KEY POINTS:
Convicted rapist Brad Shipton - released on parole last week - will find his true sentence has only just started, say two of his alleged victims.
Donna Johnson says she is no longer afraid of Shipton, even though she is furious about what she sees as a complete failure of the justice system.
Shipton was last week paroled to his parents' home in Bethlehem, on the outskirts of Tauranga, the same suburb where Johnson and her two daughters live.
She thinks she may have already seen Shipton travelling around and she says his parents eyeballed her in the local supermarket on Thursday.
"I was standing at the checkout shaking like a leaf trying to get my card out. It was so awkward and uncomfortable. So as soon as I got out of there I was in the carpark, panicking [and wondering] if he was in the car with them. Then I thought 'well I have to get used to this won't I?"'
Johnson has alleged Shipton, then a serving police officer, came to her house in 1995 and forced her to perform an oral sex act on him. She knew Shipton from the mid-80s when her mother flatted with him in Rotorua and he questioned her over allegations her grandfather sexually abused her.
Johnson also claims police intimidated her into not laying a complaint about Shipton after the alleged incident in 1995. Police did not lay charges in relation to the alleged incident. Shipton was later found guilty of kidnapping and raping another woman at Mt Maunganui in 1989, for which he received 8 years in prison. He was found not guilty by another jury of the alleged rape of Louise Nicholas.
"For so many years he frightened me, he intimidated me, he made me feel worthless, he made me feel like I am a victim," says Johnson. "I am not the victim - he is the victim now."
She says Shipton has always proclaimed he cannot recall the alleged 1995 incident. "If I run into him, I will remind him that [it] is high time he can recall."
She would not turn away from him in the street, and all she wanted was an apology. She says his true sentence will start now.
"His sentence will start from the moment he walks up [Tauranga's main street] Devonport Rd. He used to think he owned that road as a city councillor - he would trot up and down like he owned the road. Let's see if he gets the same reaction now. The only thing that keeps me going now is that I know that people in this town will go up to him and say certain things to his face that he won't want to hear."
She says she can't forgive Shipton. "He and his family have humiliated us and portrayed us [she and other alleged victims] as liars.
"Why has the Parole Board and the Corrections Department not pushed him to admit the truth - and his guilt? I don't think he has even contemplated a recovery if he is not going to admit what he has done."
Shipton's mother, Lorraine, said yesterday she was "very pleased" to have her son home.
"I can categorically say to you, I don't even hate these women. I just feel there have been some very unfortunate circumstances that have surrounded all of us."
"The one thing that I can say is that he has the ongoing support of his family. I feel that no matter what we say it's not going to change people's attitudes."
A Parole Board spokeswoman acknowledged Johnson and Louise Nicholas had written to the board. "Because they weren't registered victims, the letters were just considered submissions from the public."
Despite his release, Shipton was described in the Parole Board decision as "manipulative". It said he had made inconsistent and incompatible statements and was at times untruthful.
In a statement, Parole Board chairman Judge David Carruthers said: "The system for registering victims is a robust and thorough one, enabling these victims to give their views to the board - and allowing the board to then make conditions specific to the registered victims' concerns. In this case the registered victim and her nominated supporters were interviewed by the board, and their views taken into account."
The Mt Maunganui victim, who has name suppression, told Radio New Zealand that Shipton should not have been released.
"He has refused to get any kind of help because he won't admit the offence, so we have got an untreated rapist about to be set free into your community."
Another of Shipton's alleged victims - the woman who was to be the central witness in former Assistant Commissioner Clint Rickards' police disciplinary meeting - said she was furious the Parole Board did not classify her as a victim. "He [Shipton] makes me very angry with what he put other women and myself through. I believe he has done his time, but I do think his sentence is only starting."
She said she met Shipton after the death of her husband in a car crash. Shipton was in the police and had visited her.
"I was not in a position to give consent because of the loneliness and grief ... I was extremely vulnerable."
She wanted Rickards - whom she accused of having sex with her on the bonnet of a police car - to go through the disciplinary process because she believed she was a strong witness. "I personally find him intimidating."
A third alleged victim, who also can't be named but who accused Shipton of raping her with a bottle, said: "He has to admit what he's done so we don't look like liars. That's the biggest thing. I will never fight for anything like this again because they win every time."
