Top cop faces second sex trial
Peter Williams
Advertiser Adelaide
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Auckland ( New Zealand):
A top New Zealand police officer who tearfully declared himself vindicated after acquittal of rape charges amid huge publicity in March is facing another sex trial.
Suspended assistant commissioner Clint Rickards and two former colleagues are accused of sexual offending in the 1980s against a different woman from their first trial.
The second trial to be held later this year has been made public in New Zealand for the first time after a Court of Appeal judge partially lifted suppression orders surrounding the three men.
Women's groups held protests after the March verdict and handed out leaflets to the public revealing suppressed information.
In the first trial, Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas accused Mr Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum of raping and sexual abusing her when she was a teenager in the mid-1980s.
The trio – all police officers at the time – admitted to having consensual group sex with Ms Nicholas and a jury acquitted them of all 20 charges.
Mr Rickards, once tipped to become New Zealand's first Maori police commissioner, was stood down in 2004 when the charges emerged and has not been reinstated since the Nicholas verdict. May 26, 2006
Peter Williams
Advertiser Adelaide
______________
Auckland ( New Zealand):
A top New Zealand police officer who tearfully declared himself vindicated after acquittal of rape charges amid huge publicity in March is facing another sex trial.
Suspended assistant commissioner Clint Rickards and two former colleagues are accused of sexual offending in the 1980s against a different woman from their first trial.
The second trial to be held later this year has been made public in New Zealand for the first time after a Court of Appeal judge partially lifted suppression orders surrounding the three men.
Women's groups held protests after the March verdict and handed out leaflets to the public revealing suppressed information.
In the first trial, Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas accused Mr Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum of raping and sexual abusing her when she was a teenager in the mid-1980s.
The trio – all police officers at the time – admitted to having consensual group sex with Ms Nicholas and a jury acquitted them of all 20 charges.
Mr Rickards, once tipped to become New Zealand's first Maori police commissioner, was stood down in 2004 when the charges emerged and has not been reinstated since the Nicholas verdict. May 26, 2006
