Trouble in Paradise: Uncovering the Dark Secrets of Britain’s Most Remote Island

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Mike, who was qualified to drive heavy machinery, was keen to use Pitcairn’s big red tractor. He needed a local licence, but when he applied to the council’s internal committee, chaired by Randy Christian, nothing happened. He made inquiries. Still nothing happened. ‘They kept saying things like “After the next ship’s been”,’ said Mike.

Vaine Peu, an amiable Cook Islander and the partner of Charlene Warren, told a similar story; Turi Griffiths, Darralyn’s husband, also from the Cooks, could not get a licence either. As for Simon Young, an Englishman who had settled on Pitcairn with his American – Filipina wife, Shirley, he had managed to secure a licence—but only for an old blue tractor, and only for collecting rubbish, which was his job. Mike, Vaine, Turi and Simon had one thing in common: they were all outsiders. Meanwhile, two local teenagers were being trained to drive the big red tractor.

Those who could not drive the tractor, which was used in countless chores, most notably to plough the islanders’ gardens, were dependent on those who could. And those who could were men who had been born on Pitcairn and spent their lives there: the ‘Big Fence gang’, as they were called.

If the big red tractor was a symbol of power from which outsiders were excluded, it was eclipsed by the longboat—Pitcairn’s umbilical cord, and the sole preserve of Steve Christian and his followers.

Such is the aura surrounding the longboat that it was an anticlimax to discover that it is just a large open boat with an outboard engine and an aluminium hull. The boat’s mystique dates from the days when it was made of wood, powered by oars, and hauled up the slipway by hand. But while less muscle may be required now, its significance has not diminished: without it, Pitcairn could not function. The boat—or boats, for there are two of them—collect people and supplies from the ships in all weather. Cargo, including fuel drums and timber, is lowered in a net; for those standing underneath, it can be dangerous work. The heavily laden vessel is then guided back into shallow, surf-lashed Bounty Bay, and it is their skill in accomplishing that task in the wildest conditions that gives Pitcairn’s men their intrepid reputation.

The longboat slows down as it approaches the cove and pauses, with its motor idling. The engineer turns round to face the open sea; when he spots a suitable wave, he opens the engine up at full throttle. The boat is swept forward and surfs into the bay through a slender, rock-studded channel, skidding to a halt by the jetty—which, for passengers, is like landing at the bottom of a helter-skelter. There is little room for error, though, and islanders have been killed or seriously injured on occasions when the swell has seized the boat and dashed it against rocks.

For the local boys, joining the crew is a rite of passage, and they long to be skipper or coxswain, just like other boys dream of driving a train. The coxswain has the most kudos of anyone on the island. In an exceptionally macho society, he is the most macho figure of all.

Steve has been a coxswain since the age of 17. Randy—the only one of Steve’s sons living on the island, and thus seen as the heir apparent to his political power—is a coxswain. So is Dave Brown. So is Jay Warren. Those men were always at the back of the boat, in charge of the tiller or engine. Len Brown, who in his day headed one of Pitcairn’s leading families, was among the island’s most capable engineers and coxswains.

Vaine Peu, Simon Young and Mike Lupton-Christian had all asked to be trained for the key roles. But the locals were unenthusiastic, for according to them, you had to have grown up on Pitcairn. So ‘the boys’, as they were known, continued to control the longboat—and, with it, the community’s access to resources, its economy, its very survival.

As of 2004, Steve and Randy occupied the highest-ranking official positions on Pitcairn. As mayor, Steve was the community leader and chairman of the local council, which administers the island day to day. (The Governor wields overall authority.) Randy was chairman of the influential internal committee, which, among other things, allocated jobs. The pair also headed the unofficial hierarchy, for the real power base on the island was not the public hall, where the council met monthly, but Big Fence, Steve’s family home, where important decisions were made by his ‘inner circle’, and the same men gathered on Friday nights for rowdy drinking sessions.

Only native-born Pitcairners were part of the gang. Outsiders, particularly men, were regarded with hostility and suspicion. Steve and his mates, it is said, saw them as a threat to their jobs, and to the cosy way they ran the place for their own benefit. ‘They hate outsiders with a vengeance,’ a former Pitcairn teacher told me. ‘It’s their rock, and they don’t want anyone else on it.’

At the same time, Pitcairn is desperate for new blood. From a high of 227 in 1937, the population has dropped to around 50. Yet as much as newcomers are needed, they are feared and disliked, and also looked down on, because they lack the Bounty lineage. The locals ridicule them for breaking invisible protocols, and say of them in Pitkern that they ‘cah wipe’—do everything wrong.

According to Mike Lupton-Christian, as an outsider, ‘you’re actually treated quite badly … They don’t like people coming in with new ideas or doing anything better than them. You become very unpopular if you disagree with them.’ Mike’s house, built high on a hillside overlooking the Pacific, is derisively called ‘Pommy Ridge’ by other islanders.

