's father, in
response to his son-in-law's sexual behaviour in the 1980s. Caron, 35, has been married to
Schollum for 10 years. They have two children, although Schollum has other
children from his first marriage. Caron was "only just starting
high school when it all happened", Russell said. "They're more in
love than ever." An uncle of Yesterday, Sharon Shipton did not
want to comment on her marriage. It is understood the Shiptons have a teenage
daughter. In the past two weeks, the
Ministry of Justice project leader was not quizzed on her husband's
infidelities, just on the alibi she was giving him that they were on holiday
during some of the time it could have happened. "He's grown in every
direction," she said of his size, boosted first by bodybuilding then by
middle-aged spread. As she was slowly taken apart on
the witness stand, Shipton lost his swagger. She was accused of letting him
influence her testimony from prison. When the alibi they gave them was
painted as a lie, and The next morning, once the jury
were led out for morning tea, Mrs Shipton was not in the front row to greet
her husband as he was led to the cells. She stood further back, looking
solemn with her dark-ringed eyes, and only acknowledged him when he called
out " They shook hands. But by lunch, she was ready for a
hug again. He grabbed her and whispered in her ear. And by the verdicts, she
was ecstatic for him. It was the right thing for their family, she said. Of
course they were still together and why would you think otherwise, she said. Until asked about the verdicts in
the Mt Manganui case. That's when Sharon Shipton walked away. Crown Prosecutor Brent Stanaway
described his dismantling of Mrs Shipton as "rather sad". She was,
Mr Stanaway said, a victim in all this too. Asked about his brother's morals
after admitting affairs during his marriage, Greg Shipton said: "While
we don't condone that sort of behaviour, what you are talking about is he is
getting judged on his moral behaviour now, not 25 years ago. Twenty-five
years ago there was no Aids. "People were a lot different
in their behaviours, yet you know he is getting judged on today's, where
there are Aids, where that sort of thing is frowned upon and I don't know
whether that sort of thing is totally fair." Rickards' lawyer John Haigh
swatted away questions about his clients' involvement in group sex by saying
"half of Dr Nicola Gavey, an associate
professor of psychology at "No one really knows what
people are doing privately in their sexual lives, but I think if there is
such so-called group sex going on, and it's truly consensual, it's not very
likely to be happening among a group of policemen who are much older, with a
teenage girl." The psychology expert's
observations of Shipton? "I think he's clearly
demonstrated that his sexual ethics are sorely lacking. Just looking at the
pattern, and if you believe the complainants' accounts, it would seem he's
quite misogynistic. "It's interesting the
intersection between ethics and the justice system and criminality. It's all
very well for these men and their supporters to be cheering at the verdict
from this trial ... [but] one thing that is clear is their ethics and the
morality of their behaviour, and we need to stand up and judge that and say
'this is not acceptable behaviour'." Gavey says the defence of
consensual sex was implausible and "doesn't ring true". "Given that at least three
women have come forward and put themselves on the stand in a rape trial, to
say that they were not consenting speaks volumes to me. "To me it sounds like a group
of men acting to support each other in gross serial exploitation of women. "What may have started as
consensual sexual relationships seem to have been quickly manipulated into
exploitative, and if we can believe the accounts of the complainants, which I
do, abusive acts of sexual violence." Dr Jan Jordan, a criminologist at "Nor was the emphasis really
drawn out of that power differential between them - as physically huge,
dominant male, older police officers in positions of authority - versus 16
and 17-year-olds, sometimes from quite troubled backgrounds with troubles of
their own. "There was an inherent power
imbalance there right from the start and I think far more could have been
made of that in the court." After leaving the police in 1998,
Shipton turned private investigator, starting Focus Private Security, a firm
he still owns with During an interview with the His business interests extended to
the hospitality industry, where he had investments in several Tauranga bars.
The Bahama Hut bar is regarded locally as a popular but seedy watering hole. "It was interesting that it
was a guy who was an ex-cop, but there seemed to be plenty of trouble in the
place," said an acquaintance of Shipton. "It didn't have a great
reputation." Negative publicity followed Shipton
during his stint as a councillor and pub owner. He set the worst record for
attendance, missing 20 per cent of meetings in six months. Shipton was already the focus of
the rape allegations made by Louise Nicholas but said they had done little to
distract him from his council duties. He told the paper: "It is a
load of rubbish and I am getting on with life but it will probably get much
worse before it gets better." In 2004 he was charged with possessing
a pistol without a licence. The gun was found wrapped in newspaper in a
plastic bag in the rafters of his garage. Controversy was never far away. As
a councillor, Shipton was forced to defend his decision to hold dwarf-curling
competitions at one of his pubs, The "leprechaun curling"
competition involved punters propelling a dwarf, covered in vegetable oil,
along a 6m polythene sheet. "Has everyone lost their sense of
humour?" Shipton said at the time. "It's really popular. If I felt
in any way that he (the dwarf) was uncomfortable, I wouldn't let him do it. "We do things for the
entertainment of people, and people want and enjoy it." Schollum retired from the police
in the late 1990s and worked as a car salesman in The bonds between Shipton,
Schollum and Rickards appear to remain strong. When acquitted of the Louise
Nicholas allegations, Shipton slipped his arm around Schollum's waist as the
older man started to cry. During the Rotorua trials, Shipton
and Schollum sat shoulder to shoulder and exchanged notes. Rickards
physically distanced himself from the pair. But, following his acquittal on
Thursday, Rickards publicly declared his support for his imprisoned former
police colleagues: "Brad Shipton is a good friend. Bob Schollum is a
good friend. They are still good friends of mine and always will be." - Additional reporting Juliet
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