KEY POINTS:
One of the Pitcairn Island men convicted in 2004 of sexually abusing an underage girl is appealing his conviction at a special hearing of the Pitcairn Court of Appeal.
Randall Kay Christian is serving six years for sexual offences including one count of indecently assaulting a girl under the age of 13.
Following trials held on the island in October 2004, six men out of 13 were convicted by the Pitcairn Supreme Court sitting in Papakura, south Auckland, in May 2005.
Their charges included rape, indecent assault and incest on women and underage girls over a 30-year period.
Some offenders lived on the island, some lived in New Zealand and some lived in Australia.
The sentences ranged from six years' jail to 250 hours' community work.
Christian's lawyers told the Pitcairn Court of Appeal, sitting in the High Court in Auckland under a special Act of Parliament, that the appeal was based on new evidence.
Two days have been set aside for the hearing, which began today.
Pitcairn, one of the remotest inhabited islands in the world, is halfway between New Zealand and South America.
The British claimed Pitcairn as British territory and applied British law after Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on the British ship Bounty. He set Captain William Bligh and 18 crew adrift in an open boat, and spent eight months sailing around French Polynesia, mostly Tahiti, before landing on Pitcairn in January 1790, and setting fire to the ship.
- NZPA
