Editorial: Nightmare must never be repeated

Opinion

The resignation of Clint Rickards ought to be the "closure" Louise Nicholas needs and deserves. Whatever deal may have been done between the police and their disgraced assistant commissioner matters less than the credit due to Mrs Nicholas.

Mr Rickards was to face a police disciplinary inquiry early in the new year on the sexual behaviour disclosed by Mrs Nicholas and possibly other incidents. Police have not publicised the 11 charges but his resignation speaks for itself. It speaks almost as clearly as the behaviour he acknowledged in his trial, which he insisted was consensual.

The jury was unable to find him and two co-accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt of rape. The case turned on the uncorroborated word of Mrs Nicholas against theirs and there can be no argument with the verdict in law, though questions have been raised about the justice of keeping juries in ignorance of the sort of similar convictions already entered against Mr Rickards' co-accused.

At his acquittal Mr Rickards delivered a foolish broadside at the police investigation and declared his jailed co-accused did not deserve to be where they are. That outburst, too, spoke volumes.

Mrs Nicholas, meanwhile, has co-written a book on her treatment by police officers in Murupara and Rotorua in the 1980s. Her account offers insights into the power and fear that enabled the policemen to disgrace their uniform.

The disciplinary inquiry could not have challenged the criminal verdict and would not have cast much light on how Mr Rickards came to be promoted to assistant commissioner with Mrs Nicholas's allegations on his record. It could not have added anything to the findings of the Bazley inquiry into police attitudes to sexual complaints against officers.

If the Rickards resignation closes the book on the harrowing saga, it is a moment to hail again the heroism of Mrs Nicholas and her husband, parents and children who have ensured her complaints were not buried where the policeman she trusted, John Dewar, did his bit to bury them - in dead police files never to see the light of day.

It is hard to think of a braver act than to lay out such personal misfortune for the sake of seeing justice done. Justice need not be narrowly defined by the criminal law. Gross moral indifference to the dignity and rights of a younger and weaker person may not be a crime in itself but it deserves exposure and punishment.

The police will be better for Mrs Nicholas's determination to bring justice to their former assistant commissioner, said to be once destined for the commissioner's hat. The public has lost some of the confidence established from years of observing the fine character of those recruited and trained for the New Zealand police, but that confidence can be rebuilt.

Officers can be taught to respect the power of their uniform as much as its reputation. Off duty and on, uniformed or not, they carry the authority and trust of their training. The names of Clint Rickards and companions with less braid will long remind them of the nightmare they must not repeat. And the name Louise Nicholas should be in the New Year honours.