In the past, some newcomers have turned up starry-eyed and then left, unable to deal with the hardships of Pitcairn life. But outsiders are expected to fail. Nola Warren, one of the matriarchs, says, ‘People from outside can’t live here. They’ll never settle down. They wouldn’t be able to cope.’

Some are not given much of a chance. Nicola Ludwig and Hendrik Roos, from the German city of Leipzig, were ideal immigrants: young, strong and fit, with small children. They loved the outdoors, and were eager to adopt a self-sufficient lifestyle. Nicola, whose family is now in New Zealand, told me recently, ‘We went to Pitcairn for an adventure and to get away from the outside world. We were absolutely naïve about the place. We thought it was this little community full of greenies, where everyone is nice to each other.’ Although Hendrik pitched in, particularly on the boats, the Pitcairn men ostracised him and subjected him to anti-German insults. Eighteen months after the family arrived, a container ship offered them a free passage to Auckland. They packed up and left.

Some islanders are treated as outsiders, too. Brenda Christian—small, but very strong and fit—is always in the thick of it with the men, flitting around the boats and shouldering heavy loads. Yet Brenda is not considered a true Pitcairner. She left the island at the age of 18 and did not return until 30 years later.

Like Brenda, Pawl Warren has an obvious rapport with island life. Shaven-headed Pawl, who gave us a fright when we first saw him on the longboat, left Pitcairn as a baby and grew up in New Zealand. In 1993, inspired by the Hollywood films about the mutiny, he moved back with his wife, Lorraine, and three children. Pawl describes the island as ‘a magical place’, but adds, ‘It’s not been easy to fit in here, because the hierarchy was already established.’

Even locals who have not lived away may experience similar problems. Tom and Betty Christian—elders of the Church, well travelled, well read and relatively affluent—are envied and distrusted by many of their fellow islanders. The couple, who have pioneered most of Pitcairn’s commercial ventures and undertaken overseas trips sponsored by the Adventist Church, find themselves increasingly isolated in their own community.

In the early 1990s, in an effort to boost the population, British administrators introduced a scheme to attract young Norfolk Islanders. A few people took up the offer of work and cheap housing; none of them ended up staying for long. Even Randy Christian’s wife, Nadine, who has married into the island’s most powerful family, confides, ‘The Pitcairners have their own way of doing things. I’ve had to try and do stuff the Pitcairn way, but it’s very difficult.’

I asked Matthew Forbes, Karen Wolstenholme’s successor as Deputy Governor, who, in his opinion, had been the last outsider to settle successfully on the island. After a long pause, Forbes suggested Samuel Warren, an American whaler who arrived in 1864.

Nadine, Steve Christian’s daughter-in-law, had been one of the talkative women at the Big Fence meeting; for the time being, she and other female relatives were as close as we would get to Steve. However, we soon came to know his voice well, thanks to the VHF radio system that is Pitcairn’s domestic telephone network. Every house and public building has a VHF unit. If you want to speak to someone, you holler out their name three times on the main frequency, Channel 16. (Only a first name is needed.) When they respond, the two of you switch to another channel—and everyone else adjusts their sets, in order to eavesdrop.

The radio in our living room crackled into life dozens of times a day, as the islanders got in touch with each other to chat or make plans. Steve’s rich tones rang out frequently. He might have been about to go on trial, but he was, unmistakably, still in charge. It was he who made public announcements, informing people when the next ship would be calling, or telling them not to worry if they saw smoke rising—‘We’re just burning rubbish.’

While Steve was elected mayor in 1999, unofficially he had been a leader since his teens. Good-looking, self-confident and powerfully built, he had always stood out: cleverer than his peers, a bit more articulate, and possessing a certain raw charm. His late father, Ivan, had been magistrate for eight years, and his mother, Dobrey, remains a formidable woman. Despite a strict upbringing, Steve was described as a tearaway by a Royal Air Force team stationed on Pitcairn in the 1970s, when he was in his early 20s. In a report to British authorities, the team also tipped him as a ‘future strongman’, and said that he would be a ‘severe loss’ if he decided to emigrate. Steve never did leave, except for limited periods, and that has been a source of strength.

In his youth, Steve had the pick of the local girls, and he eventually married Olive Brown, Len’s eldest daughter, although—much to people’s amusement—he reportedly also had affairs with her two younger sisters; he was referred to as ‘the man with three wives’. The birth of three sons, Trent, Randy and Shawn, consolidated his status. In addition, Steve has a multitude of talents. It is said of him that he can fix anything, and that he is a person who gets things done. A few years ago, when the islanders were heading home in a gale and rough seas, a rope got caught in the longboat’s propeller. Steve dived overboard, cut the rope and was back in the boat before some of its occupants had realised anything was amiss.

On another occasion, when a woman was seriously ill, her husband contacted a specialist in California via ham radio. (Until recently, the only health professional on Pitcairn was a nurse.) The doctor proffered a long-distance diagnosis, and Steve, on his instructions, fashioned two surgical instruments which the nurse then used to perform an emergency procedure. The woman believes that Steve saved her life. ‘It was a miracle, and he was part of that miracle,’ she says.

