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# Pitcairn: An island a world apart. A people torn apart.

Which of Pitcairn's two faces is the genuine one? Is it the friendly, hospitable face that inhabitants of the British territory switch on for outsiders, or is it the dark and sinister face gradually taking shape as the prosecution outlines its case? Are the mutineers' descendants the simple, down-to-earth folk who welcome visitors with broad smiles and would drop everything to help a neighbour in need, pulling together to guarantee the survival of their remote, rugged island community? Or is Pitcairn a dsyfunctional society where child abuse is rampant and even untainted members have turned a blind eye for generations? A modern-day Lord of the Flies, a place that has turned inwards and devoured itself after decades of being left to its own devices?

# Pitcairn girls 'forced into harem'. Another take on the 'harem' angle.

Mr Dacre also picked several holes in the woman's evidence, forcing her to admit that she had only yesterday begun to claim that she told a friend, island woman Meralda Warren, about the alleged rape. "The defence case is that at no stage, never on one occasion, did Steve Christian have sexual intercourse with you without your consent," Mr Dacre said.

# Pitcairn Postmaster admits sex charges.

The prosecution in the cases of seven Pitcairn men accused of a catalogue of sexual offences against young girls on the island scored a significant victory yesterday when one of the defendants changed his plea to guilty.

# Pitcairn Islander 'pleads guilty to sex crime' .

Radio New Zealand said Dennis Christian, 49, pleaded guilty to three of the four charges he faced. The fourth charge was dismissed after the prosecution offered no evidence.

# Woman tells of Pitcairn 'harem'.

At 12 years of age, Pitcairn Island girls were initiated into the "harem" of Steve Christian - and everyone on the island knew what was going on.

# Pitcairn Islanders pay a high price for living in the past. An article from Marina Benjamin in 'Scotland on Sunday'.

Like some strange social experiment gone awry, the place is a human equivalent of the Galapagos, where the absence of external influence has led to all kinds of evolutionary cul-de-sacs. Take Pitcairnese, for example, a language the locals speak between themselves. Itu2019s a mixture of 18th-century English and Tahitian and it has zero currency anywhere else.

# Child rape trial begins on tiny Pitcairn Island.

With a population of 47, no telephones and no televisions, it's alleged that men on the island are having sex with children. In fact, many of those accused admit they've committed the crime.

In their defence, the men say all of the girls consented, and that women on the island start having sex at an early age, anyway. Women on the island agree it's true.

# Purgatory in Paradise . Another Dea Birkett article.

What is the point of jail on an island that is already like a prison?

# Dea Birkett wrote a book, Serpent in Paradise, about how she spent four months on Pitcairn. It was not generally very well received.

The trouble I had with the book was that I just didn't end up liking Dea Birkett very much. For a thirty-year-old well-travelled woman she seems to have gone to Pitcairn with some remarkably naive ideas. It doesn't take much imagination to see that a community of fewer than fifty adults three hundred miles from their nearest inhabited neighbour is going to be a difficult one to infiltrate. There might be little privacy and there might also be gossip, small-mindedness and intolerance. And so it proves.