Bitter memories revisited with weary determination

Louise Nicholas

Louise Nicholas has been here before. Over and again, she has told her story of rape and degradation, listed dates and addresses and names, tried to explain why she stayed silent for so long.

Through three trials, 19 police statements, counselling sessions, media interviews, through years of retelling it all, she has talked and talked.

Now, Louise Nicholas looks weary, sitting in the witness box in one corner of vast Courtroom 12, only visible from the collarbones up. She keeps her head down, staring at the floor, occasionally raising her eyes to frown at the microphone before her.

She does not look at the three accused men, bulky and bulging out of dark suits at the back of the court.

She does not look at the defence barristers as they suggest she is a liar, just occasionally flicks her eyes towards the bar tables as she answers the questions.

There's no outrage in Mrs Nicholas's voice as she denies lying, denies she is mistaken or has recovered these memories with the help of counsellors, relates how her claims against another policeman led to him facing two aborted trials, then a third trial that ended in his acquittal.

Over and over she denies ever consenting to sex with the men, explains how nobody would believe her, how no one could help.

"No, there was never any consensual sex with these men," she says a dozen times, eyes down, intonation flat. "I had no control ... I never consented. I just couldn't stop them." Her jaw is set, muscles clenching in her cheeks.

She cried on Tuesday, describing the rapes, but now Mrs Nicholas is not going to break, not going to react to the tone of incredulity in which John Haigh, QC, counsel for Clint Rickards, demands to know why she did not complain or run away.

Mr Haigh, tall and craggy, swinging his spectacles in his right hand, is trying to re-create the drama of the moment in January 1986, as Mrs Nicholas arrived at a Rotorua police house in Rutland St, in a car driven by Bob Schollum. The other men were waiting to have sex with her, she says. Mr Haigh wants to know, if she is telling the truth, why she entered the house to be raped again?

"They're standing up there on the deck in full view of you, these two rapists who had been abusing you over a period of months ... these men had been raping you in the most gross manner," Mr Haigh says as Mrs Nicholas nods and answers "Yes ... yes."

"So why," Mr Haigh asks, "didn't you tell Mr Schollum: 'Go to hell, I'm not going in there, I know what those guys are like, I'm walking home?"'

The jury members are looking at their computer screens, where a photo of the house gleams cheerfully - red brick, bright blue sky, green lawn, grey stairs stretching up to the deck. They squint across at her, waiting.

There is no drama in Mrs Nicholas's tone. "I didn't want what I knew was going to happen but I didn't run, I didn't, I admit it. I didn't go anywhere but inside that house ... I could do nothing."

On the cross-examination goes, as the three defendants sit at the back, Schollum leaning back in his chair, Rickards hunched forwards, Shipton writing notes in an exercise book.

Mrs Nicholas' only flash of anger comes late in the day, in response to questions about her brother's 1993 wedding from Schollum's counsel, Paul Mabey, QC. Schollum's evidence, Mabey says, will be that Nicholas lifted her skirt and showed him her suspenders.

If the rape claim was true, "you wouldn't have wanted to do anything sexual with him, flirt with him?"

"Oh for Pete's sakes," she snaps, looking directly at Mr Mabey for the first time. "No I definitely would not, thank you."

She holds the stare for a second, shakes her head, then drops her gaze back to the floor.