Inquisition 21
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A country by country report on the progress of the sex abuse Inquisition
The Pitcairn sex trial – the cast and the story
Pitcairn
See the characters already in history and those now going into history
After 200 years, one trainee policewoman begins the process of doing what the British Navy failed to do – bring the mutineers to heel and ruin the Pitcairn Islands. Read this last chapter. See the cast of dashing officers, dusky damsels, and prosecutors with their wigs and latex breasts.
Only one island is inhabited. Soon it may be empty once more.
Mutiny and flight
The ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ story hardly needs re-telling, but the Pitcairn Islands story begins when the Bounty mutineers, together with their Polynesian wives, sailed to it in 1790, to escape the wrath of the British Navy. Half-way between South America and New Zealand, more than 5,000 kilometres from Auckland, it is a rocky outcrop without a safe landing for ships. Supply ships must anchor offshore and wait for the ocean swells to subside for longboats to be launched from a rocky cove to pick up essential goods. After the mutineers burned the Bounty, it must indeed have appeared to be a safe haven. And so it proved to be for 200 years.
It might have stayed that way were it not for the new crimen exceptum of sex abuse.
The policewoman arrives - the beginning of the end
Pitcairn is administered by a British-appointed governor based in the New Zealand capital, Wellington. The beginning of the end came in 1999, when the UK sent a community police officer from Kent, PC Gail Cox, to the islands to investigate a claim of sex abuse, and she quickly and easily established the existence of child abuse, through the Tahitian inherited custom of girls achieving sexual maturity and marriageable status at twelve.
As a result of the investigation begun by Cox, allegations emerged against 31 men going back to the 1960s. This figure needs to be seen against Pitcairn's current population of 47, including 15 adult males. Some of those accused are now dead. Thirteen in all on the island or in New Zealand have been charged.
Who is judging who?
The presiding magistrate
The first stage of the last chapter began in 2003 when a team of prosecutors and administrators arrived from the UK and New Zealand to begin initial legal proceedings, build a prison with seven cells, co-incidentally the same number as the seven male defendants. Pitcairn became a virtual police state, with nine police officers to control thirty adult Pitcairners, thus making it appear that all are guilty. In addition to the police officers, there are now social workers that the islanders never asked for, giving the impression of mass abuse and trauma.
On the return voyage on theMV Braveheart, Auckland Crown Solicitor, Simon Moore, assistant Christine Gordon, and the presiding magistrate in the Pitcairn case, barrister Gray Cameron, were photographed clowning in costumes that made a mockery of their laying of sex charges against the Pitcairn Island residents. Simon Moore is one of New Zealand’s top prosecutors and handles some of that country’s biggest criminal trials. We are not sure how Christine Gordon was dressed up, but perhaps the men were lampooning the former bare-breasted glory of the Tahitian women of Pitcairn.
Islander, Reeve Cooze, said that the integrity of the New Zealanders was gone, and that the Crown prosecutors should step down. He added that the photographs showed bad taste, and that "Pitcairn was hardly out of sight. It wronged me and it wronged Pitcairners. I got very angry. They've become a joke and really should go."
Pitcairn woman, Marelda Warren, also said she thought the photographs and behaviour offensive. "It is degrading - to women, to everyone, and to what and who the prosecutors represent," she said. She added: “When I saw the one with the judge, I thought, who is judging who?"
The trial begins
The Crown prosecutor
The trial against seven men on Pitcairn began on Wednesday 29 September, 2004. On the evening before, a group of women held a news conference in one of their homes to say that underage sex was an island tradition dating back to Bounty days. One claimed that she was offered victim's compensation by the policewoman if she gave evidence. "I was offered some good money for each person that I could name." The Pitcairn women believe that the London government has charged the seven men, half the island's adult male population and vital for the island's survival as they operate the longboats, to force the closure of Pitcairn.
American academic, Herbert Ford, who heads up a study centre for Pitcairn in California had an idea for a kind of ‘truth and justice’ solution, rather than raw western ideological revenge, but this proposal for restorative justice was rejected by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Ford quoted one official as adding, "even if that results in the dislocation of the community".
