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Shipton, Schollum vs Jane Doe Page 5 - Further Reaction to
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After 10 not guilty verdicts,
Clint Rickards is a free man. But for many New Zealanders, his reputation is
forever tainted by the accusation that he is a rapist. In a series of
interviews with the Sunday Star-Times that began last year, Rickards speaks
exclusively of the fear he felt at the prospect of jail, the price his family
has paid, and the fury he feels towards his original accuser, Louise
Nicholas. By Miriyana Alexander. Clinton John Tukotahi Rickards
stood in the cells at the Auckland High Court and all around him the chant
reverberated: "Rick-ards, Rick-ards, rap-ist, rap-ist." The prisoners mocked the police
assistant commissioner for three long, tense weeks during the Louise Nicholas
rape trial last March. He knew their taunts would be nothing compared to the
treatment he'd face in jail. He knew he'd be a target for countless criminals
desperate to settle scores. He knew they'd probably try to kill him. He thought the worst, expected to
go to jail. "I had prepared myself physically and mentally for jail. I
was fit like nobody's business. I wasn't going to be humiliated by anyone in
there." But now, two trials and 10
"not guilty" verdicts later, Rickards will not have to find out how
he would have survived on the inside. A free man? Yes, but at 46 his
reputation is in tatters and he may never wear the police uniform again.
Rick-ards, Rick-ards. Clint Rickards was destined to be In January 2004 Rotorua woman
Louise Nicholas went public to accuse the Three men might have been in the
dock, but most of the attention - and the notoriety - was reserved for
Rickards. Never before had such a high-ranking officer faced such serious and
repugnant charges. It was his face that was plastered on the front pages and
in the TV news bulletins. A big, tough cop, now cast as a big, tough thug. The allegations were shocking.
Rape. Sexual violation with a police baton. Indecent assault with a whisky
bottle. Three cops were accused of behaving like animals. Rickards had made many enemies
during his sparkling career and, despite his strenuous denials, plenty of people
-including fellow officers - seemed ready to believe he was guilty.
Nicholas's assertion that her attempts to complain to police had been
discouraged only added to the disquiet. It seemed Rickards had been tried and
found guilty in the court of public opinion. It did not help that a tangle of
suppression orders meant details dribbled out slowly over the three years,
leading a suspicious public -encouraged by what Rickards describes as biased
media reports - to conclude crucial information was being withheld. In the frenzy that built around
the case, some of the suppression orders were broken on the internet and in
mainstream media outlets, including the information that, seven months before
the Nicholas trial, Schollum and Shipton had been jailed for raping a
20-year-old Mt Maunganui woman in 1989. Until now, Rickards has kept his
own counsel, concentrating on clearing his name. But now he says it's his
turn to tell his story. In a candid series of interviews with the Sunday
Star-Times, Rickards maintains his innocence, reveals regret about his sexual
infidelity and the humiliation of being arrested at "my own police
station". He believes Schollum and Shipton are innocent and should not
be in jail. He details his childhood (when he had
to leave one school after hitting his teacher), his police career and the
sleepless nights he sat up waiting to be arrested after Nicholas's explosive
allegations were published. He is damning of the Operation
Austin police inquiry into the rape claims - one of the country's most
expensive police investigations - saying it was a "shabby"
investigation he would have been ashamed to lead. He says witnesses were
coached, inconsistencies were overlooked, and that police were on a witch
hunt to "get Clint Rickards". He is equally damning of the media
coverage of his case, describing it as gutter journalism. He said the media
tried and convicted him before he even went to court. "The fact that
they continued to publish defamatory, biased and in some cases totally
incorrect information is a sad indictment on the integrity and objectivity of
the media." Rickards is a private, intense,
proud man. The erosion of his mana and what he considers his betrayal by
Police Commissioner Rob Robinson - who wanted Rickards to quit when the news
broke - is just as devastating for him as the accusation he is a rapist. He
is angry and almost bewildered that no-one believed him, that he and his
family endured three years of "complete hell" before his version of
events was finally accepted. Rickards was born in Rotorua on
January 20, 1961, to his Australian father John and Maori mother Lucy, the
second of four children. His upbringing was the usual working-class mix of
school, sport and mates. He was an average student who loved his rugby and
league, but he and his mates started getting into trouble with the police. "The boys I kicked about with
were pretty rough and ready. And, like it is with most kids, it came down to
boredom and daring your mates to do things. I was pinching milk bottle money
and taking money from my parents' wallets... that escalated into breaking
into the local factory and taking soft drinks." He was also turning into a
"bit of a bad bugger" at school, and was asked to leave
intermediate after whacking his teacher, who was trying to stop him fighting
with a classmate. Rickards' father decided he would benefit from a strict
Catholic education, and he was sent to Rotorua's Two defining moments changed the
direction of his life. The first was a "thrashing from my old man. It
was the first and only time he hit me and it gave me a fright. My old lady
was the disciplinarian... so I knew Dad was disappointed in me". The second was a brush with the
law. "That made me wake up to take ownership and realise that for every
action there's a consequence. It brought home to me what I wanted to do in
life. I could carry on what I was doing and never realise my potential, or I
could take the education direction, which opens up a whole raft of opportunities."
