KEY POINTS:
A police notebook containing crucial first-interview evidence of a woman's alleged sexual abuse at the hands of three Rotorua police disappeared just after its contents were discussed with a senior detective accused of covering up for the trio, a jury heard yesterday.
Former police inspector Raymond Sutton told
the High Court at Hamilton that he spoke with Louise Nicholas in 1993 - at the request of her father - about two incidents of sexual abuse against her.
Mrs Nicholas told Mr Sutton - then a relieving senior sergeant - about being sexually abused by a former police officer at Murupara in the early 1980s, then spoke of sexual abuse at the hands of Rotorua officers Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum.
She claimed to have been raped, and sexually assaulted with a police baton.
Mr Sutton said he took only "very brief" notes of the interview in his armed offenders squad notebook, as that meeting with Mrs Nicholas was not an actual complaint interview.
Later, after Mrs Nicholas decided she wanted to go ahead with charges on both matters, he arranged for her to have an official interview with a female detective.
It was then he had a visit from John Dewar, the then CIB chief.
Dewar, 55 and now retired from the police, faces four charges of attempting to defeat the course of justice.
It is alleged that between January 1993 and 1995 he deliberately suppressed or failed to act on Mrs Nicholas's complaint against the three men.
He is also accused of twice giving inadmissible, hearsay evidence at two trials for the alleged Murupara offences. The man involved in that matter - who was not a police officer by the time it got to court - was acquitted at a third trial. He has permanent name suppression.
Dewar faces a fourth charge after allegedly manipulating Mrs Nicholas during a police investigation into his evidence at the two Murupara trials.
Mr Sutton told the court Dewar wanted to take over the investigation of Mrs Nicholas's complaints as they involved police officers. Mr Sutton said he mentioned to Dewar the allegations against Rickards, Shipton and Schollum.
He told the court he was happy to hand the case to Dewar as he was the ranking officer at the station at the time.
Mr Sutton told Crown prosecutor Brent Stanaway, QC, that in May 1993 he realised his notebook had disappeared.
"I searched everywhere for it. The last time I recall it was when I was briefing John Dewar."
He was later asked to provide a police jobsheet for the Murupara allegations, but left out reference to the matters involving Shipton, Schollum and Rickards, as that was a separate complaint. "I was never asked to record in a jobsheet anything about those three."
In other evidence yesterday, Mrs Nicholas's mother, Barbara Crawford, said she watched as Dewar took a statement from her daughter that included Mrs Nicholas's allegations against Rickards, Shipton and Schollum.
Dewar had taken notes throughout.
Yesterday began with closing cross-examination of Mrs Nicholas by Dewar's lawyer, Paul Mabey, QC.
In it, Mrs Nicholas said that when she laid the 1993 complaints, and until about mid 1995, she would have gone "to the ends of the Earth" to help Dewar.
She said she had signed a June 1995 statement - understood to have been authored by Dewar - saying she had never raised with him the allegations against Rickards, Shipton and Schollum.
But she claims now she would never have signed the statement if she had read it properly, and signed it simply to assist Dewar.
The trial is proceeding with 11 jurors after a female juror fell ill.