Steve himself walks with a limp, the legacy of a teenage accident that has required two hip replacements. Nevertheless, he is physically equal to Pitcairn’s tough environment. He is said to be good company, and an entertaining host. He has something else, too—an ‘X-factor’, one outsider calls it, saying, ‘You can feel it as soon as he walks in. He carries himself like a leader.’

The Adventist Church filmed a series of documentaries about Pitcairn; watching them while on the island, I was struck by the way that Steve dominated nearly every scene—leading a group of young men off on motorbikes to hunt wild goats; debating the design of a new longboat with New Zealand engineers; driving around in a Mini Moke, the island’s one car; and giving the signal for Christmas presents to be distributed in the square. Steve even built the Pitcairners’ coffins.

To his fellow islanders, he was the linchpin of the community. Nothing happened without Steve’s say-so, and if he was away temporarily, on Norfolk Island, for instance, the others would still consult him. ‘Steve liked to be boss,’ says Tony Washington, a New Zealander who taught on Pitcairn in the early 1990s. ‘He had more say than Jay [Warren], although Jay was magistrate. When we went on a trip to Henderson [a neighbouring island], it was Steve who decided when we should come back.’

Neville Tosen describes him as ‘the evil genius who ruled Pitcairn’. He adds, ‘And yet I came to recognise him as a person of ability. He was smart. He understood the island and the way things were done. He could think his way through problems and come up with a solution. He was the brains of the place.’

Others say that Steve surrounded himself with yes-men and treated Pitcairn as his personal fiefdom. He would turn up late to communal dinners, knowing that no one else would start eating without him. ‘Pitcairn was an oligarchy,’ says Leslie Jaques, who has succeeded Leon Salt as Commissioner. ‘Steve ruled, and everyone else did what they were told. The way the community was run was medieval.’

There was an in-crowd, but not everyone in it was equally favoured. The island’s pecking order was quite intricate, it seems, and was reflected in the jobs that people did, and even by their positions in the longboat. As one British official observes, ‘It was almost like an Indian caste system. You had your place in society, and you never moved from it.’

For six decades the mainstay of the Pitcairn economy was stamps. First issued in 1940, they became the cream of many a collection, coveted because of the island’s colourful history and exotic location. So popular were they, in fact, that within a few years the community was able to build a new school and, for the first time, hire a professional teacher from New Zealand.

The proceeds from stamps went into a Pitcairn Fund that until a few years ago met the island’s running costs, as well as subsidising freight charges and the price of diesel fuel and building materials. The fund—latterly bolstered by sales of coins, phonecards and the .pn internet domain suffix—enabled the islanders to travel to New Zealand for further education and health care, and be paid salaries for carrying out ‘government jobs’. Capital items, such as longboats, tractors and generators, have always been provided by Britain, which is also responsible for maintaining the infrastructure.

As stamp collecting and letter writing fell out of fashion, the fund dwindled. Thanks to British subsidies, Pitcairn has nonetheless continued to enjoy full employment, in a manner reminiscent of a Cold War-era Communist state. The government jobs, equivalent to a public service bureaucracy, include deputy postmaster, trainee tractor driver, second assistant forester and keeper of John Adams’ grave. While there may be a whiff of absurdity about some of the jobs, who gets what is a serious matter, for the small stipends—NZ$500 (£200) a month for the island’s engineer, for instance—can go a long way on Pitcairn. And, until recently, who got what depended on your connections.

When Steve Christian’s daughter, Tania, arrived for an extended visit, she was promptly given two positions: museum keeper and librarian. Simon Young, the English newcomer, who had a horticulture degree and wanted to work in biosecurity, was made garbage collector. That had been the job of Hendrik Roos, the German settler. His wife, Nicola Ludwig, had been gardener of the cemetery.

Steve was not only mayor; he was chief supervising engineer—probably the most significant post on Pitcairn. (Randy was his deputy.) He was also the island’s dentist, having completed a course in New Zealand that qualified him to perform extractions. He was the radiographer. He was the number one tractor driver. He was the explosives supervisor, and a heavy machinery operator. He was a longboat coxswain. Steve had eight paid jobs.

The Christian clan has traditionally been the aristocracy on Pitcairn, but not all Christians are equal, and in Steve’s day his branch has been pre-eminent. The Warren clan also plays a prominent role in island affairs, securing some of the best jobs for family members. Despite lacking Steve’s force of personality and charisma, Jay is regarded as his main rival for power.

The mayor—or magistrate, as the office was formerly called—has always been a man. Betty Christian once nominated a woman. ‘Everyone laughed. They thought it was the biggest joke they’d ever heard,’ she says. Many women thought so too. When an outsider asked one older islander, Nola Warren, why a woman could not be in charge, she replied, ‘Because it’s never been, and it just can’t be.’

