KEY POINTS:
Jeanie and Isobel, who grew up on Pitcairn Island, were seven and nine years old when Brian Young, a neighbour, began assaulting them.
He would call at the sisters' house and ask their mother's permission to take them off on his motorbike, supposedly to fetch firewood.
Then he would drive them to an old hut in a remote part of the South Pacific island and rape them, one after the other.
The weekly attacks continued for two years, until Jeanie and Isobel's family moved to New Zealand in the early 1970s. The girls never told anyone, because they were frightened of Young.
Besides, there was no one to tell.
Although Pitcairn was a British territory, Britain had shown little interest in it, leaving the island - an isolated chunk of rock inhabited by the descendants of the Bounty mutineers and only accessible by longboat - to run itself.
Horrific as Jeanie's and Isobel's experiences were, they were typical of what girls growing up on Pitcairn - home to just 51 people - endured for generations.
In 2006, after an investigation by British police, Young was convicted of raping the sisters.
In total, nine Pitcairn men were found guilty, six of them at trials in 2004 on the island.
In Britain, victims of sexual abuse are entitled to statutory damages under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS). However, the scheme does not apply to the overseas territories, and the British Government - despite its historic neglect of the island - refused to compensate the Pitcairn women.
They engaged a New Zealand QC, and earlier this year, with Britain still stonewalling, threatened to launch a class action. Now their efforts have borne fruit.
Meg Munn, the Foreign Office minister responsible for the territories, is expected to announce this week that the nine women who testified will be offered compensation.
Another 17 women, who gave statements to police but declined to go to court, could potentially be eligible, too. The details remain sketchy, but the victims are likely to receive sums similar to those fixed by the CICS tariff system.
Under that system, a rape victim can claim up to £44,000 (NZ$121,400), depending on the severity of their physical and psychological injuries.
The Pitcairn women are still suffering the effects of abuse from up to 40 years ago. Some have attempted suicide. Most had kept their experiences to themselves, telling no one - not even their husbands - until the police inquiry began in 1999.
After relating their stories for the first time, they had to wait, in some cases, seven years to go to court.
The women, aged from their mid-20s to late 50s, all live overseas, in Britain, Australia or New Zealand.
They include Belinda, who as a 15-year-old schoolgirl told a visiting English policewoman, Gail Cox, that she had been raped by two brothers, Randy and Shawn Christian.
When detectives began investigating her allegations, they uncovered systematic child abuse dating back to the 1950s.
Britain's refusal, until now, to compensate the victims was an additional source of distress and frustration.
Speaking before the deadlock was broken, Isobel, who lives in New Zealand, told The Independent: "Compensation would mean real recognition of the injuries we suffered as children, and of the fact we'll never get back our innocence."
She and other women were aware that Britain had spent nearly £7m (NZ$19.3m) bringing the men to trial.
In fact, since the abuse came to light, the Government has ploughed at least £15m (NZ$41.3m) into the island, which nowadays is home mainly to the convicted child abusers and their families.
Much of the money has been spent on upgrading infrastructure and communications. The islanders have satellite television, an affordable telephone system, and sealed roads.
As one victim noted: "The perpetrators seem to be getting all the benefits."
Six men received prison sentences, which they elected to serve in a jail on Pitcairn that they had built themselves.
The sentences were extremely lenient, and all the offenders except Brian Young are already back in the community.
Steve Christian, the former mayor, who was convicted of five rapes, served just nine months behind bars before being given home detention.
Mr Christian is now on parole, as is his youngest son, Shawn, who, together with his brother, Randy, attacked Belinda when she was 10. The pair cornered her in a banana grove, gagged her, and took turns to hold her down and rape her.
Shawn was in prison for just under a year; Randy, who was released into home detention last month, was locked up for 18 months.
Many islanders believe the abuse dates back 200 years, to the time of Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers, who - after overthrowing their captain, William Bligh, and seizing his ship - fled to Pitcairn in 1790 to escape British naval justice.
The island was a perfect hideaway, and even now remains formidably isolated, with no airstrip, no safe harbour, and no regular boat service.
After the victims began speaking out, Britain sent police officers, social workers and a resident diplomat to the island.
There are seven or eight children there now, and about a dozen outsiders, including prison officers.
During the police investigation, which spanned three continents, 26 women made statements, but most withdrew from the case because of pressure from their families.
Those who went to court are convinced that the abuse would not have flourished had Britain supervised the island more closely.
"If they'd had proper laws on Pitcairn, people overseeing the island properly, none of this would have happened," Isobel says.
"But they basically let the place run itself, and the men were a law unto themselves."
Governors visited only intermittently, and unlike other small colonies, such as Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, Pitcairn never had a resident British administrator.
The colonial files contain evidence that Britain was repeatedly warned about unsavoury goings-on in this distant outpost of Empire.
In 1950, a New Zealand teacher stationed there notified British officials that a 10-year-old girl had been raped so violently "as to cause the child physical injury".
Another teacher reported on a spate of schoolgirl pregnancies, which he attributed to "interference with children by grown men".
Those schoolgirls included a 15-year-old, Vanda Young, who died in childbirth because her body was not sufficiently mature.
Britain saw the island's birth records, which revealed that most Pitcairn girls had their first baby between 12 and 15. It was also sent the minutes of council meetings, including a meeting in 1970 at which the "raping or illicit carnal knowledge of a girl aged 11 years" was discussed.
None of these warning signals prompted any official action.
Pitcairn is the last of Britain's possessions in the South Pacific, and one of 14 remaining overseas territories.
The men appealed all the way to the Privy Council, which dismissed their case in 2006.
* The names of each of the victims are pseudonyms.
- INDEPENDENT
