Pitcairn witness: Rape was routine

By KATHY MARKS


Former residents of Pitcairn yesterday painted a picture of a community in which young girls were used as sexual playthings and rape and violence were a way of life.

One man, Dave Brown, allegedly assaulted a series of girls aged as young as 5 over a period of 21 years. One was indecently assaulted in the Seventh Day Adventist church as her friend looked on, the Pitcairn Supreme Court heard.

Deputy prosecutor Christine Gordon told Justice Jane Lovell-Smith that Brown's attitude was "young girls were available for him as and when he chose".

Brown, 49, is charged with 13 indecent assaults and two acts of gross indecency with a child between 1970 and 1991. He is one of seven islanders before the court on a total of 55 child sex charges.

Six more men now living in Australia and New Zealand will go on trial next year, charged with 41 similar offences.

Steve Christian, Pitcairn's mayor, is in the first batch, and one of his alleged victims told the court yesterday that he tried to drag her out of her tent and have sex with her during a trip to Oeno, an uninhabited island in the Pitcairn group.

The woman, who grew up in the British dependent territory settled by the Bounty mutineers, also claimed that Christian came to her house and tried to get into bed with her while his wife, Olive, was giving birth.

Asked by Christian's lawyer, Paul Dacre, why she did not inform anyone in authority, the woman - now 51 and living overseas - said it would have been pointless.

"That's the way it is on Pitcairn. You get abused, you get raped. It's a normal way of life on Pitcairn."

The trial continues.