Law descends on Pitcairn Island

By KATHY MARKS

MANGAREVA - Pitcairn guards its secrets as jealously as the vast Pacific Ocean that encircles it, extending to an unbroken horizon in every direction.

The island was the perfect bolthole for Fletcher Christian and his men, seeking to disappear off the face of the earth after staging their famous rebellion.

And it remained a place so isolated that the mutineers' descendants, allegedly, were able to abuse their women and children for decades with total impunity.

Now the blanket of secrecy that has shrouded Pitcairn since Christian spied it from the deck of the Bounty in 1790 is about to be lifted.

Seven men, half of the adult male population, will go on trial in the British dependency this week, charged with 96 counts of rape, sexual abuse and indecent assault dating back to the 1960s.

The case has torn apart the tiny community of 47, setting mother against son and brother against brother. Every family on the island, a speck of rock in a far-flung corner of the South Pacific, is affected.

Another six men, former Pitcairners now living in New Zealand and Australia, face extradition on similar charges.

The trial will be one of the strangest in British legal history, with the entire trial personnel of judges, lawyers, court officials and police shipped in from Mangareva, a French Polynesian island 400km away.

Pitcairn, lashed by some of the world's roughest seas, has no airstrip, harbour or scheduled shipping service. The only way in or out is on boats manned by locals who know every part of the treacherous coast.

After two centuries of running their own affairs, Pitcairners - many of them directly descended from the mutineers - are outraged that the full force of British law is about to descend on them. They see it as a gross violation of their privacy by meddling outsiders with no understanding of their distinctive way of life.

Since the first allegations were aired five years ago, they have steadfastly resisted the prospect of a trial that will expose the innermost workings of their society.

So close-knit and interrelated is the community, perched on a rock 3km long by 1.6km wide, that it regards itself as one large family. A family in trouble best deals with its troubles and problems privately and discreetly, one islander, Mike Warren, told the Independent.

"How would you like it if your family disputes were aired on television for the whole world to see? Would you call this justice?"

The disputes relate to claims of systematic sexual abuse of girls as young as 5 by some of Pitcairn's prominent figures. Sources close to the case say the evidence to be aired at the trial, relating to a dozen alleged victims, is only part of a bigger picture of widespread abuse stretching back into the mists of time, probably as far as Christian's era.

Numerous other men could have been charged, they say, had it not been for the victims' reluctance to testify, many of them pressured against it by their families.

The first hint of a rotten core at the heart of Pitcairn society came in 1996, when Kent police were sent to investigate a complaint by the father of an 11-year-old girl who was visiting the island.

Officers established that she was in a consensual relationship with a teenage boy, but sent one of their constables, Gail Cox, to train the local lay officer, Meralda Warren.

In 1999 two girls told Cox they had been sexually mistreated by older men in the community. Kent detectives began an inquiry that turned into an international investigation.

Over the next two years, they interviewed every Pitcairner on the island as well as all those living elsewhere, in the United States, Australia, Britain and New Zealand. With good reason, they named their investigation Operation Unique.

For the Foreign Office, which had left the island to its own devices for years, the scandal on Pitcairn - Britain's last remaining overseas territory in the South Pacific - presented a huge logistical headache.

Pitcairn, mid-way between New Zealand and South America, had not hosted a major criminal trial for more than 100 years. An entire legal infrastructure, including a magistrate's court, supreme court and high court had to be specially created.

The island's Governor, Richard Fell, who is the British High Commissioner in Wellington, appointed lawyers from the New Zealand circuit to positions including Pitcairn chief justice and public prosecutor.

Because of the island's isolation and lack of facilities - it has no cars, no telephones, no pubs, shops or restaurants - New Zealand was persuaded to pass a law allowing court proceedings to be held in Auckland.

But the defendants mounted a legal challenge and won the right to be tried on their own doorstep.

Despite that victory, the anger has not abated. The Pitcairn family is now bitterly divided. Most locals consider the defendants have been unfairly targeted and resent the imminent intrusion of prying eyes, including those of journalists, long banned from the island.

A minority welcome the trial as an opportunity to cleanse Pitcairn's soul, but they are fearful of speaking out by name.

The two camps are barely on speaking terms, working together only to man the longboats used to ferry in goods from a supply ship that calls by every few months.

Tensions are so high that Fell has ordered residents to give up the guns they use to hunt wild goats and shoot breadfruit out of trees.

Herb Ford, a California academic with close links with Pitcairn, says: "It's like a civil war and, on Pitcairn, you can't get far away from anyone else. Fifteen minutes, and you're walking on water."

Jacqui Christian, who lives in Australia but grew up on Pitcairn, where her parents, Tom and Betty, are highly respected elders, says: "The trial had to happen. I believe in a strong future for the island, but you can't have that if there are doubts about the integrity of the people."

It is not only Pitcairners who will suffer if the case sounds the death-knell for the island, already vulnerable because of its dwindling numbers.

Such is the lure of the Bounty legend, romanticised in five Hollywood films, that people around the world regard the island as a metaphor for paradise.

Intoxicated by the heady mix of romance, swashbuckling adventure and a tropical idyll, they have turned Pitcairn into their private vision of heaven.

Thousands of people who have never visited and know little about the case have been hotly defending the community's men on websites.

Pitcairn is not Utopia, and it never was. The men who seized the Bounty and set Captain Bligh adrift in an open boat chanced on it after scouring the South Pacific for a haven from British naval wrath. Minuscule and miles from anywhere, it was a matchless hideaway.

But within 10 years of being settled by Christian and eight fellow rebels, with 12 Tahitian women and six Tahitian men, all but one of the mutineers were dead - murdered, mainly in disputes over women.

To the cruise ship passengers who clamber ashore at Bounty Bay for a few hours, Pitcairn is a fantasy land. But the reality is far more mundane.

There is no sewerage on the island and only 10 hours of electricity, provided by a diesel-powered generator. There are no beaches or coral reefs, just steep cliffs, many of them - such as Where Dan Fall - bear the names of islanders who met an untimely end.

It boasts a single palm tree. Locals while away their time watching videos from New Zealand.

The alleged victims who will give evidence by video link from New Zealand will testify that, for them, Pitcairn was not paradise, but hell.

Informed sources say the girls allegedly victimised in past decades are still damaged, unable to form close relationships. Many have turned to drink or drugs. Some have attempted suicide.

All the defendants, meanwhile, have pleaded not guilty, claiming the case is based on a profound misconception. They argue that the island's culture is still influenced by its part-Polynesian roots and that girls become sexually mature early.

Some of the men have helped to transform Pitcairn's one-cell jail, previously used for storing lifejackets, into a 12-bed prison in which they will be incarcerated if convicted.

Fell concedes that a hands-off approach was taken towards Pitcairn in the past. Previous Governors visited once, if at all. "Once all this is over, one will have to reflect on the past and see if there are lessons to be learned."

* Kathy Marks will be covering the trial from Pitcairn for the Herald.