One of Pitcairn’s attractions is that people do not pay tax. Instead, they carry out ‘public work’: painting buildings, repairing the slipway, clearing the roads of undergrowth. They can go fishing if the weather is good, or tend their gardens and orchards. The islanders grow, among other things, mangoes, pineapples, passionfruit, strawberries, avocadoes, watermelons, pumpkins, peppers and sweet potatoes. Everything thrives in the volcanic soil and semi-tropical climate.

The locals trade their produce with the crews of passing ships, swapping fruit and fish for items such as timber, frozen chickens and cans of Coke. Their most valuable commodity, however, is the wooden carvings to which they devote most of their free time. The carvings are sold to passengers on the cruise ships that visit Pitcairn during summer, and also through the islanders’ websites. A Bounty replica can fetch US$120. Not long ago, on a cruise ship, a Pitcairn family made US$10,000 in one day.

Souvenirs account for three-quarters of the Pitcairners’ earnings. Most homes have a workshop equipped with power tools, and the carvings—while no longer produced by hand—are still made from the richly veined miro wood harvested locally or on Henderson Island, 15 hours away by longboat. (Henderson is one of three other islands, all uninhabited, in the Pitcairn group; the other two are Oeno and Ducie.)

Most of the Big Fence crowd are drinkers. For a long time Pitcairn was a dry island—in theory, at least. Alcohol is banned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1997 the locals voted to legalise its importation, but a licence is still required and drinking in public remains outlawed; in the outside world, Pitcairn retains its teetotal image. You cannot buy alcohol on the island, any more than you can buy cigarettes or ice cream or a carton of milk.

Seventh-day Adventism replaced John Adams’ idiosyncratic brand of Anglicanism in 1876, after the American-based Church posted a box of literature to Pitcairn, then dispatched a missionary to argue its cause. The islanders were baptised in a rock pool, and since pork was now a forbidden food, they killed all their pigs—pushed them off a cliff, so the story goes.

Adventism, an evangelical Christian denomination, has 14 million members worldwide. Followers believe that Saturday is the Sabbath, and that the Second Coming of Christ is imminent; they are expected to dress modestly, and avoid shellfish as well as pork; tobacco is another prohibited substance. Dancing, gambling and the theatre are frowned on, along with works of fiction and music other than hymns.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has been a generous benefactor to Pitcairn, raising funds for the community and sending out teachers and pastors. It is not clear, though, how deeply the faith implanted itself, or to what degree the islanders ever observed its precepts. Certainly, they called themselves Adventists, and until a few years ago the pews were always crowded on Saturdays. But going to church was, like elsewhere, the done thing, and on Pitcairn the church was also very much a social focus.

Outsiders were struck by the locals’ earthy language, peppered with innuendo and swear words, and by their relaxed sexual morals. Roy Sanders, a New Zealand teacher, described a Sabbath service in the 1950s that was punctuated by heckling and jeering, and ‘intermittent spitting out of the windows’. Ted Dymond, a visiting British official, reported in the 1970s, ‘The lengthy and rambling sermon was soporific and I counted seven islanders in deep slumber.’ Some believe that Pitcairn’s history has been characterised by cycles of moral decay and religious renewal. Others are doubtful about the renewal part.

Nowadays Seventh-day Adventism is no longer a spiritual anchor. Yet Saturday is still ‘the Sabbath’, and everybody has a quiet day. Even some of the least pious islanders continue to pay a tithe, and the pastor is deferred to, outwardly at least. Council meetings, market days and communal meals begin with a prayer. ‘They all look so bloody sincere, with their heads bowed,’ remarks Bill Haigh, an Englishman who has spent long periods living on Pitcairn, modernising its communications on behalf of Britain.

‘Sacrificial living’, it seems, has never been embraced by local people, despite being a central plank of Adventism. Carol Warren has five freezers, and most households own at least three, among an array of white goods and electrical appliances: fridges, deep-fryers, microwaves, video cameras, stereo systems, DVD players, television sets, video recorders. The Pitcairners are defensive about their material possessions—more so, perhaps, than about any other aspect of their lives. It certainly feels odd, in such a remote, rugged spot, to find homes stuffed with the emblems of Western-style wealth. Paradoxically, the houses themselves are relatively basic, with concrete floors and unpainted walls, and the furniture is plain.

The multiple freezers and fridges, the islanders point out, are a necessity—and after opening a bag of flour infested with weevils, I could see what they meant. Moreover, the hoarding instinct is ingrained, for no one is ever quite sure when—or if—the next ship will come. The video and DVD players, too, are crucial in a place with no television, cinema or theatre, and no restaurants, pubs or cafés. Such goods are also status symbols, though, and in that respect Pitcairn is not much different from anywhere else. I suppose I had expected, rather naïvely, to find people living the simple life.

