Nicholas and Kitchin have become friends. I interviewed her at Kitchin’s house. He lives in a river valley, bellbirds and tui in the lovely secluded view from his porch. There was yelling from another part of the house. Was someone, I asked, in pain? Kitchin said that was his autistic son singing in the shower.
It was a dark winter afternoon. Nicholas sat in front of a log fire with a glass of rum and Coke, wolfing her way through a packet of Holiday cigarettes, a small, light, narrow woman, forty years old, tense and suspicious, and although there was something hunted about her, like a child afraid of a harsh word or some worse punishment, she spoke with the kind of determination that has made her a legendary figure.
In the autumn of 2006, Nicholas appeared at the Auckland High Court to accuse three men – and here goes that old litany of names you’ve heard so often, the deeply unpleasant firm of Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum – of raping her, repeatedly, once with appalling violence, in the early 1980s in ruthless Rotorua. Nicholas took the stand. She looked terrible. I wrote back then: ‘She seemed starved; her skin had the tan of someone who works outdoors, but her face was caved in, all bones.’ I wasn’t surprised to hear that she had lived on coffee and cigarettes during the trial.
The trial she lost: the jury reaching its verdict of not guilty, the judge saying, and how carefully he put these words, ‘The accused are now free to leave the courtroom.’ Rickards left for home; Shipton and Schollum left to return to jail. Nicholas knew it, the press knew it, the judge and the lawyers knew it, and soon everyone else knew it, but it was kept secret from the jury that the pair had already been convicted for their role in the pack rape of a Mount Maunganui woman, who had come forward after Kitchin told Nicholas’s story.
About an hour after the trial, I saw Nicholas and Kitchin standing on Nicholas’s hotel balcony – smokers have no privacy these days – opposite the court. I alerted a photographer and he took their picture. Did you notice, Kitchin said when I interviewed Nicholas, what she was doing with her hands in the photo? No, I said. He said they were holding on tight to the balcony barrier, and wouldn’t let go.
She took up the story. ‘I was devastated we’d lost my trial. I was so angry at the devastation these guys had caused. And the poor cops from Operation Austin – I remember [operation head] Nick Perry saying to me, “We really thought when we started this investigation it would be over and done within six weeks.” And to see these guys crying – they’d worked so hard, and they’d proved they were just as determined to see justice served as I was.
‘That’s why I got angry, and I thought, “Nah, we’re not going to let these guys bring us down anymore, we’re going to stand up and fight. We’ve lost the battle, but shit, we’ve still got the war. And we will win the war.” And we’ve done that. It’s as simple as that.’
She meant the recent conviction of former CIB officer John Dewar for obstructing the course of justice. The man who betrayed her: Nicholas thought he was a friend, ‘the best thing since sliced bread’, until Kitchin provided her with documents showing that Dewar had in fact conspired against her. Like Rickards, Dewar has threatened to take a police complaint against Nicholas for perjury. Nicholas is about to publish her book, My Story. The war continues.
The phone rang with news that afternoon. Two men were found guilty of perverting the course of justice – they had lied to try and save the skins of Shipton and Schollum’s accomplices in the Mount Maunganui pack rape. ‘Well,’ said Nicholas, ‘it’s simple. Don’t lie.’
‘That woman,’ Rickards said of Nicholas over and over at his trial, ‘is lying.’ The evidence against him didn’t stack up. He was acquitted. But the innocent Rickards is now widely viewed with repugnance. As for Nicholas – Helen Clark commended her courage in speaking out, she continues to receive supportive letters, she will give more interviews to promote her book.
She said, ‘It’s not because of any wanting to be in the limelight, because in all honesty, Steve, I hate it. I mean, I think it’s wonderful to walk into a supermarket and people come up and shake your hand and say well done, good on you, keep it up. That’s lovely. But it’s not what I want.’
What does she want? ‘There’s no need to treat us like we get treated, the people that have had bad things happened to them. It’s got to change. If people are willing to sit up and listen to me babbling on, then hell, I’ll babble on all the time. I’ll give it my all.’
I asked about her treatment in court, at the expert hands of defence lawyers John High and Paul Mabey. She said, ‘I think they’re nasty bastards. There was no need to be so brutal. They were re-victimising. I get so angry these people are allowed to do that. They’re putting you through the real ugliness of rape again and again and again. I just … I hate them. I really do. They’re probably the nicest people you could ever ask to meet on the street. But as defence lawyers, they can burn in hell for all I care.
‘After being hammered like that, I was asking, “Who the hell’s on trial here?” That’s how bad it got. There’s just no need for it. None whatsoever. You can understand why so many rape complainants, rape victims, won’t go anywhere near a courtroom.
‘I had a hankie – it wasn’t for tears or anything, I just needed something in my hand, because I knew I was going to
