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OVERWHELMED: Louise Nicholas arrives at court. 'I just wanted to die,' she said of an alleged sexual assault with a police baton.
Louise Nicholas has broken down in the witness box as she outlined how three police officers had sex with her against her will while she was a teenager.
Mrs Nicholas told a jury in the High Court at Auckland yesterday of how she had nowhere to turn because the men were police officers who "scared the living daylights" out of her.
The three men's size – she weighed 47 kilograms at the time – and their job were enough to make her "playdough" in their hands.
The Rotorua woman, now 38, was giving evidence on the second day of the trial of Assistant Commissioner Clinton Rickards and former policemen Bradley Shipton and Robert Schollum. They are charged with raping and sexually abusing Mrs Nicholas, then aged 18, in Rotorua in 1985 and 1986.
At one point during her testimony Mrs Nicholas was overwhelmed, and the judge called a 10-minute adjournment.
She had been describing being on her back on a bed while the three men moved around her, either having intercourse, or receiving or giving oral sex.
When she thought it was over, she looked up to see Shipton coming toward her with a police baton and a jar of Vaseline. She said she yelled: "No f. . . ing way, mate, no f. . . ing way are you using that on me.
"I'm moving back, moving back and then there's the bedroom wall and I had nowhere to go. He (Shipton) had a dirty smirk on his face . . . "
She said her head was up against the wall and her face in the pillows. "I just wanted to die."
The three accused say the incident never happened and deny all charges.
Prosecution and defence lawyers both said yesterday that Mrs Nicholas' credibility would be the most important issue for the jury of seven women and five men.
She is likely to spend a week giving evidence and being cross-examined.
Rickards, Schollum and Shipton face a total of 20 sex charges, which prosecutor Mark Zarifeh said fell into two groups.
One set of allegations related to Rickards and Shipton going uninvited to Mrs Nicholas' Corlett St flat and forcing her to have intercourse and oral sex. She said they sometimes came alone – or together for a threesome – and that there were between six and 12 visits in total.
The second set of allegations related to the alleged police baton incident, which she said took place at Shipton's Rutland St home. She said she was forced to have group sex with the three men, while an unidentified man watched.
Mrs Nicholas said Shipton was holding the baton during a sexual assault. The other two men have been charged as parties to that crime.
Yesterday defence lawyers gave brief opening statements in which all three men denied the Rutland St baton incident occurred. The men insisted any sex with Mrs Nicholas was consensual, including threesomes.
The trio had testified in 1993 that this was so, when they gave evidence for the Crown during the trial of another former police officer, who was acquitted of raping Mrs Nicholas.
Rickards' lawyer, John Haigh, QC, said allegations had been investigated and reinvestigated a decade ago and had been consistently denied.
Mrs Nicholas told the court that the visits from Shipton and Rickards started after they met at a police social club function.
She said she told them she did not want sex. They had to remove her clothing. Though no violence was threatened, she was scared.
"Because they were policemen, there was nowhere for me to go, no one I could tell . . . They scared the living daylights out of me."
Schollum was a family friend and she had babysat for him. Schollum had tried to comfort her during the Rutland St baton attack and it ended when he said: "That's enough, guys."
Rickards arrived at court in his police uniform on Monday but wore civilian clothes yesterday. A police national headquarters spokesman confirmed a letter had been faxed to him on Monday night reminding him that suspended officers were forbidden from wearing their uniforms.
The trial is expected to last three weeks.
