I lost the power to resist, Louise Nicholas tells court

Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas has told a High Court jury she had lost control and lost the power to resist when she was taken into a Rotorua house, raped and sexually abused by three policemen 20 years ago.

In the High Court at Auckland today Mrs Nicholas told the trial of the three policemen that she had grave reservations about entering a police house in Rutland Street in Rotorua.

She had been picked up by one of the men she has accused of raping and sexually abusing her, former policeman Bradley Keith Shipton.

He and another former policeman, Robert Francis Schollum, and Assistant Police Commissioner Clint Rickards have denied 20 charges of rape and sexual abuse in Rotorua in 1985 and 1986.

The lawyer for Rickards, John Haigh QC, began his cross-examination of Mrs Nicholas today.

Mrs Nicholas told the court she feared what would happen at Rutland Street after she had earlier been abused at her Corlett Street flat.

"The horror of the time at Corlett Street, what had been happening at Corlett Street, knowing that group sex was about to happen at Rutland Street, it was at that point I knew I had no control.

"I had lost all control. I had no strength left to fight this. It had been taken from me and taken from me a long time ago," Mrs Nicholas said.

The trial is expected to last three weeks.

- NZPA