KEY POINTS:
The law courts have had their say in the various trials that emerged from the Louise Nicholas allegations. Now it is time for the court of public opinion.
In the dock are not the various individuals and personalities but the justice system itself and the notion of fairness
upon which it is supposedly based.
The charge: that justice was delayed for an unconscionably long time and was neither done nor seen to be done.
The defence, of course, has a case. A number of people were eventually brought to trial and this week a former senior police officer was convicted of obstructing justice. He faces a lengthy prison sentence for his part in a scandal that, among many other things, has caused untold damage to the reputation of the police force.
Yet this seems like small change considering the enormity of what happened to Louise Nicholas.
Abuse of power
The conduct of Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton may not have been rape but there is no question that it was a monstrous abuse of power towards a young and vulnerable woman whom they were duty bound to protect.
Monstrous too was the conduct of other police officers who similarly took advantage of her from a very young age and those who ensured that any appeal she might make for protection would go unheeded.
Even in the context of this sordid story, it is hard to imagine anything more sinister than the web in which John Dewar enmeshed her: while pretending to be her friend, he systematically worked against her interests as he swept evidence of his mates' scandalous conduct under the carpet.
But it was not just a matter of corrupt police officers protecting their own by illegal means. It should not be forgotten that there were perfectly legitimate methods by which Mrs Nicholas' allegations were concealed.
Smokescreen
When she first aired them publicly 14 years ago, it is clear that the courts smelled a very large rat and yet they still did what courts do all too readily: they imposed a series of suppression orders - some of which remain in force to this day - creating an official smokescreen behind which Dewar and others were able to operate so effectively to derail any impulse towards justice and fair play.
It should not be forgotten that it took an investigative reporter - Phil Kitchin of the Dominion Post, acting outside the institutions that are supposed to protect the citizens from official abuse - to draw back the veil of secrecy and force the police and the courts to face up to their duty.
When the story broke, a decade after the allegations had first been raised, it quickly became apparent that a Pandora's box had been opened and the justice system moved belatedly into action with a series of court cases that produced some controversial verdicts.
In such cases it is customary to defer to juries on the grounds that they, unlike those who did not attend court, heard all the evidence and were therefore in the best position to arrive at a just verdict.
But the same could not be said for the trials that took place as a result of the Nicholas allegations. The veil of secrecy quickly descended on the process again and no jury heard the complete story.
The careful orchestration of the evidence was done in the name of fairness, although many people rightly wondered what was fair about a trial that concealed evidence of scandalous or even criminal conduct by the accused while allowing the most sensitive and intimate details of a woman's life to be laid bare.
Equally unfair was the decision to leave the Dewar trial to last. This made it all too easy to portray Louise Nicholas as a publicity-loving troublemaker trying to atone for her past at the expense of others.
Such a view is impossible to sustain with the knowledge that she had been crying out for justice since she was scarcely more than a child but was denied at every turn by fair means and foul.
Above the law
Only now, with the last trial over, is it possible to tell the story in proper context, which reporter Phil Taylor does in Weekend Review today. It is a story about a grotesque abuse of power by a band of rogue policemen who thought themselves above the law. But it is more than that. It is also about a justice system that failed to come to grips with the problem.
There is no question that, in the end, some people made herculean efforts to put things right, notably the Operation Austin team led by Detective Superintendent Nick Perry. Louise Nicholas herself said this week that they had restored her faith in the police.
In itself that was no mean feat, but it cannot acquit the justice system of the charge that it failed this woman, and others like her, at almost every turn for years and years. The verdict on the system must therefore be guilty as charged.
And yet, even out of such a disgraceful failure, some good may come.
First, there has to be a better, more sensitive way of investigating and judging complaints of sexual abuse. Louise Nicholas said as much this week and she is right.
Of course serious allegations have to be tested and tried, but there is no good reason the experience of seeking justice should be made as brutal as the alleged offences.
Second, juries should be allowed to hear all the relevant evidence in complex cases so they can see the issues in their full context.
Third, it is clear that the most rigorous independent oversight should be exercised when police investigate their own.
And finally, the courts need to be more judicious in their imposition of suppression orders. Shocking abuses of power, like those exposed by Louise Nicholas, can flourish only in secret. In the full light of public scrutiny they wither and die.
