www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/109111/1/.html
An engraving of a young woman of Pitcairn Time is GMT + 8 hours Posted: 29 September 2004 1646 hrs 'Mutiny on Bounty' sex trials to start on remote Pacific island AUCKLAND : Sex crime trials on the tiny British Pacific colony of Pitcairn Island is all set to begin, threatening the future of a tiny community infamously founded by mutineers more than 200 years ago. Seven men on the island of just 47 people will plead to 55 charges, including counts of raping children as young as five, which have been laid against them under British law after a last minute bid to halt them failed, an official said. The seven would face the charges for alleged offences dating back as long as 40 years ago when the complicated trials begin at 10:00 am on Wednesday (1800 GMT), British High Commission spokesman Bryan Nicholson told AFP. The charges are part of a total of 96, including 31 of rape and others of underage sex and indecent assault, that have been laid against the seven men and six others yet to be extradited from Australia and New Zealand. Pitcairn Chief Justice Charles Blackie on Tuesday rejected a defence motion to abandon the trial over his alleged bias, Nicholson said, adding the court also lifted a suppression against naming the defendants. One of alleged sex offenders is Pitcairn Island mayor Steve Christian, along with his son Randy, while the others are Len Brown, his son Dave, Jay Warren, Dennis Christian and Terry Young. Eight women complainants will give evidence by video link from New Zealand to judges Jane Lovell-Smith and Russell Johnson, who along with Blackie, lawyers and other court officials were specially shipped in from New Zealand for the hearings. Leaders on the rocky, forest-clad island halfway between New Zealand and South America, which did not even have a jail before this case, fear the trials will irreparably damage the future of their small, close-knit community, and the cracks have already begun to appear. "We feel we are losing control of our island and our destinies," Steve Christian, a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian who founded the island when he led the mutiny on HMS Bounty in 1789, told a United Nations conference in 2002. Three judges, lawyers, prison guards and six accredited reporters were shipped to the five-square-kilometre (two-square-mile) island, which has no harbour or airport, from New Zealand this week, leading to a detectable rise in tensions. One media report said emotions on the island were raging but Pitcairn elder Tom Christian welcomed the trials as necessary to safeguard the island's future. "We need to get this whole mess behind us and look to the future," he told New Zealand Herald. Little was known of Pitcairn's darker side until a 1997 book, "Serpent in Paradise", by British journalist Dea Birkett who said Pitcairners starved of real choices "developed relationships considered unacceptable elsewhere". Then in 1999, a Pitcairn woman laid a complaint which led to a British police investigation, code-named 'Operation Unique', which eventually led to the charges being laid against almost half of the island's adult male population. On Monday 13 women -- described by media as almost the entire adult female population of the island -- called a press conference to protest at what they termed a miscarriage of justice. Olive Christian, 48, Steve Christians wife, told reporters: "We all thought sex was like food on the table." The men were charged under Britains Sexual Offences Act, and the defendants are expected to base their defence on the legality of the law on Britain's last remaining territory in the South Pacific. Even if they are convicted, the men are likely to be allowed leave jail periodically under supervision because their labour is needed in order to keep life on the island going. If they are found innocent, there are plans to convert the new jail into a hotel. Pitcairn was first inhabited in 1790 when Fletcher Christian led a mutiny from HMS Bounty against Captain William Bligh, who was set adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Eight mutineers along with six Tahitian men, 12 Tahitian women and a small girl then searched the South Seas for a haven, reaching uninhabited Pitcairn on January 15, 1790, where they remained undiscovered until 1808. AFP shall not be held liable for any delays, inaccuracies, errors or omissions in any AFP content, or for any actions taken in consequence.
|
http://csua.com/feed/