Witness testifies by video at Pitcairn trial
A woman testifying against two men she claims raped her as a child said she couldn’t tell anyone about the assaults because of the closed community mentality on the remote Pacific island of Pitcairn.
The woman, who cannot be identified, was testifying via videolink from New Zealand against two of seven men on trial in the isolated British territory, home to descendants of the 18th century Bounty mutineers. The community’s entire year-round population numbers only 47.
Pitcairn, roughly halfway between New Zealand and Peru, has been reeling from unprecedented attention since the trials opened last week with more than half the island’s adult males on trial, including the island’s mayor Steve Christian.
Giving evidence by video link from New Zealand on today – which was yesterday across the international dateline in Pitcairn – the woman described how as a 12-year-old she used to go with her friends to swim in Bounty Bay, and was assaulted there one day by island resident Jay Warren, seven years her senior.
The bay was popular with children after school, “but some of the older guys would come down and swim too”, the witness told the court, Television New Zealand reported.
Warren denied the charge.
The same woman also gave evidence against another man, Terry Young, who she claimed assaulted her at a school function. Young has pleaded not guilty to four charges of rape and seven of indecent assault.
The woman said she couldn’t even tell her parents about the assaults because of the island’s closed community mentality.
“I don’t recall talking about anything personal to anyone,” she was quoted as saying.
Most of Pitcairn’s female residents have come out in defence of their men, insisting underage sex was part of the island’s culture and that none of them were forced into it.
But prosecutors painted a picture of the island’s men treating women and girls like their harem.
Already one of the men has pleaded guilty.
Dennis Christian, a relative of the mayor, admitted in court this week to indecently assaulting a 12-year-old girl in the early 1980s. The court suppressed details about the other two charges to which he pleaded guilty.
The trials, held under British law before New Zealand judges, are expected to take six weeks.
Some islanders claim that if the defendants are convicted and imprisoned, they will no longer have enough men to crew longboats – the only way to bring vital supplies to the island from passing ships.
There is no airstrip or port on the rocky, volcanic Pitcairn Islands, which have a total land area of 18 square miles. Only one is inhabited.
