Jury considering police rape charges

A jury of seven women and five men retired at 1.25pm today to decide if a high-ranking policeman and two former policemen are rapists.


Assistant police commissioner Clint Rickards, and former police officers Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum are being tried in the High Court at Auckland on 20 historic rape and sexual abuse charges against Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas.


She told the trial all three men raped her and indecently assaulted her in 1985 and 1986 when she was an 18-year-old in Rotorua. They deny the charges.


Summing up this morning Justice Tony Randerson told the jury the three men were entitled to benefit from any element of doubt in the case with an acquittal.


He told the jurors they faced a daunting task but were not to be influenced by moral issues after the three men said in court they had had group sex with Mrs Nicholas but that it was consensual.


Lawyers for Rickards, suspended from the police on full pay, Shipton and Schollum, said that Mrs Nicholas made up the rape allegations.


They said she liked sex with policemen.


Mrs Nicholas said in evidence she had lost control and could not say "no" to the three men who used their influence as police officers to intimidate her. She said she was very scared of them.


- NZPA