Rape victim gets apology from police

Police have apologised to a victim of the notorious rapist Stewart Murray Wilson for inquiry failures in the 1970s — including losing a file never found and probably destroyed.

Wilson yesterday had his appeal dismissed after being convicted of three more historical sex offences in Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland.

Police reinvestigated the 72-yearold and he went to trial last year in the High Court at Auckland.

A jury found him guilty of raping a woman and a 9-year-old girl and attempting to rape a third woman during the 1970s and early 1980s.

He was found not guilty of raping a fourth woman — the girl’s mother.

Detective Inspector Scott Beard said Wilson’s convictions were a “long time coming for these victims”.

But it was a woman who Wilson attacked in Auckland during December 1976 whom police failed. The woman laid a complaint after Wilson attempted to rape her.

Police now accept her initial complaint was not investigated properly.

“It is clear that police involved with the case in the 1970s did not handle the complaint properly at the time and we have apologised to the woman concerned,” Beard said.

During last year’s trial she said police “treated me like sh*t” in 1976.

Police said they were “unable to comment” about her testimony.

She made another complaint in 1996, when Wilson infamously went to trial for drugging, assaulting and raping several women, as well as charges of stupefying and bestiality. When police decided to look into him again in 2016, they could not find any paperwork for her 1976 complaint.

“This was the year computers were introduced to policing. How we recorded, coded and archived information was going through a technologically revolutionary stage,” police said.

“The locations throughout the Auckland City District where hard copy files were once stored have since closed and records destroyed in line with police policy.”

Wilson was released from prison in 2012 to a two-bedroom cottage on the Whanganui Prison grounds.

By then the indictment law had changed and police received several complaints about Wilson, due to the widespread media attention.

“This was particularly relevant in relation to one of the victims, who was aged 9 at the time of his offending against her and reported it to police in 2012,” police said.

Beard said police have come a long way in their handling of sexual violence cases since the investigation failures of the 1970s.

“The culture of police and the way sexual assault allegations have been handled has shifted over the past few decades,” he said.