Carol told Sue Ingram, the Radio New Zealand reporter, ‘We’ve had it really good for a long time, and I don’t think a lot of our people in New Zealand could live like we do. We do live quite extravagantly. I have everything they have, plus.’

Pitcairn has been fairly prosperous for decades. Roy Sanders, the teacher in the 1950s, was taken aback to find children with gold watches and expensive fountain pens. A British official in that era reported that the islanders were reticent about their earnings; however, he added, ‘Judging from the manner in which some of them journey up and down to New Zealand—even to England—they cannot be too badly off.’

Not everyone benefits equally from the spoils of the island. Take the share-out, which is one of Pitcairn’s more charming traditions. Based on an old naval custom, it takes place in the square and is used to distribute the catch from a communal fishing trip or goods donated by a ship. The fish (or flour, or clothing, or whatever) is divided into piles equivalent to the number of households. Everybody turns their back, except for one person, who points to a pile; another person, facing away, calls out the name of a family. The process is repeated until every family has been allocated a ration—with everyone, in theory, receiving equal.

Mike Lupton-Christian told us that the share-out had become a joke, with Steve Christian and Dave Brown often siphoning off the prime items beforehand: bottles of beer, for instance, or the best cuts of meat. As Mike put it, ‘The stuff is shared out equally, only Steve’s family gets a bigger share.’ It was the same when a ship wanted to buy a consignment of fish or produce. ‘The order only goes to those in the know,’ he said.

As for the general dishonesty that Gail Cox, the Kent constable, had tried to address, Mike’s belief was that ‘everyone in the community had something on everyone else … Nobody was prepared to shop anyone else … It was a bit like the sexual abuse thing.’

The ‘sexual abuse thing’ was now plunging the island into its worst crisis since the mutineers’ day. Pitcairn’s leading men stood accused of paedophilia, a crime so abhorrent that it sometimes causes vigilante-style reprisals. Not only had they preyed on children, it was alleged, they had done so within their own small, introverted community, targeting girls who lived a few doors away—the daughters of cousins and neighbours, or, in some cases, family members.

If a prosecution was launched, though, the island’s name would be blackened, and relationships in this most interdependent of societies ruined. The community was already in a precarious state, thanks to the fragile economy and falling population. Could it survive this latest and most devastating blow? And how would fans of the legendary Bounty island react?

CHAPTER 6 The propaganda campaign starts (#ulink_114fa1d5-0166-5719-babd-a210615f4b0f)

By mid-2001 Pitcairn was making international headlines, although the scale and true nature of the problem uncovered by English police were not yet known. ‘“Mutiny on the Bounty” island faces first trial in history,’ proclaimed The Independent in London, trumpeting a story written by one of my colleagues. ‘End of a legend as Pitcairn Island meets the modern law,’ announced the New Zealand Herald.

None of the stories running then quoted anyone on Pitcairn. The islanders, not slow to use the media in the past, refrained from making any public comment—at least for the time being. Others spoke up on their behalf, however, and chief among them was Dr Herbert Ford, an ordained Seventh-day Adventist minister and director of the Pitcairn Islands Study Center, located on the campus of Pacific Union College, California.

‘Herb’ Ford had worked in public relations and as a journalism professor at the college, which was funded and administered by the Adventist Church. He had a lifelong fascination with Pitcairn: he had met Tom and Betty Christian in California in the 1960s and visited the island briefly in 1992; he had also raised money for it, securing donations from, among others, Robert Redford and Jordan’s late King Hussein. After he retired, the college gave him some office space for a study centre, and when the child abuse story broke, Ford made himself available to media worldwide. He spoke well and could spin a good quote. He also communicated with the island weekly by ham radio, which qualified him to pronounce on the community’s ‘mood’.

In 2001 he told me, referring to the investigation, that ‘the sum of it all is pure speculation, and whether you want to call it rape, I don’t know’. He added, ‘There’s been an awful lot of Polynesian blood put into the island. The girls resorted to sexual activity at a very early age, and that was carried on by the women into Pitcairn.’ Ford claimed that Gail Cox, the English constable, had ‘ingratiated herself’ with the locals, ‘wheedling’ information out of the girls during informal ‘kitchen table’ chats, and precipitating a ‘sweep’ by police of Pitcairn women. In his view, it would not be surprising if the inhabitants of a remote tropical island were ‘out of harmony with the laws of downtown London’.

Also quoted in those early days was Glynn Christian, a former television chef and author of a biography of Fletcher Christian, Fragile Paradise. Accessible and articulate, Glynn was a seventh-generation descendant of Fletcher, and had grown up in New Zealand. In a telephone interview, he spoke of the ‘goodness and niceness’ of the Pitcairners, whom he met in 1980 while conducting research on the island, and, in a remarkable observation, said that ‘to be there makes you think there’s no such thing as original sin’. Glynn ascribed the current crisis to British neglect, which he claimed had left the Pitcairners in a social timewarp. In his opinion, the Pitcairn men had known no better. ‘It’s not wilful badness,’ he said. ‘You can’t punish a child for doing something wrong if he’s not been told that it’s wrong.’