Ford said, "As late as the year 2000 there was ambiguity, and seemingly a lack of consensus even among New Zealand-based Pitcairn governing personnel, as to what age constituted the age of consent for sexual relations on Pitcairn Island."
He added: "It is hard not to believe that a destructive vindictiveness toward the Pitcairn people is present here. What other motive is possible, given the almost certain death-to-Pitcairn consequences?"
There has also been criticism that the Governor has set in motion processes that are prejudicial to a fair trial. One of these may be the conduct of the initial legal investigation team.
Here is Mayor Christian, speaking about the prosecutors in drag: "If there wasn't anything going on Pitcairn, or if they were dressed as King Neptune or Hula girls, you would not think anything of it. But when you look at where they have come from and the reason, to lay charges of alleged sexual abuse, we all reckon it's disgusting. It seems to us a mockery for them to come here and charge the men for sexual abuse. They seem to be saying, 'We can do this, you can't.'”
Islander, Meralda Warren added: “For what these people represent in condemning our ways and condemning our island, although it was probably done as a joke, I thought it was quite disgusting. Especially the one with Simon Moore holding on to the Registrar's leg.”
No more dusky damsels
The impact of the affair on the tiny island, according to Mayor Christian, one of the accused, is catastrophic. "The whole island will be involved in some way or the other. All the families will be involved. The list could be growing a bit longer by the time this mess is finished."
New Zealand passed a special law last year allowing the Pitcairn court to sit on New Zealand soil, with its implication that islanders could be carted over 5,000 kilometres m to a foreign country to face charges.
"We have heard they want to close Pitcairn down," says Christian. "I don't want to believe it, but that is what is being said."
It is almost certainly the end for Pitcairn. A woman journalist on the island is writing that the women islanders defending their men are ‘in denial’, while male New Zealand journalist, Gordon McLauchlan, writes of his anger and quotes Oscar Wilde from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:
For man's grim justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong
The last farewell
Soon all the characters will have packed up and departed.
Above all, what will have been destroyed on Pitcairn is a dream, however unrealistic, that there can be a place on this Earth far from the law and prosecutors and social engineers. A place where only strong men can bring the longboats in through the dangerous reefs. Where dusky damsels wait for them. But the dusky damsels have now been interviewed by policewomen and counsellors.
When our grandchildren read the story, which they surely will, new characters will have joined with the old. There will be a policewoman and a judge and a prosecutor. All will be dressed as befits a swashbuckling story.
The children will know who are the heroes and the villains. And who are the clowns?
The story so far
On 25 October 2004, six out of the seven men were convicted of a range of charges including rape, indecent assault and gross indecency on women and girls on the island, dating back up to forty years. The prosecutors painted a picture of a male-dominated society in which underage sex was commonplace. The women who are still on the island continued to support their men.
In later news interviews, Prosecutor Moore (see picture in costume) claimed that the prosecution case had now been vindicated and he praised the ‘bravery’ of the complainants (who testified via video link from New Zealand). None of the complainants still lives on the island.
The case, however, is far from over. The men will continue to be free pending the outcome of an appeal by their defence lawyers against Britain's jurisdiction over the island. That case is expected to be heard next year in New Zealand. The basis of the appeal is a challenge to Britain's very right to bring this case at all, that when the bounty mountaineers burnt the ship, they were cutting all ties to with Britain.
Should that appeal fail, the men will be imprisoned on the island in the new six cell jail they had to build themselves. Corrections officers will be sent over from New Zealand to police that jail.
What a dismal story!
Colleen McCullough calls it a set up
Another writer has launched an attack on the convictions of the six Pitcairn Islanders. Colleen McCullough, the best-selling Australian author of The Thorn Birds, who lives on Australia’s Norfolk Island, a former penal colony that is home to a number of Pitcairn Island descendants, and who is married to a Pitcairner, has described the trial and convictions as an ‘an absolute disgrace’.
