KEY POINTS:
Sometimes we just get it wrong. As readers, on a daily basis we watch a news story such as the Rotorua police rape case of Louise Nicholas unfurl in scattered pieces over months, even years.
Just as we are able to pull up to survey the big picture,
the next noisier instalment diverts our attention.
In the thick of it, we argue over whether Clint Rickards is innocent, or if Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws' declaration of "don't give me moral coppers - give me effective ones" is frightening, foul or fair.
Only now, far too late, do I realise why the entire national conversation about this case feels sorely off-target. We have missed the point.
Yes, these trials may be about a dirty bunch of cops who were allowed to abuse their position of power criminally. It is also about a system that may or may not have been tragically flawed, allowing impotent litigation to drag on for years.
But the pivotal piece that holds the most power for me is that most of us - in the media, in the courts, and at dinner conversations - have forgotten one essential thing.
This story started with an innocent 13-year-old girl. Ultimately, it will end with another 13-year-old girl, Louise Nicholas' daughter, and mine, and yours.
Louise Nicholas was first raped by a cop before she had even begun menstruating. She was a young, scared girl boarding with her abuser and his family. It took her decades to grow into a woman sophisticated enough to understand the abuse of the institutionalised corruption she would have to fight long after that first rape.
For a moment, put aside whether Clint Rickards needs to be out on the street stripped of his new $50,000 Government wheels. Put aside whether John Dewar's counter-accusations will be upheld, and even put aside whether Louise Nicholas was telling the truth. Instead consider this.
One woman has been on the witness stand seven times through five trials and three depositions. Thousands of pre-trial hours have been spent on what her decision to speak out as a young girl has now unearthed decades later.
She has been called "the town bike" and a "media whore" by people who have never known her, though there has never been proof that she was sexually promiscuous in any way outside of the police rape incidents.
She has had the guts, the strength, the tenacity, and the tremendous inner resolve to choose to fight this case through intermittent litigation on and off for the past 14 years.
How would one person ever have had the strength to put herself through this?
Even if you discount her entire case, no one can ignore almost two dozen women who eventually came forward with similar stories of abuse uncovered as a result of the Operation Austin investigation in the years that followed. The handfuls of victims who chose not to confront the cruel agitator of the courts or the media are today symbolised in just one woman.
Louise Nicholas lost the trials she always believed would rebalance justice. But she won something much bigger than her own experience. She won a different future for her daughter - one that was stolen from her past. What I and many others in this country have forgotten amid the combustible discourse is how to change the conversation. We forgot how to ask: What should be valued here?
There is a former dairy milker living quietly in the North Island with three daughters and a new baby son who embodies what is best about this country. She has fought - despite being stripped of personal power taken from her since she was a young teenager - against the police, against the courts, and against public opinion to do what she knew was right, to find justice.
She lost once, twice, three times, then four, and even today it appears that this fifth trial conviction will be contested.
Louise Nicholas, I hope your 12-year-old daughter has begun to understand the importance of the woman you have become.
Tell her what you have done for her future. Tell her what you have done for the thousands of silent victims who are now a part of your singular voice.
Then this country can remember to say what we should have understood all along. Thank you.
* Tracey. Barnett@xtra.co.nz
Louise Nicholas is speaking at 8pm tomorrow, at the Dorothy Winstone Theatre, Auckland Girls Grammar School. For tickets benefiting Rape Crisis phone (09) 376-4399.