Once the British Foreign Office had resolved to act on the child abuse allegations, it set about addressing a problem identified by its advisers many years earlier: Pitcairn’s lack of a legal infrastructure, which, given recent developments, needed to be rectified swiftly. A series of appointments were made, among the most important of which was the naming of Simon Moore as Pitcairn Public Prosecutor. Moore was already Crown Solicitor for Auckland, the chief prosecuting counsel in New Zealand’s largest and most crime-ridden city; now he was to take on a similar job for an island of a few dozen people.

Christine Gordon, a senior colleague, was appointed Deputy Public Prosecutor. The pair regarded themselves as a formidable team. Moore, an effervescent character with a mane of golden-brown hair, rode with the Auckland hunt and belonged to that city’s exclusive Northern Club. He was a master of courtroom theatrics. Gordon, a petite blonde with a ferocious grasp of detail, smiled sweetly while asking the killer questions.

Having prosecuted a previous case of child abuse in a closed community, Gordon correctly predicted that the allegations would proliferate. By mid-2001 the two lawyers had enough evidence to charge 13 men; Moore, though, paused to consider another factor—the public interest. How would a prosecution affect the tiny, isolated society? Would it really collapse if men were put in jail? He and Gordon realised that they could not answer these questions while sitting in an office block in central Auckland. They would have to make the journey to Pitcairn, to see for themselves how the community operated.

In October 2001, accompanied by Karen Vaughan, the Wellington-based detective, the prosecutors travelled to Pitcairn on a container ship, the Argentine Star. The Deputy Governor, Karen Wolstenholme, was already on the island, as were several new resident outsiders, British authorities having belatedly acknowledged the need for some external supervision. Two New Zealand social workers were watching over the half-dozen children, while two British Ministry of Defence police officers—known as MDPs and licensed to carry firearms—were monitoring the suspects and keeping communal tensions in check. The two pairs, sent out on rotating three-month tours of duty, were resented by the majority of islanders, who grumbled that Pitcairn had become a police state and accused Britain of planting spies in their midst.

Standing on the deck of the Argentine Star, Christine Gordon had ‘a knot in my stomach when I saw the dot on the horizon, because we didn’t know what the situation would be there’. As it turned out, and just as Peter George and Dennis McGookin had experienced, the Pitcairners went out of their way to be friendly, even if these latest visitors found them a little overwhelming at first. Simon Moore recalls, when the longboat came out, ‘the assortment of humanity, wearing different coloured T-shirts, some carrying huge frozen fish on their shoulders, clambering aboard just like pirates and swarming around the ship in all directions’. He also observed the efficiency with which the locals stocked up on duty-free cigarettes and alcohol. ‘We’d been told they didn’t drink,’ says Moore, whom I interviewed in his oak-panelled office in 2005. ‘So I was astonished to see the quantities of booze unloaded, and boxes of eggs and frozen meat, and anything else you can imagine—wads of cardboard, mattresses, chairs—all dropped down into the longboat.’

The next morning the visitors were invited on a community fishing trip. At one point Simon Moore found himself in a small boat driven by Dave Brown, one of the alleged child abusers. Dave instructed him to lie flat, then he revved up the engine and the boat shot forward. ‘I looked up and saw that we were hurtling towards this solid rock face,’ says Moore. ‘Just as we were about to hit it, or so it seemed, the swell dropped and exposed the mouth of a cave.’ Dave deposited him on a patch of sand deep inside the cave, where the other visitors had already been dropped off. ‘I thought perfect,’ says Moore, rolling his eyes. ‘If they wanted to abandon us, this is the way to do it.’ A little later, though, they were picked up, and everyone proceeded to fish for a local species, nanwe. Despite the rough seas, the islanders hauled up hundreds of fish.

The catch was destined for a ‘fish fry’ that afternoon at The Landing, in celebration of Dave’s birthday. The fish were cleaned and the guts thrown off the end of the jetty, attracting a reef shark, which Randy Christian, another of the accused men, caught. Then, as one witness tells it, ‘Randy got a sledgehammer and hit the shark so hard that the hammer went right through its head and came out the other side. The shark was writhing in agony, the women were gagging, and Randy just stood there grinning, with the bloody sledgehammer in his hand.’

By coincidence, it was also Simon Moore’s birthday; so after regaling Dave with a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, the Pitcairners sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to their Public Prosecutor. Dave later complained to someone, ‘That prick Moore, we put on a birthday party for him the first time he came, and I thought he’d go easy on us as a result of that, the bastard.’

The fishing expedition was the first of numerous communal events, including dinners and sports days, that were staged for the visitors’ benefit during their fortnight on Pitcairn. At a tennis tournament, Karen Vaughan found herself partnering Dave in a doubles match. Simon Moore played cricket in a team skippered by Dave, and at a picnic later on chatted amicably with Randy, the rival captain. The prosecutors also attended a ‘cultural day’ at the school, where Christine Gordon was taught basket weaving, and Steve Christian, the mayor and another child abuse suspect, showed Moore how to carve a wooden dolphin.

