- One by one, they stood in the dock, all large men of
imposing build. Until recently, they had acted like kings, swaggering around
their tiny empire. Yesterday, in a sweltering courtroom on Pitcairn Island,
they were exposed as bullies, rapists and abusers of children. Five men,
including the island's mayor, Steve Christian, were found guilty after
one of the most extraordinary cases in British criminal history. A sixth,
Dennis Christian, had already entered a guilty plea. Only one Pitcairner,
Jay Warren, left court without a blemish, cleared of indecently assaulting
a young girl at picturesque Bounty Bay.
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- The defendants were among 31 men named as abusers by
women who had grown up in the remote British dependency during the past
half-century. Seven of those women testified by video link from Auckland,
and the three judges - shipped in from New Zealand, along with lawyers
and court officials - believed them, almost without exception.
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- The verdicts were a resounding affirmation for the witnesses,
who resisted years of family and community pressure to withdraw their complaints.
They also vindicated the work of Kent Police detectives, sent to Pitcairn
in 2000 to investigate one allegation, only to uncover systematic abuse
of young girls that dated back at least 40 years.
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- Detective Inspector Robert Vinson, the chief investigating
officer, said the judgements "sent a strong message that the abuse
of children is not acceptable in any culture, anywhere, and Pitcairn Island
is no exception".
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- The verdict was the dramatic climax to a month of harrowing
evidence about life on a South Pacific island romanticised for its links
with the Bounty mutiny. Three generations of Pitcairn men stood in the
dock, and all three generations - including Len Brown, 78 and barefoot
- were found culpable.
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- Rivulets of sweat ran down the face of Steve Christian,
the island's charismatic tribal chieftain, as Chief Justice Charles Blackie
pronounced him guilty of five rapes. As a young man, Christian, now 53,
assumed the right to sexually initiate girls of 12 or 13, who then became
members of his personal "harem". Randy, taller than his father
and broad as a rugby prop, sweated equally profusely as he too saw prison
loom. He was found guilty of four rapes and five indecent assaults. Randy
was the "young cub" who emulated his father - the natural heir
of a family that ruled Pitcairn with an iron grip while preying on its
most vulnerable inhabitants. Like father, like son. Steve Christian raped
a 12-year-old girl under a banyan tree while two friends held her down.
Twenty years later, Randy pinned down a 10-year-old in a banana grove so
that a friend could rape her. Then they swapped places and Randy took his
turn. Randy's brother, Sean, was cautioned by police in 1996 about a consensual
liaison with a 12-year-old girl.
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- For years, Steve Christian was the face of Pitcairn,
travelling the world to promote the island. After he was charged, and while
still enjoying anonymity, he went to New York and addressed the UN committee
on decolonisation. No one outside Pitcairn knew that, in his heyday, it
was he who set the tone for men who felt they could rape young girls with
impunity.
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- Ironically, it was his son's actions that led to the
culture of endemic abuse being uncovered. Randy's principal victim told
a friend, who told her mother, and the complaint ended up with Gail Cox,
a Kent police constable stationed temporarily on Pitcairn in 1999. Ms Cox,
the first British officer ever posted to Pitcairn, began an inquiry that
turned into a massive investigation. Detectives travelled the world several
times, interviewing women who had grown up on the island and now live in
New Zealand, Australia, Norfolk Island and England. As they went, "we
got disclosure after disclosure ... it was staggering," said one officer.
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- While the women's testimony suggests that few men from
the past three generations are untainted, anecdotal evidence indicates
the abuse began even further back. One middle-aged woman on Pitcairn claims
"it was the same in my great-grandparents' day". Another recalls
her father asserting that girls of 12 needed to be "broken in"
- the precise phrase used to describe Steve Christian's alleged conduct
a generation later. "That was the belief, and I think it's always
been there," she says of her father's attitude.
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- When did it start? Many people believe the abuse took
root in 1790, when Fletcher Christian and his men abducted a group of Tahitian
women and sailed with them to Pitcairn. The early years of the community
were marked by brutality and violence, as well as fights over women.
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- By the time an American sealer arrived 18 years later,
all but one of the mutineers, John Adams, were dead. Adams was surrounded
by women and children who all called him "Father". In the ensuing
years, Pitcairn always had a dominant male figure. Today that man is Steve
Christian.
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- Some believe the mutineers' mentality still prevails.
With Pitcairn left to its own devices for decades by British administrators,
the men were able to do as they pleased. They lived in an isolated, male-dominated
society and were accountable to no one.
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- Asked why the six guilty men did what they did, one source
replies: "Because they could. Because that's the way it was. There
was a power base of influential men, and no one was going to go against
them." At the centre of that power base was Steve Christian, head
of a so-called "inner circle" of men who - at least until now
- have run the island between them. Nothing happens without the say-so
of "the boys", and they control the longboats, the umbilical
cord that links Pitcairn with the outside world. All of those men have
passed through the dock in Adamstown. Indeed, before a court order suppressing
their identities was lifted, one observer noted that anyone curious to
know their names needed only to "look in the back of the longboat".
