Allegations of abuse by NZ Police
	peterellis Home / police allegations / Rickards, Shipton, Schollum vs Jane Doe Page 5 - Further Reaction to Not Guilty Verdict
	Sunday Star Times March 4 2007; 05:00 The trial's over, but the doubt goes on Editorial The police rape trial ends and nobody is satisfied. Doubts persist about the verdict and about whether Clint Rickards is fit to return as Auckland's top police officer. The hideous difficulty of historic rape trials - her word against theirs, and no other evidence - confronts us again. Nor do we know if Margaret Bazley's inquiry will provide any help for the future. After the scandal and the uproar and the stalemate in court, we are left with doubt and anger on all sides. What can we retrieve from this shambles? The three trials leave the impression that disturbed and immature young women were manipulated by older and experienced men. In such cases, the issue of consent becomes horribly clouded. Where the power lies so heavily on one side, and the other side is all confusion and vulnerability, the legal issues are fraught, but the moral issues are not. Clint Rickards dimly discerns that his behaviour - sleeping with very young women while married with children - was shameful. Many simply do not believe he is innocent. This is a brute political fact that the police chiefs, wondering now what to do with him, cannot ignore. Two principles collide here. Rickards is, under the law, innocent until proven guilty. On the other hand, the commander of the Auckland police must be seen to be above suspicion of fault. Rickards is not in that position. He will inevitably be in charge of the investigation and prosecution of future rape cases. And inevitably many of the public will not think he is fitted for the task. It is especially unfortunate that Rickards demonised those who brought the charges against him and the other policemen, and that he sided with Schollum and Shipton. They remain his friends, he says, and he implies that they were wrongly convicted. A very senior policeman should not lend public support to convicted rapists - whether they are his friends or not. This cannot be excused as words spoken in the heat of the moment, understandable though that is. People of Rickards' rank and power must display better judgement. The legal principle - innocent till proven guilty - requires the police to employ Rickards again. The political principle - that those in powerful public roles must be above suspicion -means he cannot become the Auckland commander again. There are rumours that he will be offered a non-public desk job in Wellington. That would probably be the wisest choice, and a fair trade-off between the two conflicting duties. Whether Rickards would accept it is more doubtful. There are now calls for the police records of defendants to be revealed in court, but that would be a bad step. Juries are not stupid, and they would not necessarily be prejudiced if the police record was formally produced in evidence. It seems likely that many of the jury in the latest case knew that Schollum and Shipton were convicted rapists, but simply chose to ignore the fact - as they are bound to do. But the old cliche about justice having to be seen to be done remains true. If a defendant's previous convictions are aired in court, outsiders as well as the accused might think he was convicted because of that fact. The scandal has harmed public confidence in the police. The police are going to have trouble rebuilding trust. The right think the prosecutions should never have been brought. The left think the complainants have not received their due. But Shipton and Schollum were found guilty, and Justice Young's eloquent condemnation of them will be remembered. They serve as a warning to future offenders. Whether the whole business could have been better handled remains an open question. An inquisitorial-style inquiry, such as a Royal Commission, would not necessarily have led to any better result. Historical claims of wrong-doing without corroborating evidence are hard for any kind of inquiry, adversarial or otherwise.