Pitcairn sex abuse man 'believed it was his right'
A Pitcairn Island man on trial for sex abuse used to act as though young girls were available for him whenever he chose, a prosecutor said in a makeshift courtroom on the remote rocky outcrop populated by descendants of the 18th-century Bounty mutineers.
In opening statements, prosecutors charged that Dave Brown, nicknamed The Mouth, abused five victims, including a five-year-old girl and another aged under 13, in a string of attacks. Brown says he is innocent of the 15 charges of indecent assault and gross indecency.
Brown is one of seven men on the island charged with a total of 55 sex crimes, some dating back 40 years.
His trial on Pitcairn – an island of just 47 inhabitants in the Pacific east of the international dateline – began yesterday, one day after prosecutors opened proceedings in a small community hall for a string of trials are expected to take up to six weeks.
Prosecutor Christine Gordon said that Dave Brown is accused of assaulting one girl in the island’s Seventh Day Adventist church and another during a fishing trip along the island’s rugged coast.
One woman told Pitcairn’s court that she was five years old when Brown assaulted her as she played in the bushes.
The alleged victims of the sex abuse all are testifying via a video link from the New Zealand city of Auckland.
Also among the defendants are Brown’s father, Len, 78, who is the oldest of the accused. Brown’s brother-in-law, Steve Christian, the island’s mayor, who claims to be a descendant of mutiny leader Fletcher Christian, has pleaded innocent to six charges of rape and four of indecent assault on four women from 1964-75.
Public prosecutor Simon Moore on Wednesday alleged that Christian, 53, committed the offences when he was between 13 and 24 years old.
“There was no question of consent. Steve Christian was exercising a right he believed was his,” TVNZ reported public prosecutor Simon Moore as saying in his opening statement.
Moore said Christian had displayed a “callous and cavalier” attitude to his victims.
“Even as a teenager, Steve Christian was a prominent and influential figure within his peer group. He was the leader of the pack,” he said.
His alleged victim broke down several times during her video-link testimony from Auckland.
Some islanders claim that convictions and prison sentences for the defendants will put at risk the community’s ability to crew a longboat that is the only way to bring vital supplies to the island from passing freight and cruise ships. Pitcairn has no air strip or port.
The Pitcairn Islands are a group of five rocky volcanic outcrops – only the largest of which is inhabited – with a combined area of just 47 square kilometres (18 square miles). They are 14,885 kilometres (9,250 miles) from London, in the Pacific between New Zealand and Peru.