He eventually took the education
route, and trained as a police cadet in Trentham, north of Dangerous work, but he had no
trouble fitting in. He was made for undercover duties. A tattooed barn-door
of a man, after returning to uniform duties he was aware that the crime
victims he was sent to help often found his appearance menacing. "If I pulled up to a job and
there was a distraught complainant, I'd hop out of the police car and they
would look straight at my tattoos and I could see them thinking `holy hell'.
Fair enough, I don't exactly look like a cop." He got his first tattoo - a lion
on his right shoulder - when he was 14. He and mate Steve McDowell (later an
All Black and last week a witness for Rickards) were in He got more when he went
undercover - including a cannabis plant on his left shoulder - but in recent
years, his choices have become more meaningful. During Rickards' suspension,
his close friend Gordon Toi, a renowned ta moko artist, tattooed his arms
with traditional Maori works depicting his whakapapa, marae and his tumultuous
life. He says they provide spiritual protection. The undercover work ended - to his
regret - because he was becoming overexposed to the criminal world. "I
enjoyed the work, enjoyed the adrenaline rush it provided... you had to
survive on your wits and I liked that. And I got some serious criminals off
the streets." Being undercover cost him his
first serious love, but gave him his first long-term relationship. "When I went undercover I was
seeing a police officer in Rotorua. We were very serious and I probably would
have married her... but I went undercover and from a relationship perspective
it's not the best thing to do. Undercover work mixes you up. Things that are
not priorities become priorities and vice versa." He fell in love with a drug-dealer's
girlfriend. After locking up her boyfriend, in the early 80s Rickards
controversially brought the woman "out" from undercover with him
(it is usual police practice that undercover operatives cut all ties with
their criminal underworld contacts once they're out). Their relationship
lasted about 10 years. By late 1985 the couple had two
children. Rickards was 24 and working in the Criminal Investigation Branch
(CIB). Occasionally he had after-work beers with colleagues including Brad
Shipton and Bob Schollum at the Rotorua police bar. According to Louise
Nicholas, then an 18-year-old clerk with the Bank of New Zealand, this is
where she met Shipton and Rickards; she already knew Schollum, a friend of
her parents. And it was from there, she told the Auckland High Court, that
their sexual encounters began. But here is where their stories
diverge. Rickards told the court he and
Nicholas twice had consensual sex. The first was vaginal intercourse, the
second time she performed oral sex on him. He described them as happy
occasions: "There was laughing and giggling." The first time
Nicholas sat on his knee and kissed his ears. He said she was always willing
and participated "fully and consensually"; had she not, he would
have stopped. Nicholas told the court she was
raped six to 12 times over the course of a year. She said she was made to
have intercourse and perform oral sex on the three men. She told them she
didn't want to do it, but didn't fight back because she was intimidated by
their physical size and the fact they were police officers. The most gruelling part of her
evidence was her allegation that after the three men raped her one day at a
Rotorua flat, Shipton inserted a police baton into her vagina and then her
anus while the other two watched. She said she bled for several days
afterwards but did not go to the doctor or seek help from family, friends or
the police. All three men denied the incident
ever happened. In January 1988 Rickards and his
family packed up and moved to Otahuhu, south "I realised I could stay
there (Rotorua) and struggle on, be one of the boys and keep partying up a
bit, or start taking stock of the fact that I had a young family and I could
do what was best for them." They left behind a ticking time
bomb that would blow up some 20 years later. Rickards busied himself with his
career, and soon butted heads with superiors and staff over his style of
policing. He recognised problems in Maori and youth offending rates and wanted
to deal with them. "It is clear that Maori are
disproportionately highly represented in crime stats and to change that you
have to change the way you police. It was an area I wanted to get into and I battled
a lot within the organisation... it was hard for people to accept that I
