Officer groped me, says woman

By JO-MARIE BROWN

Another Rotorua woman has alleged that she was sexually assaulted by a police officer in the city during the late 1980s.

The woman, who asked not to be named, was just 17 when she says a serving officer tried to rip her clothes off and put his hands down her pants outside the Rotorua Police Station late one evening.

She now lives overseas and was not aware of Louise Nicholas' claims that she was pack-raped by three Rotorua police officers in 1986, or that a criminal investigation and commission of inquiry were under way as a result.

It was only after she arrived home last weekend to visit her family that she saw a news item about Mrs Nicholas and broke down.

Until then, she had not even told her mother about what had happened.

"There was a different culture back then.

"You didn't say anything ... We were brainwashed into thinking there was no one we could turn to for help," the woman said.

Now in her early 30s, she remembers having gone to the Rotorua Police Station after finishing her waitressing shift one night to lend moral support to a friend who wanted to report an incident.

The policeman who she says attacked her lived on the same street as her family and asked her into his office as soon as he spotted her waiting in the lobby.

But their conversation quickly soured when the officer made a lewd comment about a revealing costume the teenager had worn in a local theatrical production.

"He just said to me, 'I need to tell you I thought you looked really good in your underwear', " she recalled.

"I was completely shocked. I was only 17 and I freaked out."

The Herald cannot name the police officer concerned because he was granted permanent name suppression in the mid-1990s following his acquittal on various criminal charges.

He is not one of the men accused by Louise Nicholas of sexually interfering with her.

The woman says she then ran out of the office but barely made it out of the station's front doors before the officer grabbed her.

"He threw me against the car, stuck his tongue in my ear, started ripping my clothes off and tried to put his hands down my pants.

"I said to him, 'What the hell are you doing' and he said, 'What can you do? I'm a cop.'

"Those words will burn in my brain for ever," she said.

Terrified that she was about to be dragged back inside and raped, the woman says she kneed the officer in the groin and ran off.

"I was just sobbing but I remember him yelling out after me, "I'll get you. I know where you're from. You can't run away'."

The following day, she claims, the officer turned up at her flat and forced his way inside. The woman says her male cousin was home and the policeman backed off as soon as he realised the pair were not alone.

Because the Rotorua woman was too scared to report the assault at the time, her story is unlikely to fall within the terms of reference of the commission of inquiry looking into police conduct.

Internal Affairs spokeswoman Juli Clausen said the commission could look only at cases where complaints had been made to the police and investigated.