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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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Amazingly, God was so popular last
week that He turned up in an It's amazing because in a
fervently secular world the Almighty still manages to make an appearance in
desperate times - as in publicity for a new documentary, say, or being under
pressure in cross-examination. There is, plainly, no substitute for Him.
Though fervent feminists once tried exclaiming "Goddess!" in
moments of extreme annoyance, it was never catchy. I winced for Sharon Shipton, who
made a mess of testifying on her husband's behalf in the police sex trial in It seemed hardly fair to stake
another family member's life on this, but hers is a family under
extraordinary pressure, possibly close to breaking point. Mrs Shipton has
been married for nearly 30 years to Brad Shipton, the former policeman who,
if his age is reported correctly, married her when he was barely out of his
teens. She has a lot at stake in his innocence, and this is not his first
trial on such matters. I can well imagine that another guilty verdict at the
end of this long saga would have collapsed her certainties about her marriage
like a tower of cards. That said, the same could be true
of some criminals' wives who her husband brought to justice. There has been a
nasty symmetry at work. All the families of the three men
involved have been through years of enormous stress regardless of this
trial's outcome - years of their lives they can never claw back. Loyalty is a
virtue, but it's a tough one to plug away at year after year, through times
of inevitable doubt and despair. It's not Mrs Shipton's fault she
ended up in that position. It was her husband who was in the dock, he who was
accused, not her, and I don't believe any woman could look kindly on a man
she believed could possibly be guilty of the crimes he's been charged with
over time. Blind loyalty would be the only viable option, since abandoning
someone you cared about in their time of need would be too cruel. I've seen in criminal trials when
the nastiest evidence is given - usually expert evidence about fatal injuries
and how they were inflicted on a murdered person - how wives and girlfriends
typically disappear from the courtroom until it's over. I've assumed that's
because it might make the crime more real to them, and threaten their
loyalty. You need a thick skin to stand by your man. You need to be tough. There's always a thin line between
the socially upright and the disreputable, and that's been one of the
undercurrents in these men's legal trials and tribulations. I guess police
wives expect to be certain which side of that line they stand on. I noted,
then, Mrs Shipton referring to investigators' conduct in her husband's case
as, "shameful, unethical, unprofessional". Police work is dirty work - nobody
likes to be on the receiving end of it -but it was the work the accused men
all chose at one time. Now she knows, I guess, how many other people feel who
fall foul of the law, guilty or not. The law is purposeful and callous. It
has to be. It was so when her husband earned a living by it, too, when she
probably never thought about its workings. We ask it to be fair, not kind,
and we only hope it uncovers the truth. A lesser standard of proof is
required in film story-telling, as in a new American documentary, The Burial
Cave of Jesus. When I was a kid people would still mutter, "Tell it to
the marines!" - a way of saying the In that spirit, the producers
believe they've uncovered the tomb of the actual Jesus, the Christian Son of
God, and his family, in DNA has reportedly been extracted
from remains found in two of the old coffins. I expect this will be used to
clone a new Jesus and Mary Magdalene, who can then star in a remake of |