wanted to start establishing a relationship with Maori, and with youth, but
it was common sense. The solutions to these problems can only be found from
those it affects. "As a Maori (he is of Tanui
descent) I found it unacceptable that our crime rates are so high... as a
Maori I've got some responsibility to right these statistics." Rickards appointed iwi liaison
officers and established programmes to dissuade youth from crime. Teachers
told police children were turning up to school hungry and were playing up, so
they'd be kicked out. "These kids were then roaming
the streets... thefts and burglaries increased. So we set up breakfast clubs
to give children breakfast before they started school - the kids that were
fed did not play up, so they stayed in school and we got a drop-off in crimes
like petty thefts." Such moves got results - the crime rates dropped in
Gisborne and Rickards made his way up through
the ranks (senior sergeant at Hawkes Bay, detective inspector and head of the
CIB in Invercargill, detective inspector and rural area controller in
Papakura, and district commander in Gisborne and then Waikato) eventually
arriving at police HQ in Wellington as assistant commissioner, where others
referred to him as the "commissioner's hatchet man". When
under-performing police districts came to the commissioner's attention, it
was Rickards he sent in to sort them out. As Rickards' star was rising, the
spectre of Nicholas was always in the background. Her accusations against
Rickards, Schollum and Shipton were first aired in the early 1990s, during
the trial of a former policeman Nicholas accused of indecently assaulting and
having sex with her in the mid-1980s in Rotorua. The case went to trial three
times - the first two were aborted -and the man, who has name suppression,
was acquitted in the third. Rickards, Schollum and Shipton were called to
give evidence for the prosecution at the third trial, and said, in a closed
court session, that they had had consensual sex with Nicholas. In 1995, there was a Police
Complaints Authority investigation into allegations she was raped by the
three men - no charges were laid. As Rickards saw it: "There was no evidence
against me. A full police investigation had cleared me of any
wrongdoing." In 1999, anonymous letters
insinuating Rickards was a sexual offender were circulated to police. The
innuendo cost Rickards possible promotion to deputy commissioner in 2000,
when Prime Minister Helen Clark vetoed his appointment. His case would go on
to become hugely political, when, the day Nicholas went public in 2004, Cue January 2004. Rickards had
arrived in Rickards sought support from
Robinson, a man who once described Rickards as "the best cop I've ever
worked with", but Robinson moved quickly to distance the organisation
from the trouble. "I was basically told I was
on my own, that these things had happened outside my role as a police
officer, that he might have to make some decisions about me so needed to keep
some distance. (Robinson) suggested I take some leave. "I was like - hang on, she is
saying I was a uniform cop on duty when it was supposed to have happened. The
reason I was locked up was because I was a police officer. If I had been Joe
Mongrel Mob this would never have been investigated because the complainant
was so unreliable there would never have been a conviction. "The man lost courage and
that was the biggest disappointment for me. I backed that man 110%; I would
have given my soul to that guy. I was totally loyal to him. I took a lot of
shit for him. "I thought he would have had
the courage and moral fortitude to stand up to those who wanted my head on a
platter, but he wiped his hands of me... the lack of support was
devastating." The pair have not spoken since. Several days before the Dominion
Post published on January 31 2004, Robinson sent deputy commissioner Steve
Long to meet Rickards. He suggested Rickards consider resigning. Rickards was
gobsmacked: "What happened to innocent until proven guilty?" It
seemed police national headquarters had written his professional obituary. For months, Rickards would wake in
the early hours of the morning and sit in the dark in his living room,
waiting for police to "come crashing through the door and arrest
me". It was less dramatic when it
finally happened in March 2005. He was "invited" to the Many people were there to witness
their boss's arrest. "A lot of people who never come down to the watch
house suddenly found something to do down there. "I was so ashamed that it had
happened to me and my family. It was the lowest day of my life. It was just devastating.
