NEW  ZEALAND
FOLK * SONG

Bobby with Name Suppression
(Clint Rickards)

Traditional, 1895?

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This had its origins as a 19th century pub song, in the style of Charles Thatcher
Any  resemblance to recent events is purely coincidental.
Born in the 50s in the Bay of Plenty
Rough and tough by the age of twenty.
Without your parents' love you lacked security
so you tried to compensate with promiscuity.

      Bobby, with name suppression,
        Trying to make an impression

At the age of twenty-five you became a cop
in a mill town, gave the rowdies the chop.
Then to slake your lust you went over the top
with pervert acts you could never-ever stop.

      Bobby, with name suppression,
        Cop with a sex obsession

Little Louisa was only thirteen
and for horseback riding she was really-truly keen,
"I trust you Uncle Bobby, to take care of me."
But you winked when your mate stole her virginity.

      Bobby, with name suppression
        Covering your mate's transgression

For you and your mates sex together was fun
and gang-bang thrills you could not refrain from
But after a time you would never-ever come
'Til you'd made the girls scream with your baton up their bum.

     Bobby, with name suppression
        Out of control aggression.

Now you're in jail from a bad baton session.
From the other inmates you're getting baton lessons.
But for batoning Louisa you won a concession
when your jail-bird status was hidden by suppression.

      Bobby, with name suppression,
         disgrace to the police profession.

      Bobby, with name suppression,
         it's time for your full confession.



Tune

It is not known what tune was used for this song in the 1890s, but it can be sung to the tune of "Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier."

Origins

Collected 1956 in the Wapakiwi Hotel, from Alistair Swain, who said he had learnt it while on the swag in the 1920s. There is a brief reference to a similar song in "Whited Sepulcres," Geyserland Gazette, v.5, pp.32-34, 1896.


Charles Thatcher

Coincidence

In 1981, thirteen-year-old Louise Crawford was raped by her father's friend, a Murupara policeman. She laid a complaint but it was ignored. In 1986, eighteen-year-old Louise, now living in Rotorua, was visited by three other policemen, Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton. They forced her into a bedroom, stripped her of her long white dress, and forced a police baton into her body. Many other Rotorua women were assaulted in a similar way.

Constable Rapist Rickards
Louise went to senior Rotorua policeman Detective Inspector John Dewar for help. But he owed Rickards, Schollum and Shipton for sexual favours they had organised, and he fobbed her off and destroyed evidence of Rickards' pack-rape. In 1993 Dewar deliberately sabotaged two trials of the Murupara policeman who had raped 13 year old Louise, so that this rapist friend of Dewar's was also let off scot-free.

John Dewer and two others have now been convicted of obstructing justice with regard to Rickards, Schollum, Shipton and the Murapara policeman.

Schollum and Shipton are now serving eight years in solitary confinement for abducting and baton-raping another young Rotorua woman.

Clint Rickards became New Zealand's O J Simpson when he avoided conviction after unscrupulous defence lawyers brutally attacked the rape victim with hearsay evidence, while significant information about those who assaulted her was suppressed.

At a second trial Rickards also avoided conviction for kidnapping another girl, a sixteen years old, and violating her with a whiskey bottle.

Rickards is now finishing his law degree. He is expected to specialize in obtaining acquittals for big, rich powerful men who have gang-raped young girls. (2007)




Clint Rickards, lawyer,
   heads back to court

Controversial former cop Clint Rickards has begun working as a lawyer at the same Auckland courthouse where the woman who accused him of rape assists victims of crime.

Louise Nicholas could come face-to-face with Rickards again, less than four years after he was acquitted of historic rape charges against her.

Rickards had his first shift as a duty solicitor at the Auckland District Court on Thursday. Nicholas said she was appalled that Rickards could be defending criminals so soon after he was in the dock himself.

A lawyer, who did not want to be named for fear of punishment from the Law Commission, said there were many people at the courthouse "who don't want the guy in the building".

"He undid, in a short period of time, 100 years of work that the men and women have given to the NZ Police. And he did that in his professional capacity, he did that on duty by his own admission."


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Revised Sept 2007, Oct 2021.