That must have been weird, I say. Moore leans back in his hair, hands behind his head. ‘Yes. But then everything was weird on that trip. Normally we never see the people we’re prosecuting until we get into court, but here we were mixing with them quite closely.’

Some of the outsiders on the island voiced cynicism about the community activities, saying they had never seen the Pitcairn people display such unity and goodwill. Then, just before the visitors left, the islanders sang them their traditional farewell song, ‘Sweet Bye and Bye’, in the public hall. Moore says, ‘I was genuinely quite moved by it, but others, apparently, were not, because they saw it as yet another show for us.’

While they enjoyed sampling the local cuisine and learning new sports such as Pitcairn rounders, the lawyers had serious business on the island. At a public meeting soon after he arrived, Simon Moore explained the role of a public prosecutor, emphasising that his job was to serve the islanders’ interests. Privately he was optimistic that the men would plead guilty, enabling the matter to be settled with minimum damage to family relationships. The locals warmed to Moore, a man of considerable natural charm. But, according to one person present, ‘they didn’t get it … They saw him as their friend, even the suspects did. When he talked about the good of the island, they thought that meant that nothing would happen to them, whereas he was talking about the law being upheld.’

Moore had been told there was a widespread belief that the alleged crimes were minor, even though police had spelt out exactly what they were investigating. At the meeting, therefore, he took care to stress that some of the offending was exceedingly serious. ‘I could see some of the older people gasp,’ he says, ‘and I was told later that a number of islanders were quite upset.’

During their stay, he and Christine Gordon spoke to nearly every Pitcairn resident. Many expressed fears for the community’s future if men were imprisoned. But no one suggested that the allegations were untrue, and the overwhelming message the lawyers received was that prosecutions ought to go ahead. This was unexpected, since the islanders had previously resisted the notion that sexual abuse even existed, let alone needed to be tackled. Yet according to Moore, ‘The feeling was, if these are crimes elsewhere in the world, then we shouldn’t be treated differently. That came through really loud and clear. It was also said that if they would attract prison sentences elsewhere, then Pitcairn should be no exception.’

Only one person dissented, and that was Len Brown. Len was concerned because, as he saw it, women were hopeless in the longboats. In his quaintly accented English, he told Moore, ‘The island will be doomed, Si-mon.’

Never before in his long career had Moore had ‘a more profound feeling of the difficulty and significance of the decision we had to take’. It was not until February 2002 that he finally made up his mind. The prosecution would go ahead. He informed the community in a videotaped message that reached the island in May. Moore said he would not be laying charges, however, until the vexed issue of a trials venue had been resolved.

Faced with an indefinite period of limbo, the Pitcairners decided it was time to fight back.

In August 2002 the New Zealand Herald ran an article across two pages, quoting three ‘former Pitcairn Islanders’ living in Auckland. The three said that their cousins on the island were frustrated by the media coverage, which in their opinion was based exclusively on information from the British. One of the interviewees, ‘Alex’, who revealed that he had been questioned by police, suggested that Britain was trying to rid itself of its financial obligations. He also told the Herald that, on Pitcairn, teenage sex was common and even some ten-year-olds were sexually active. His companion, ‘Sarah’, said that Britain was partly to blame for this, as it had failed to provide the Pitcairners with guidance. The third interviewee, ‘Mary’, claimed the islanders could not be judged as if they lived in New Zealand. ‘Different countries have their own way of life,’ she explained.

This article, presenting the child abuse case as a David and Goliath contest, set the tone for the way it was reported until the trials two years later. Almost every news report reproduced the Pitcairners’ claims of a culture of under-age sex, and a plot by Britain to shut down the island. It was the mutineers’ descendants versus the big bad colonial power—and the fact that the alleged victims were Pitcairners too, with an equally impeccable lineage, was rarely mentioned.

From mid-2002 the islanders were able to use email, and they joined the propaganda campaign, corresponding regularly with their supporters and with journalists whom they believed to be sympathetic. They also bombarded Richard Fell, who had replaced Martin Williams as the British Governor, with angry emails.

Meanwhile, the other parties were quiet. Simon Moore was unwilling to comment until charges were laid, British officials were cautious, and police were not talking. Neither were the complainants, of course. As for those Pitcairners who, as it later turned out, were horrified by the men’s alleged behaviour, such as Pawl Warren and Brenda Christian, they were keeping their own counsel.

That left the accused men and their families in a position to monopolise the debate, and to assert, without fear of contradiction, that Britain was getting itself into a lather about youthful canoodling behind the coconut palms. The men, who had not yet been named, made public statements about the case, with few outsiders aware that they had their own agenda. ‘Alex’, for instance, was Brian Young, later to be charged with serious sexual offences. ‘Sarah’ was his Norwegian-born wife, Kari, who had lived with him for 15 years on Pitcairn.

