Whatever the outcome of the Pitcairn sex abuse trial, the future of the island community is in doubt, writes Rosita Boland.
Until very recently, remote Pitcairn Island in the Pacific Ocean was best-known as the island settled in 1790 by the mutineers of HMS Bounty. When Fletcher Christian and the crew of the Bounty cast adrift Captain William Bligh and 18 of Bligh's men on the open seas, they sailed the ship on to Tahiti. Later, feeling that they were not out of reach of the British authorities, Christian sailed with eight of his own men, six Tahitian men and 12 Tahitian women in search of an uninhabited island to begin a new community. He found Pitcairn: isolated, fertile, beautiful and empty.
In 2004, Pitcairn's Anglo-Tahitian population is still tiny, numbering only 47. The island is Britain's last territory in the Pacific, and is overseen by the British high commissioner in New Zealand. Along with its 47 citizens, there are also seven non-citizens, who work on temporary contracts as police officers, social workers, pastors and doctors.
This week, seven citizens of Pitcairn - including three descendants of Fletcher Christian - were brought to trial on the island on 55 counts of sexual abuse with girls. They are mayor Steve Christian, Dennis Christian, Randy Christian, Dave Brown, Len Brown, Jay Warren and Terry Young. There are five additional Pitcairn men, now living in Australia and New Zealand, who face 42 further charges and who are currently the subject of extradition proceedings. The charges include 31 counts of rape, as well as indecent assault, unlawful sexual intercourse and gross indecency.
It is no exaggeration to state that the trial has torn the island's community to pieces even before a verdict is reached.
Geographically isolated, lying halfway between New Zealand and the US, Pitcairn is still a very difficult place to get to. Its nearest neighbours are the Easter Islands, themselves famously remote. Since Pitcairn is so small - only two miles square - and so steep and rocky, there is no airport. The one harbour, Bounty Bay, is notoriously tricky to negotiate. The harbour is suitable only for the island's longboats, and landings can only be made in calm seas.
This week, the island's population has increased to 79, with the arrival of a team of 25 lawyers, officials and journalists. The island reportedly hasn't had so many people staying on it since the 1960s. Some of the team came from Britain, others from Australia and New Zealand. From Auckland alone, the nearest point, it was a four-day journey, involving a flight to Tahiti, a connection to an outer Tahitian island, a voyage onwards by ship and, finally, the landing by longboat.
As there is no hotel or guesthouse on the island, these visitors are presumably staying in rented houses. Usually, guests do home-stays with the islanders, but given that the new arrivals are on Pitcairn either to prosecute or to report on the prosecution of relatives, neighbours and friends, it is likely they are having to make their own arrangements. In August, all islanders were asked to hand in their guns, should tempers flare during the proceedings.
The current trial, which is taking place in a converted schoolroom, is, unsurprisingly, attracting international media interest. It is the result of a five-year investigation which began in 1999. In that year, a 19-year-old New Zealander was sentenced to 100 days' imprisonment for having sex with a 15-year-old girl. The 1999 trial aroused interest in Britain and a community police officer from Kent, PC Gail Cox, was sent out to Pitcairn to investigate the background to the case. While there, she heard further allegations from islanders of sexual abuse against minors.
There were so many allegations that an inquiry, Operation Unique, was instigated. Statements were collected from dozens of alleged victims, many of them now living away from Pitcairn in Australia and New Zealand. The allegations go back 40 years, and some involve girls aged as young as five.
At the crux of the trial is the question of what constitutes an acceptable legal age of consent for sex. In Britain, it is 16; on Pitcairn, islanders freely admit that sexual customs have long differed from those of western communities. While any kind of sexual contact with a child of five cannot be condoned in any culture, once puberty has been reached different cultures have different perspectives on what is considered acceptable sexual behaviour and what constitutes abuse.
FOR 200 YEARS, the islanders have used their own laws to rule their island. British law has only been enforced once before on Pitcairn, in 1897 for a murder trial. Until as recently as this week, lawyers for the seven defendants were trying to stop the trial by arguing that they could not possibly have broken laws they did not know existed. They argued that the principle of nulla poena sine lege - no punishment without a law - applied, since a full set of British law books were only brought to Pitcairn in 2001.
The run-up to the trial has been marked by controversy. Some women who gave evidence early on have since withdrawn the charges, saying they were misled by police. There have also been rumours about money being offered in exchange for evidence.
Some islanders say that Britain is only holding this trial so as to cause Pitcairn to be abandoned and thus absolve itself of responsibility for one of its last colonies.
An e-mail received by the Irish Times yesterday from an islander stated: "Together we will hold together and move on after the trials. We have a long path to climb but if we hold on together we will pass this bad thing that the British are trying to do to us."
All attempts to stop the trial failed, and it began on Wednesday. The first man to be charged was the mayor, Steve Christian (53), who is also the island's dentist and captain of the longboats. Of the 10 charges against him, six of which are for rape, one is that he allegedly raped a 12-year-old girl while two boys held her down.
Eight women, all now living in New Zealand, gave evidence by video link. The trial had to be stopped several times when one of the women broke down while describing her life on Pitcairn as a young girl.
"I didn't have any trust in anybody in authority in Pitcairn," she said. "There was nobody on the island that we could turn to for anything."
On Thursday, Dave Brown, the island's tractor driver, appeared in court. He is charged with indecent assault on five girls, one aged five. The prosecutor put it to Brown that he had the attitude "that young girls were available to him at will".
Most of the islanders are staying indoors. Only three attended the first day of the trial, which is expected to last six weeks.
PITCAIRN IS FULL of contradictions. There are no landlines, no sealed roads and no airport. There is, however, a satellite phone, and islanders get about on quad bikes. Most houses have the Internet, and on Pitcairn's official website, www.lareau.org/pitc, there are e-mail addresses listed for most of the islanders, including some of those currently standing trial.
The longboat is the only means by which people and goods can be brought ashore, or put on board an outgoing ship. Container ships visit Pitcairn's waters about three times a year with supplies, the most important of which is diesel to fuel the islands' generators.
Apart from a few private yachts that diverge from normal shipping routes, the only other callers are military and cruise ships, which moor briefly in the bay. Islanders paddle out to sell their craftworks: baskets, painted leaves, miro-wood carvings, jewellery made from shark's teeth and coconut shell, and the Pitcairn-franked stamps that are much sought-after by collectors.
The island's primary school teaches the New Zealand syllabus, and most older children go to boarding schools in Auckland. The currency is New Zealand dollars.
Most of the islanders have been abroad to work, to Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the US. Pitcairn may be 4,000 miles from the nearest continent, but its inhabitants have availed of opportunities to travel, live and work in the wider world.
Should the current trial result in convictions, the newly built prison in the island's tiny town, Adamstown, will be occupied for the first time. The prison was built this summer by the able-bodied men of the island, including those currently on trial. If there are no convictions, the prison will be converted into a guesthouse for potential visitors.
There are other issues that will have an impact on such a tiny community. If the trial results in convictions, the question of who will then take the longboats out to the ships, both to sell and to bring back the goods on which the island depends for survival, has not yet been answered. The demanding sea passage is currently made only by the island's able-bodied men, half of whom could end up in prison before Christmas.
ThePitcairnFile:Population: In 1790 - 27; In 1956-16; In 2004- 47
Area: 450 hectares
Religion: Seventh Day Adventist
Government: British dependency
Currency: New Zealand dollar
Language; English, with local dialect
Time zone; Greenwich Mean Time plus eight and a half hours
Climate: Sub-tropical
Points of interest; The Bounty Bible belonging to Fletcher Christian is on
display in the island's church