I had been a police officer for 25 years, I lock up the bad people... "I'm not proud of my
behaviour, but I've done nothing illegal. I did things I'm ashamed of, given
I was in a relationship and had two young kids, but I'm no rapist. "I've never used violence
against a woman... a violent person does that sort of thing; that's a
sadistic thing to do." The most he is guilty of, he says,
is infidelity. When he learnt Nicholas' allegations would be published, he
rang his former partner to tell her he'd slept around on her. She told him he was an arsehole.
"But she also told me she knew I wouldn't do anything like that (rape).
That was so comforting - she was a woman who out of anyone had an axe to
grind." His take on why he cheated on her:
"In the 80s there were women who came to police bars to pick up
officers. That happened. I was indifferent to it; it was just something that
happened. I'm not the first and certainly won't be the last man who has been
unfaithful to his partner. I sit back now and say was it right? No, it was
not appropriate and I am ashamed. "But I don't think our
culture is any different now to back then. The difference is that in the 80s
the focal point for a lot of police was the police bar, but that's not the
case now -there's all sorts of cafes, bars and nightclubs that police go
to." Different venue, same result. His
advice: "You need to be very wary of these types of relationships, not
only in the sense it will impact on your own relationship, but it could have
repercussions for your career in terms of being falsely accused. You need to
be very careful and the over-arching principle should be don't do it." Looking back at his behaviour in
Rotorua, does he consider that policemen having group sex was an abuse of
their power? "I think that if you say
that, it's degrading to women. We are talking about consensual sex - I could
have been Joe IRD or Joe Fireman. "To categorise women like
that is unfair to women. It makes it sound like the women we had dealings
with were bimbos. In the main they were intelligent women who knew right from
wrong - we made consensual decisions." Rickards is candid about the way
he has treated the women in his life in the past, saying he has been a bit of
"tomcat". He left a Rotorua officer for another woman, then slept
around on her - with Louise Nicholas and others -until he left her for his
current partner Tania Eden. Rickards calls Eden his wife,
though they have never married. They have been together about 15 years and
have a blended family of five children - they brought two each into their
relationship and had a daughter together. "I'm not proud of some of the
things I've done and I make no excuses for them. A lot of it was my
fault." And now? "I think I'm a big
softie. I'm 20 stone and like a teddy bear... where it comes to my family I
give into everything at the end of the day. I love them to bits." After his arrest, Rickards buried
himself in his law degree and the battle to clear his name, essentially
becoming a detective for his defence team. "I'd go through old
statements, court documents and anything else I could get my hands on... and
start identifying discrepancies to chase up. It was a way to keep busy, to
feel like I was doing something to help." And even though he thought he
would go to jail (and took a packed bag to court on the days the juries
deliberated) - "when you battle the state there's a whole brigade with
unlimited finances and resources and there was just us" - he says it was
almost a relief to go to trial. "Louise Nicholas had courted
the media and sought sympathy for all those years... we were finally able to
say to the jury hang on, there's another side to this, look what this woman
has done." Even so, the trial was
"humiliating and the media pressure unrelenting. And I felt for Tania,
my brother and my son sitting there every day at court... I was ashamed, some
of the things that I did I'm not proud of and I have no excuses for
them". His family had prepared for the
worst - including changing their daughter's school - in case Rickards went to
jail. "We sat down early on to discuss the situation. My position was
that this might not go our way - the reality was I could be found guilty and
go to jail for a long time - and so we needed to manage some things." Rickards also made a calculated
decision to change his appearance for the Nicholas trial. At an earlier court
appearance, much had been made of his intimidating size - he is 185cm tall
and 125kg - and goatee beard. So come March 13 last year, he was clean shaven
and had lost weight. "John Haigh (his QC) is a
staunch supporter of the judiciary and the justice system, but I'm not so
sure. When I have to lose 20kg so I don't appear too menancing... should it
be based on looks and how you appear... or on the evidence before you? "But we went through those
steps. I'd done power-lifting for a long time; I'm a big guy. And Tania told
