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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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Clint Rickards is a man who sees
the world in black and white. Guilty, not guilty. Truth, or lies. Which
perhaps explains his struggle to understand the ambivalence so many of his
fellow countrymen and women feel about his acquittal last week, three years
after The Dominion Post first published Louise Nicholas's rape allegations. Yesterday he told Sunday Star-
Times assistant editor Miriyana Alexander he did not know why he was being
judged so harshly by the public: "How many juries does a man
have to go through? How many times does a man have to be persecuted?" Equally, he refuses to distance
himself from convicted rapists Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton - despite the
fact loyalty to his former Rotorua police colleagues has made his road to redemption
that much tougher. Loyalty, mana, status, pride:
these are things that matter greatly to the man former police commissioner
Rob Robinson once described as " the best cop I've ever worked
with". In a series of interviews
conducted over a year, Alexander probed the Rickards' psyche, revealing the
enduring sense of injustice and bewilderment he feels at having been brought
so low by an organisation he held dearer than life. Curiously, Nicholas appears as
little more than a bit player in his story. As Steve Braunias comments in his
opinion piece on A8, the women complainants have been "minor
characters" throughout the trials. Rather, "it was very much about
men, about male behaviour". |