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- Over the long years of abuse, the victims had no one
to tell. Their assailants included magistrates and police officers, while
their own male relatives were, allegedly, abusing young girls themselves.
A few parents, it is said, even pushed their daughters in the direction
of influential men. Some girls suffered blighted childhoods in which they
were abused by half a dozen men. They could not tell, and they could not
leave - at least until they went to school in New Zealand in their mid-teens.
Some have never returned, and never will.
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- While the men abused, the women - including the mothers
of some victims - colluded. And when Pitcairn's silent victims finally
found a voice, thanks to Ms Cox, it was the girls who were blamed for speaking
out rather than the men who abused them. One middle-aged woman calls her
daughter, who was allegedly raped at 12 by a man in his 30s, a "silly
idiot" for making a complaint. "She knew what she was doing,"
the mother says. "She wanted it as much as him."
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- The rapes and molestations took place in every conceivable
situation. Girls were assaulted during spear-fishing trips and games of
hide and seek, on quad bikes and at children's parties. Every scenic spot
on Pitcairn is a crime site. Aute Valley, Garnett's Ridge, The Hollow,
Hulianda - postcard-pretty places with quaint names, all defiled by men
who used their superior strength and age to force themselves on girls who
had barely achieved puberty.
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- For Steve Christian and his cronies, sex was about power.
For others, such as the old men who groped little girls opportunistically,
it meant fleeting gratification. And for others, the abuse stemmed, perhaps,
from their frustration at the limited pool of women on a 2.5 mile-square
lump of rock in the middle of the Pacific. Even family members were not
immune. The court heard allegations of incest.
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- Small wonder that many visitors remarked on the sexual
precocity of Pitcairn's children, who - according to one woman - simulated
sex with each other from the age of five. But even the trend for girls
to have babies from the age of 12, confirmed by historical records, did
not shake British administrators out of their torpor.
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- One woman, now 51 and still deeply traumatised, described
a nightmare childhood of repeated assaults. "That's the way it is
on Pitcairn," she told the court. "You get abused, you get raped.
It's a normal way of life on Pitcairn." The witnesses quashed the
myth, perpetuated by relatives of the defendants, that prosecutors targeted
men engaged in consensual under-age sex. They painted a picture of a dysfunctional
society where men raped young girls almost casually. Many of the women
had bottled up the abuse for decades, disclosing it only when approached
by police.
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- And yesterday came the verdicts. Len Brown twice raped
a teenager in a watermelon patch. Dave Brown, his 49-year-old son, carried
out six indecent assaults. Terry Young, 46, raped a 12-year-old girl every
week for years, assaulting her every time she went out to collect firewood.
All six of the guilty men will be sentenced on Thursday, but they will
remain free on bail until legal argument about the legitimacy of the trials
has been heard in Auckland and London next year. Until then, their convictions
will not be formally entered.
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- The verdicts left the fractious and bitterly divided
community in shock. Few of the 47 islanders had stepped inside court to
hear the evidence. None of the six men commented afterwards. Steve Christian,
who cracked a joke on his way into court, departed stony-faced. Dave Brown
was in tears. Despite the legal delays, it seems certain that at least
three - and possibly all six - will serve sentences in the imposing new
prison that all seven helped build.
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- The Chief Justice, Charles Blackie, poured scorn on Steve
Christian's claim that his victims consented. Commenting on one girl, he
said: "She was 12 years old. He was 21. She was young, naive and vulnerable.
She was secreted into the bushes and there the accused took advantage of
her. There had been no affection, kissing or romantic connection. She did
not want it to happen." There cannot have been a single adult on the
island who did not know what was allegedly going on through the years.
Yet little was said, and nothing was done.
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- The verdicts will leave a power vacuum on Pitcairn, with
both Steve Christian and Randy, who is chairman of a key island committee,
under pressure to resign. Steve Christian's sister, Brenda, is planning
to run for mayor in council elections next month.
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- While the defendants' relatives have warned that Pitcairn
will collapse if so many able-bodied men are jailed, islanders unconnected
with the case disagree. They say there will still be enough men to crew
the longboats and carry out other communal work. They regard the trials
as a necessary healing process that will enable Pitcairn to survive and
move forward.
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- Mike Christian, an Englishman married to Brenda Christian,
said: "This is a watershed. We have to make sure of that. We have
to make the island safe for children."
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- THE GUILTY MEN
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- Steve Christian, the island's mayor, who claims to be
a direct descendant of the 'Bounty' mutineer leader Fletcher Christian,
was convicted of five rapes and cleared of four indecent assaults and one
rape.
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- His son, Randy Christian, was convicted of four rapes
and five indecent assault charges, but cleared of one rape and two indecent
assaults.
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- Len Brown, 78 was convicted of two rapes.
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- His son Dave Brown, was found guilty of nine indecent
assaults, but was cleared of four charges of indecent assault and two of
gross indecency.
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- Terry Young was convicted of one rape and six indecent
assaults but was cleared of one indecent assault charge.
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- Dennis Christian pleaded guilty at the trial to one indecent
assault and two sexual assault charges.
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- Jay Warren the island's magistrate, was cleared of indecent
assault.
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