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Convicted rapist and former detective sergeant Brad Shipton says no serving police officers were involved in the latest allegations of sordid group sex.
The 48-year-old spoke to his Tauranga-based lawyer Bill Nabney by phone this morning from prison, where he is serving time for the 1989 rape of a 20-year-old woman who was lured to a lifeguard tower at Mt Maunganui.
He, along with ex-policeman Bob Schollum and Tauranga businessman Peter McNamara and fireman Warren Hales were convicted of her pack rape.
Hales appealed his rape conviction, the crown later withdrew the rape charge when it went to retrial and replaced it with one count of abduction, to which he pleaded guilty.
In March last year Shipton, Schollum and assistant police commissioner Clint Rickards were all acquitted of raping then-teenager Louise Nicholas in Rotorua in the 1980s.
A year later, the three were also acquitted of kidnapping and indecently assaulting another teenager in Rotorua more than 20 years ago.
Mr Nabney told NZPA Shipton today that all the sexual activity revealed by an unnamed woman to the Sunday News -- which splashed images from a home-made videotape across several pages at the weekend -- was consensual.
"At the time it occurred, he was not a member of the police and had not been since 1997," the lawyer said.
The woman alleged in the Sunday newspaper story that the activities took place in the Bay of Plenty between the mid-1990s and 2002.
An indication that the video was made after September 2001 came from the soundtrack of a music television show heard playing in the background. The hour-long tape showed Shipton and two unidentified men -- whom the woman claimed were also former police officers -- having group sex with her.
At that time, Shipton was a Tauranga city councillor and local business owner.
Mr Nabney said Shipton told him that other activities the woman alleged had happened had not involved him.
And Shipton was "quite upset" about reference in the Sunday News story to his wife of nearly 30 years who has stuck by him.
"He said Sharon has already been hurt enough," Mr Nabney said.
The claims made to Sunday News include the woman having sex with serving uniformed officers while they were on duty, the use of handcuffs and batons during sex sessions, and being shackled to the ceiling of a building by Shipton, who bit her.
She said she considered the activities consensual at the time but later believed she had been exploited by Shipton and the other men.
The allegations, which have sparked fresh police inquiries, have come ahead of the findings due for public release soon from the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct. The inquiry was instigated in 2004 after the accusations made by Louise Nicholas.
- NZPA
