It turned out that both men and women of this piece of land lost in the watery expanses do not understand why the British authorities have declared war on their traditions. In connection with this, the lawyers of the convicted have started a new legal process.
English rebels and Tahitian beauties
The population of Pitcairn is only 47 people. The isolated community, in which almost all residents are relatives, settled here in 1790. It was then that the English ship Bounty, which, by the way, means "encouragement prize", anchored at the island. The crew mutinied against the cruel captain William Bligh, putting him and the part of the crew supporting him into a longboat. The sailors remaining on the sailing ship, led by the helmsman Christian Fletcher, after taking 19 people of both sexes on Tahiti, decided to hide away from the eyes of justice. The story of the "Bounty" turned out to be so remarkable that it was filmed several times. Fletcher was played at different times by Marlon Brando, Clark Gable and Mel Gibson. Most of the current inhabitants of the island consider themselves descendants of the helmsman; many bear the surname Christian.
The islanders feel themselves one big family, sacredly preserving the traditions of the first settlers. Island girls, in whose veins now also flows the blood of Polynesian women, begin sexual life immediately upon reaching puberty, and here that is usually 12 years. Only the third generation of relatives - second cousins - could marry each other, and the more strong branches the family tree had, the wider the choice for potential brides and grooms in the future became. Over time, the islanders turned into a calm, good-natured little people, inclined to a measured life, growing fruit trees, carnal pleasures and quiet "domestic" entertainments. The island is one of the most isolated places on Earth; from it to the nearest airfield is 3,000 km. Being a British colony, Pitcairn, located 14,885 km from Great Britain, still obeys London. Sick islanders are sent to New Zealand, and there young people receive higher education. In its capital, Wellington, the colony's administrators, including the governor, also live permanently. On Pitcairn itself, local self-government is headed by the mayor of the island's capital, Adamstown, named after the long-lived John Adams, who died last of the founding sailors of the colony.
And suddenly a scandal broke out. It turned out that the customs of Pitcairn come into direct contradiction with British criminal law, and only the stronger half is under attack, having overnight turned in the eyes of the law into debauchees and rapists. "For 200 years the British were completely unconcerned about what happens on the island," says 25-year-old Pitcairn resident Tanya Christian in an interview with the newspaper "Australia". "Why are they worried now? It's just too expensive for them to support us!"
The acting governor of Pitcairn, Matthew Forbes, dismisses all accusations, saying that Britain spends millions of dollars on maintaining the island: "If Britain were going to stage this trial in order to close the island, we would not be spending huge sums on developing its infrastructure," he stated in an interview with New Zealand newspapers.
Lost Paradise
The "exposure of paradise" began in 1999, when a British policewoman, Gail Cox, visited the island. The lady in uniform was shocked by the artless story of one islander about the free morals reigning on Pitcairn. Learning that men had deprived the cheerful young woman of her innocence back in childhood, the Englishwoman transformed the everyday joys of the islanders in her report into the leaden abominations of life. She launched a show trial, seeking to bring all the "criminal community" out into the open. During the investigation, new laws were introduced on Pitcairn, including child protection, and police officers and social workers, tired of the heat and seasickness, arrived on the island several times.
The investigation ultimately led to charges against 14 men; the police called this case a unique operation, as it involved English police officers and New Zealand lawyers acting under British laws that had only recently been introduced on the island. It was established that the islanders, including the mayor of Adamstown himself, Steve Christian, were guilty on as many as six counts, and some episodes occurred 30-40 years ago. The most innocent of the charges was "gross violation of public order", and the most serious were "corruption of minors" and "rape". Steve, for example, according to the case materials, "for the first time raped a twelve-year-old girl four times when he himself was 15 years old".
It is clear that none of the criminals will admit guilt. The "children of nature", who, thanks to the care of distant mother Britain, are by no means in a primitive state and know how to use computers, have tried to organize a worthy rebuff to interference in internal affairs by contacting well-known lawyers. The women on whose testimony the prosecution was based simply retracted their statements. One of the witnesses, 22-year-old mother of four children, Charlene Griffiths, honestly repeated her story to the press: "I was 13 years old, I felt like an adult lady, I myself wanted it. Our women are proud that they begin having sex as soon as they enter the age of maturity."
True enough. In criminal terms, the colony had been practically “sterile” for many decades: no one filed police reports, and on the island they hadn’t even bothered to build a courthouse or a prison. The trial, which lasted six weeks, was to be held at the “scene of the crime,” in Adamstown. The defendants faced long prison sentences, and the heavenly patch of land faced the fate of an uninhabited island. The population lives by fishing and gardening; there is no port on Pitcairn, and contact with the outside world is maintained via ocean vessels, which can only be reached in long, heavy boats that withstand the waves well. Deprived of men, the colony could have ceased to exist: there would simply be no rowers left. Helicopters cannot reach the island, and planes cannot land on it.
By the start of the trial, a whole flotilla had arrived at Pitcairn, carrying lawyers, judges, and reporters. The proceedings began in a wooden community hall, in front of which an anchor from the Bounty had been placed—after the plank floor had been covered with a carpet and the windows hung with heavy drapes “so that frivolous views would not distract the judges.” The defendants appeared in their best T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. The local population tore down British flags from the four-wheeled motorcycles on which the outsiders were riding around the island. Indignation grew when a journalist managed to photograph two prosecutors during a party on their ship. The law officials had dressed up as ladies, attaching fake busts and red wigs. Such behavior at a time when the islanders were in deep depression was seen as blasphemous.
All participants were connected to the “mainland” via a videoconference link. Some witnesses who had left their homeland testified with its help. The court sentenced six of the fourteen to imprisonment—the rest received suspended sentences and were ordered to atone for their guilt through community service. For the islanders, this meant continuing their favorite occupation: fishing and transporting cargo to Pitcairn from the rare ships that anchor in the roadstead. However, Britain celebrated its victory too early. The six “prisoners of custom” serving their sentences in New Zealand were taken up by luminaries of the British bar, attracted by the mass of legal paradoxes in this case. The lawyers discovered that the descendants of the mutineers should have been tried under British laws of 1790, because London had forgotten to carry out formal actions on the distant island necessary to bring it into the orbit of modern British legal procedure. But the legislation of the late 18th century had no articles prohibiting sexual relations with minors.
An appeal demanding that the Pitcairn trial be declared a farce, drawn up by a team of star legal sharp-shooters, has recently been filed with the high court. It is not out of the question that Britain will be forced to send its representatives to the inconsolable islander women.