me I was a serious guy at the best of times... that I needed to chill out and
knock off the weights. I didn't want to stop exercising, so I knocked off the
heavy weights and monitored my diet. It wasn't something I necessarily agreed
with, it was just something I thought I should do." Still, his appearance on the first
day of the Nicholas trial couldn't have been less discreet - Rickards decided
to dress in full police uniform. He was castigated by top brass and spent the
rest of the trial dressed in a suit. He says: "I was proud to wear
my uniform to court, proud to have been a police officer for 25 years. I was
being criticised for being a police officer, the reason I was arrested was
because I was a police officer, but I'm proud to be a police officer. The
police is everything to me. I once worked 57 hours straight on a homicide and
fell asleep interviewing a suspect..." The Nicholas trial wore on for
three weeks. As Rickards waited for the verdicts, he had a long time to
ponder his fate. "I kept thinking about what
would happen to me in jail and how my family would cope. When Brad (Shipton)
and Bob (Schollum) got to Mt Eden (jail) they nearly got killed. They were
put in the general yard and they heard there was going to be fight in the
yard to distract the guards, and while that was going on, those two were
going to get dealt to. "Sure enough, there was a
fight in the yard and 20 to 30 inmates approached them ... but a prison
officer at the top of the yard looked down and saw what was happening and put
a stop to it. "So all I could think about
was where I was going and how I was going to be treated. I was under no
illusions. I was a top-ranking officer, the criminal fraternity had no
respect for me, I'd worked undercover and was being depicted as a monster. I
would be the lowest of the low in there. "All I could think about was
that if this went wrong, I might be going to Mt Eden for at least 10 years
for something I didn't do." Relief seems too tiny a word to
describe Rickards' reaction to the not guilty verdicts in the Nicholas case. "Bob broke first, Brad was
next... I'd given Bob my hanky but by the time it was down to the last few
(not guilty verdicts) I needed my hanky back. "They were vindication that
what I'd said in court was the truth. I had said she was a liar... she was a
liar. A jury presented with the evidence and the facts, not fiction, came to
the right conclusion." It wasn't to last. No sooner had
the last "not guilty" been uttered, than the judge lifted
suppression on the fact the three were facing further charges. Now the public
knew he was accused of kidnapping and indecently assaulting a second woman. So how did the second case come
about? Rickards believes police went through Nicholas's evidence, and
realised it contained major flaws. "The likelihood of a successful
conviction was 50-50; they needed to tie the three of us together, so they
went looking for someone else." Police approached the second woman
after discovering her name and telephone number in a police notebook
belonging to Shipton. It was only then that she made her allegations, saying
five police officers were present when she was taken screaming and struggling
to a bedroom, handcuffed to a bed and indecently assaulted with a whisky
bottle. She has never identified the other two men. The Crown said the case was about
degradation and humiliation, about "what these men could do and get away
with because of who they were and who she was". The circumstances in the second
case are quite different to the Nicholas case. Rickards admitted consensual
sex with Nicholas but says he didn't know the second woman and has never had
sex with her. He says she has a history of offending (including dishonesty
offences, cultivating cannabis, drink-driving, and disorderly behaviour) and
has been "anti-police her whole life. Now she's got a chance to get back
at the police and she's getting all this attention". A lot was made of her credibility
during this month's trial: there were many inconsistencies in her statements,
and QC John Haigh was able to discredit her identification of Rickards. In the
end, the jury took just under eight hours to decide he was not guilty. Rickards said the verdicts were
"a weight off my shoulders. I can finally have a decent sleep after
three years". Despite his acquittal in the
Nicholas case, he did not believe he'd get a fair second trial. "The
reality is that a lot of people know Brad and Bob are in jail and that taints
me. The judge's call to lift suppression (on the second trial) astounded me,
it was baffling." Was he strong enough to go through
another trial? "I had to be - I can't let liars prevail. It is very
traumatic, but I have strong support from my whanau. And the thing is, I have
not done these things. You can't be faulted if you tell the truth." If he has nothing but contempt for