Steve Christian did not bother with pseudonyms. Instead, he exploited his position as mayor to attack the British government and the prosecution. He did not disclose—and few people outside the island realised—that he was himself directly affected by the legal action. Another man in his situation might have stepped down. Not Steve. Already in October 2000, shortly after being interviewed by police, he had flown to London for a gathering of leaders of the British Overseas Territories. Baroness Scotland was among seven British ministers who attended the meeting, which included drinks parties and official receptions. Steve also travelled to Chicago in his official capacity, and in May 2002, soon after Simon Moore’s announcement that he planned to lay charges, gave a speech to a United Nations seminar in Fiji on decolonisation. Steve inveighed against the delays in the criminal case, calling them ‘an abuse of process’, and criticised Britain for neglecting the island and its infrastructure. ‘Must we hijack a yacht, or be invaded like the Falklands, to get attention?’ he inquired theatrically.

On his way home via New Zealand, Steve was due to see Richard Fell, a courteous, unflappable man who had become the islanders’ principal bête noire. When Fell refused to allow him to bring a lawyer, the meeting was cancelled. Steve called it ‘yet another example of the pattern of high-handed behaviour exhibited by the Governor’s office’.

He did not seem worried about the impending prosecution. ‘I think Steve thought that nothing was going to touch him,’ says one British official.

A key figure behind the scenes was Leon Salt. In theory, the Commissioner was just a British employee; in practice, he was enormously powerful. He ordered supplies for the islanders, and arranged for them to be delivered. He organised passenger berths on container ships. All mail to and from Pitcairn passed through Salt’s hands, as did email messages, via a central server in his Auckland office.

Salt—tall and rangy, with long, curly hair and a big moustache—had Pitcairn blood; he was well educated, somewhat alternative in his lifestyle. He owned a smallholding north of Auckland and had a passion for vintage cars. He was fiercely attached to the island and its inhabitants, having spent three years teaching on Pitcairn before becoming Commissioner in 1995. He knew the individuals, their relationships, their feuds and affairs. He knew precisely how the tiny, squabbling community functioned.

While some locals saw the softly spoken Salt as their champion, others claim that he favoured certain families, particularly Steve Christian’s. If Steve wanted an item loaded onto the next ship leaving Auckland, it would get on, some islanders say, at the expense of goods belonging to others. Leon Salt was good friends with Steve, who called him ‘Boss’, and with Steve on Pitcairn and Salt in Auckland, it is said, the pair ran the island between them. In 2002 they deported an English journalist, Ben Fogle, who had arrived by yacht. Salt, who was visiting, spat at Fogle’s feet and would not permit him beyond The Landing. ‘We don’t want your sort spying on us,’ he told him.

When Operation Unique started, Salt was helpful. Police worked out of his office, at his invitation, and he unearthed documents from his archives for them. He was a fund of useful information, most of which he carried in his head. When police voyaged to Pitcairn to interview suspects, the Commissioner went too, and stayed with them at the Lodge. Salt, say British officials, was level-headed about the island and ‘didn’t buy into the myth’. Almost everyone, including Simon Moore, regarded him as a thoroughly good bloke.

Those who know him say he was revolted by the child abuse allegations. But he felt it was ‘inappropriate to apply a UK solution to a Pitcairn problem’, he told the Governor. Salt wrote, ‘The UK has ignored law and order on Pitcairn for 200 years … It would seem perhaps incongruous that UK justice is to be imposed in all its might after all this time, particularly given the fact that reported serious crime has escaped investigation in the past.’

Salt supported an amnesty and, astonishing as it seems, he even told police, according to Peter George, ‘I’ll get the men to plead guilty—provided there’s an amnesty first.’

After that avenue was closed, his attitude changed. Detectives asked Salt to sign an affidavit releasing documents from his office; if the affair got to court, he would have to give evidence for the Crown. He refused, and withdrew all co-operation from the inquiry, telling prosecutors that if they proceeded as they intended, history would ‘judge them very poorly’.

The men and their families, unwilling to see the case go to trial, pressed, instead, for a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’, based on the body that probed human rights abuses in apartheid-era South Africa. The idea of transposing truth and reconciliation to Pitcairn had initially appealed to major players, including Simon Moore, but had to be abandoned once it was decreed by Baroness Scotland, Britain’s Overseas Territories Minister, that the conventional legal process had to take its course. Still, Moore remained hopeful that the healing principles it embodied could be integrated into that process.

New Zealand is a pioneer of ‘restorative justice’, which offers criminals who plead guilty the opportunity to express remorse, apologise to their victims and make reparations; when they then go before a court to be sentenced, they can expect a significantly reduced penalty. Moore believed that this approach would enable most of the Pitcairn men to avoid prison. Christine Gordon, his deputy, consulted restorative justice experts, and researched a model employed in a Canadian – Indian community where generational child sexual abuse had been exposed.