the rotorua sex rape culture part 2

(continued from part one)

The PCA appointed Detective Chief Inspector Rex Miller to investigate. Miller has also supported Nicholas's claims, saying John Dewar had shown "a gross lack of judgment and competence".

The investigation into the gang rape was hindered because Nicholas, who then believed Dewar had been sympathetic to her, had protected him from criticism. Miller says he was hamstrung by a wall of silence and alleges interference by Dewar, then the head of Rotorua CIB. Miller retired in 2000 as head of the Hamilton CIB.

The inquiry found insufficient evidence to prompt a criminal investigation into the rape allegations.

Louise Nicholas got married in 1988, and the next year the first of her three children were born.

John Dewar has been stood down from his job as a HR Manager for the St Johns Ambulance in Hamilton. He had been found guilty by a police disciplinary tribunal of making a sexist and improper remark to a woman police officer while employed by the police. He asked the woman whether her late release from the investigation hunting Auckland serial rapist Joe Thompson was because she was "bonking" the boss - and was the subject of at least three inquiries by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) or the police commissioner.

Dewar resigned from the police and a good verbal reference was given by Rickards prior to Dewar's employment at St Johns Ambulance. No mention was made of the above concerns in the reference, of course. Dewar did not get very good performance appraisals in 1994/95 before leaving the police, so the reference made up for that.

A former Rotorua woman has alleged to have had consensual group sex with Rickards and Shipton while they were on duty in the mid 1980s. The woman claimed on a One News item that she was manipulated into having sex in the mid-1980s with Dewar, Shipton and Rickards. Many of the sessions involved Shipton and Rickards, in a car although one was with Dewar, whom she said Shipton described as his boss and friend. The woman said Rickards would use a police car to drive her to meetings with Shipton near Tauranga, where they would have roadside sex .

Between October and December 1985, one of the sergeants in the Rotorua CIB was former Police Commissioner Rob Robinson, who was there on secondment. Schollum may well have been too. It is known that Rickards was undergoing his induction at the time. Schollum left the police in the late 1990's.

There are two other cases that will be investigated by the commission of inquiry.
Part one of this is here

Part three will be posted later.