Accuser weeps through rape testimony

Louise Nicholas testified that the three men would turn up uninvited to her house and force her to have sex. Picture / Kenny Rodger

The woman who has accused one of the country's highest-ranked police officers of rape is today expected to face gruelling cross-examination from lawyers for the suspended Assistant Commissioner Clint Rickards and his two co-accused.

Louise Nicholas yesterday broke down in tears as she described an alleged rape by Rickards and two other police officers 20 years ago.

Hers was the first evidence to be aired in the High Court trial of Rickards and former officers Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton, who worked together at the Rotorua police station in the 1980s. The three deny 20 charges of rape, indecent assault and sexual violation of Louise Nicholas between 1985 and 1986.

Crown prosecutor Mark Zarifeh said the men had treated the-then 18-year-old like "playdough".

Defence counsel for the three, John Haigh, QC, for Rickards, Paul Maybe, QC, for Schollum and Bill Nabney for Shipton, said their clients admitted consensual sex with Mrs Nicholas and Shipton and Rickards admitted they had consensual threesomes with her. All men denied any incident involving a police baton.

Mrs Nicholas, now 38, weighed about 47kg, and she was intimidated by Rickards and Shipton when she met them one night in the police bar.

"They were big men and rather, because of their size and stature, quite intimidating."

After the meeting they routinely went to her flat uninvited for sex.

Rickards or Shipton would turn up during the day when she had the day off work from the BNZ or was sick. Sometimes the men wore police uniform, sometimes they were in suits.

"I didn't want them there and when they would turn up my heart would just drop. I just didn't want them there."

Scared of the men, she said she told them she did not want to have sex. 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 like that.

The men took turns having sex with her, she said, in the lounge of her flat, making her perform oral sex on them as well.

"When this is going on I'm telling them 'no I don't want you to do this, I don't want you here'."

Mrs Nicholas described an alleged incident at a police house where the three accused are said to have taken turns at raping her before allegedly using a police baton to indecently assault her.

She broke down and Justice Tony Randerson had to adjourn proceedings to give her some time to compose herself.

Schollum had picked her up in his tan-coloured Triumph as she walked home from work, she said.

She knew him through her parents and was not scared to get into his car, but then they went past Corlett St where she lived and turned into a street where she saw Rickards and Shipton standing on the balcony of a house.

There was a fourth man at the house she did not know and she was eventually led to a bedroom.

"I said straight off that I didn't want them to do anything; 'I don't want you to do this'."

The three accused took turns at having sex with her, and forced her to perform oral sex on them, she said.

"Then it was all finished and they were gone and there was no one there and as I looked up I saw Shipton with a police baton, this, this baton, this wooden baton in one hand," she cried. He had a pot of Vaseline in his other hand.

She told him "no f ... n way" as she backed down the bed away from him.

"The bedroom wall was there and I could go no further, I couldn't go anywhere, he had this dirty smirk on his face, this smirk."

She was indecently assaulted with the baton and Schollum caressed her, trying to make her feel better, she said.

Schollum eventually called "that's enough guys".

"Then that was enough, they'd finished, they'd finished ... " she said over and over, crying into a handkerchief.

She said Schollum told her to have a shower, which she did, and he drove her back to her flat.

"I was getting out and he just turned and said 'sorry Lou'. I just kept walking."

She bled for a few days afterwards but did not go to a doctor because she doubted anyone would believe her.

After the incident Rickards and Shipton still visited her flat wanting sex.

The three men sat stony-faced throughout her evidence yesterday, Shipton and Schollum only passing occasional comment between themselves or Schollum shaking his head and taking notes. Rickards sat further away from them dressed in a suit after having being reprimanded by the Police Commissioner's Office for wearing his police uniform to court on Monday.

The Crown will call 44 witnesses in the case.