KEY POINTS:
For 10 torturous months, home for 57-year-old Bob Sutton was a gloomy prison cell not much bigger than the cluttered back room of his Rotorua dairy.
Inside his cell, the mild-mannered Okawa Bay shopkeeper would sit alone hunched over the tail end of his narrow cot, keeping a jailhouse diary, penning his thoughts.
"Even now it seems quite unbelievable. What can I say, it was a nightmare," he says.
Sutton's "nightmare" finally came to an end last week with confirmation of the Crown's decision not to seek a retrial over allegations he raped and assaulted a woman known to him and her two friends.
In November 2005, Sutton, who has four adult children, was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment after earlier being found guilty on 15 indictable charges - including two of rape, nine of assault and four relating to assault with a weapon.
A year later, following the presentation of new evidence, the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial, quashing the earlier convictions. It found that the main complainant in the case was "involved in gathering false evidence in support of the allegations prior to the trial".
Police this week decided not to take a new case - Sutton is now a free man.
Back behind the counter yesterday of the Happy Angler dairy, Sutton remembered the phone call from his lawyer giving him the news.
"He said to me 'you're out of here'. The relief was enormous," he says.
"I can still hear the door on my cell closing for that last time. It was a sound I'll never forget."
For three years Sutton had protested his innocence.
The allegations, which dated back to 1995, came to light in 2004. At the time Sutton was operating a hotel in the King Country town of Piopio. Aside from the allegations of rape, the Crown had alleged that on two separate occasions Sutton had threatened one of the three complainants in the case by pinning her to the ground and up against a wall. On both occasions, the Crown alleged, Sutton was armed with either a knife or an axe.
However, witnesses appearing on Sutton's behalf described the main complainant as a "strong-willed" woman who was known to "spin out" and overreact to situations when she didn't get her own way. The defence alleged the three complainants had banded together to "get Sutton".
Yesterday, Sutton was reluctant to criticise the complainant, whose identity was suppressed throughout the trial.
But he recalled when the guilty verdicts finally came in: "I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't understand how anyone could believe those allegations were true. All my life I'd been a law-abiding citizen and then suddenly I was going to jail."
Sutton spent the next five weeks on bail awaiting sentencing, and confronting the fact he was "going away for a long time".
"You just can't imagine what that time was like, preparing for jail. The whole time was a blur."
He recalls the sense of dread he felt as he was frogmarched through the doors of Waikeria Prison. He had no idea what to expect.
But he soon discovered the harsh reality of prison life. An inmate wanted a packet of biscuits he'd been given. Sutton told him to "piss off". The inmate beat him to the ground.
"It wasn't the sort of thing I was used to. I tried to get on with the other inmates, make the best of the situation, but it was tough.
"I'm a people person, but there, the best thing you can do is keep to yourself. The toughest thing was losing my freedom.
"I knew I was innocent so I always had faith. Every day I would wake up thinking maybe today's the day. That kept me going."
Sutton says he drew great strength during those dark days from friends and family who, he says, never doubted his innocence.
He says nothing can make up for the huge financial and personal toll of the past few years. He'd spent $100,000 defending the charges and had lost thousands while he'd been locked away. He was not sure whether he would now seek compensation.
The complainant could not be reached for comment last night.