Nicholas - "I've already said in court that she is a liar and I don't
resile from that, she is evil and manipulative" - he is full of loathing
for the Operation Austin investigating team. "This was a vexatious,
malicious inquiry. Here was a woman who had a history of false rape
complaints and a propensity to lie and they were happy to believe her version
of events. "Not only that, but she
changed her story many times - and every time she did or the investigating
team saw a hole, they changed her statements to fix it up. "She made over 17 statements
to police and when you go through them and start pulling out her
discrepancies you have to start questioning the direction taken by the
investigating team. Where was the balance, why weren't the discrepancies
followed through? "I've been in the CIB 13 or
14 years and if some discrepancy pops up when you are interviewing someone
you have to flesh it out, but they did not. "They believed her from day
one. If she had told them chocolate fish could swim the only question they
would have asked her is if they were marshmallow or Caramello. "The tactics they deployed,
the overall lack of objectivity, not checking out her discrepancies, the lack
of balance... it sent a pretty clear message of intent. They were out to get
Clint Rickards." He has complained to the Police
Complaints Authority about the way his case was investigated - from the
interception warrants on his telephone, the illegal search of his police
office and personal property to the way he says the investigators were happy to
change Nicholas's statements. "It was an investigation I
would have been ashamed and embarrassed to have led." So why did Nicholas put herself
through all that if it wasn't true? Rickards can't answer that - "I
don't know what's inside her head" - but believes, given her history of
rape complaints, it is her modus operandi, done for attention and revenge
when she considers people wrong her. "It is also non-acceptance of
responsibility on her part for her actions when she was young. She can't
accept the way she was and blames everyone else as being responsible." Nicholas has at various times
accused seven police officers of sexual crimes against her - some have been
tried, but none have been convicted. She also admitted making up a rape
complaint against a group of Maori youths. "For people making these
types of allegations which are untrue, they must have an appreciation of the
hurt they cause, not just on you, but on your whole family... to carry on, to
change their stories to create things is reprehensible. I have no respect or
any feelings of empathy for them. They are cold, calculated people." The last time Rickards spoke to
Nicholas was in 1987, about a year after their last sexual encounter, when he
had been called to deal with a noisy party near Rotorua. "She was drunk as a skunk.
She planted a kiss on me and I took a while to realise who she was. They
weren't the actions of a person who had allegedly been raped by me. And that
was the last time I saw her." If he ran into her now, what would
he say? His anger is like a fire that
ignites instantly and ferociously. "I would not speak to her, I would be
physically sick... she would need to go away... the damage she has done to me
personally and my family..." He shakes his head. "She would have to
go away." The case has strained his 15-year
relationship with "We've had some heated
discussions about a whole raft of things, but never about whether I did it. I
know I've been a bastard to live with during the past three years, the
smallest thing gains the biggest momentum, but she has been amazing." Rickards is resentful that the
three-year battle to clear his name has cost him more than $600,000 and
therefore his family's financial security. He has borrowed heavily to fund
his fight -and yes, he is aware people make the point that he is suspended on
full pay. But it's not the $200,000 salary that has been reported - he says
he earns $155,000. SO IF Rickards does not get to don
his uniform again will it be, as his QC John Haigh says, a waste of a
brilliant career? Three days after the Nicholas
acquittals, Howard Broad was named "But Howard Broad is the
commissioner and I'm sure he'll do a good job. If I get back to the police
and he's my boss, I have no issue with that." And get back to the police is
exactly what he wants. "I'd be back tomorrow if I could. "I love policing, even though
I've lost a bit of my passion for the organisation. But I've never criticised
policing in general - my criticism is of the police officers in this
investigation and how blinkered they were, but they are only a small part of
that organisation. "All I want to do is put my
uniform on, walk back into my station and sit down at my desk... and get on
with working to provide a decent police service to the public." But after all this, does he really
think that can happen? "Why not? I haven't done
anything wrong." |