"The flipping Brits want the island and they've set them up - - -. The Poms should be horsewhipped for this business. The Poms have cracked the whip and it's an absolute disgrace. These are indigenous customs and should not be touched. These were the first people to inhabit Pitcairn Island, and they are racially unique."
Speaking to the The Sydney Morning Herald, she added, “They are as much Polynesian as anything else. It’s Polynesian to break your girls in at 12. These are indigenous customs and should not be touched. It’s hypocritical too. Does anybody object when Muslims follow their customs? Nobody’s afraid of 50 Polynesians, but they are very afraid of a million Muslims.”
Comment posted from reader
To The Editor
I would like to thank you for publishing your article in Country by Country about the Pitcairn Island trials. Your article is the only one that defends the people of Pitcairn Island and the injustice that is happening to these poor people. The men are the victims not the women and this is purely a political witch hunt. These men were not given a fair and just defence. These women are purely after the money and these women were promised by the police of getting victims compensation only if there are convictions. The law profession should be ashamed of these people prosecuting and defending the Pitcairn Island men as these men are not getting the same representation as you would if you were in New Zealand, Australia or any other place. The whole thing is riddled with corruption, cohearsen and a dictatorship Government Mr Richard Fell.
I hope you continue to write about the injustice of these people and I do believe it all needs to be exposed as what really is going on.
Kind Regards
A Fighter for the People of Pitcairn Island
Historical note
From Captain James Cook's diaries - in Tahiti, 14 May 1769.
This day closed with an odd Scene at the Gate of the Fort where a young fellow above 6 feet high lay with a little Girl about 10 or 12 years of age publickly before several of our people and a number of the Natives. What makes me mention this, is because, it appear'd to be done more from Custom than Lewdness, for there were several women present particularly Obarea and several others of the better sort and these were so far from shewing the least disaprobation that they instructed the girl how she should act her part, who young as she was, did not seem to want it. (Captain James Cook, in Tahiti, 14 May 1769, The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific as Told by Selections of His Own Journals, 1768-1779 [edited by A. Grenfell Price, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1971], p.31)
Suppressed Pitcairn Island documents published
The Pitcairn Islanders have written us as follows: “We would just like to draw your attention to a website that has major documents showing the corruption going on regarding Pitcairn Island. These documents have been suppressed in New Zealand.
Suppressed Pitcairn Island documents published -November 2005
The Pitcairn Islanders have written us as follows: “We would just like to draw your attention to a website that has major documents showing the corruption going on regarding Pitcairn Island. These documents have been suppressed in New Zealand.
Please place this or the documents on your website for the world to see what these poor people of Pitcairn Island have suffered at the hands of arse holes.
There are 61 documents in the following categories:
PI 1 - Views on costs of Operation Unique
PI 2 - Document that purports to justify not allowing the accused to face the accusers
PI 3 - Double talk used by the British to justify making modern day ordinances
PI 4 - Atrocious behaviour of the British police
PI 5 - Discussion of Restorative Justice and lack of its application
PI 6 - 'Therapists' showed no ethical behaviour and total lack of concern for the people they were supposed to help
PI 7 - British government wanted to cut costs by denying the Pitcairn defendants/accused the rights to choose their own lawyers
PI 8 - From governor to the public prosecutor explaining the ramifications of pursuing the ‘so called’ changes
PI 9 - Ordinances and Peculiar rules.
Read the documents
The documents can be read HERE.
We are just about to read them also. Please help us and the Islanders with your comments.
Country by country
Clint Betterridge - stop this extradition! It's over.
The Peter Ellis story
The Shieldfield travesty
The Saskatoon story
The McMartin and other US stories
Act of infamy – the Nora Wall story
Bart Lauwaert tells his own story
Australia’s criminal involvement in Cambodia
Graham Cleghorn writes from Cambodian prisons
The setting up of Rudolf Knuchel
The Pitcairn sex trial – the cast and the story
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