Halfway between South America and New Zealand is a small piece of British territory with just 50 residents, no paved roads, no sewage system and no landline phones.
While it might sound like an idyllic tropical island to some, the volcanic island of Pitcairn has a very dark history – which has now been explored in the Wondery podcast The Pitcairn Trials.
It all began in 1996, when police officer Peter George from Kent was asked to investigate an alleged serious crime on the island, the rape of a 10-year-old child. However as he began to look into the case, he uncovered horrific stories of sexual abuse from several girls on the island.
One brave former resident, Glenda, who now lives in England after fleeing the island when she was 19, opened up about her own terrifying childhood, including rape at the hands of the island’s Mayor and other men.
When UK police officers investigated further they learnt that almost every man on the island was accused of child sexual abuse or rape.
At 1,300 miles southeast of Tahiti, Pitcairn is far from easy to get to and is too rocky for an airstrip. It can be reached by flying to an outer Tahitian island and then taking a 36-hour boat ride, where travellers are ferried to the island’s tiny harbour on longboats.
Recalling arriving on the island, Peter, from Tonbridge, said: ‘There’s a church, there’s a community hall, a post office. We were staying at the mission house, which was where the pastor and his family had been staying. They’d been taken off the island as a result of the allegation.’
Peter spoke to the suspect in the case, Sean Christian, a 19-year-old local boy, who lived with his father Steve and his mother Olive.
Former resident of Pitcairn, Britain’s smallest colony, (pictured) recalls being raped at the hands of the island’s Mayor
Peter said: ‘He readily admitted that he’d had sex with this girl. You know, we’d put a rape allegation to him. He said, ”I’ve had sex with her far more times than that. Five or six”. She was 11, but had reached the age of 12 by now.’
Under British law, it is considered statutory rape for an adult to have sex with an individual under 16. The law states: ‘Whether or not the child consented to this act is irrelevant.’
However Peter explained that the 19-year-old acted more like a child than your average UK teenager, even asking his parents could he go out to play. Bizarrely, the age of consent on the island had been 12 years old.
Peter revealed that the accused 19-year-old claimed the pair were in a relationship and had been exchanging ‘love letters.’
The officer added: ‘So I went with him on his quad bike back to his house. And he took me into his bedroom. He opened up his bedroom drawer. And there were five or six letters from this particular girl outlining how they’re having a relationship.’
The young girl was sneaking out of her bedroom window at night to meet up with Sean – without her parents’ knowledge.
They only discovered their daughter’s involvement with an adult when they went into their daughter’s room one night to discover her bed was empty. After they sent out a search party for her, she finally arrived home – and claimed she had been raped.
The suspect in question was the son of the island’s mayor Steve Christian. At the time of the accusation, Pitcairn’s police officer was away from the island.
Pitcairn Island Mayor Steve Christian, centre, and Public Defender Paul Dacre (right) arrive at the sex abuse trial on Pitcairn Island in 2004
Pitcairn is not easy to get to, it’s 1,300 miles southeast of Tahiti, and is too rocky for an airstrip
It all began in 1996, when police officer Peter George, (pictured) from Kent, was asked to investigate an alleged serious crime on the island, the rape of a 10-year-old child, however it was uncovered that this was a common experience for all girls
Peter admitted that he didn’t really know what to do because there was no real legal system on Pitcairn, so he sought advice from the UK.
He said: ‘The advice was to caution him for underage sex. And that’s what we did, caution him for underage sex.’
After the case was considered closed, Peter went back to Kent to resume his normal duties, however he recommended that there should be some sort of independent policing on the island to stop further crimes.
Peter reported this to the British Foreign Office in London and they sent a report onto the British High Commission in New Zealand, and the Deputy High Commissioner.
Upon Peter’s recommendation, another Kent Police officer, Gail Cox, travelled to Pitcairn for three months where she established laws for the islanders.
She established the definition of domestic violence and extended it to include general violence, verbal abuse and she introduced an arms code, licence book and safety code.
Gail reported the residents of Pitcairn seemed confused by an age of consent; as she had proposed changing it from 12 to 16.
However the new sentencing structure for crimes was equally bizarre – raping a 16-year-old meant two years behind bars, but two men having consensual sex under the age of 21 meant life in prison.
Adamstown is the capital and only settlement of the Pitcairn Islands, the only British Overseas Territory that is located in the southern Pacific Ocean
The community hall pictured on Pitcairn Island
The island is reached by flying to an outer Tahitian island and then taking a 36-hour boat ride, then travellers are ferried to the island’s tiny harbour on longboats
The island is full of dense, rocky woodland. As of January 2020, Adamstown has a population of 47, which is the entire population of the Pitcairn Islands
The small adventist church of Adamastown, Pitcairn island
The detective was concerned if they locked up every man on the island the trade would stop as the locals relied on men to ‘run the longboats, to trade with the ships and load and unload’
Elsewhere, Gail had built a training programme for a local island police officer, a woman called Marelda Warren.
Even though things seemed to be moving in the right direction, the floodgates opened when two more girls came forward with rape allegations from when they were 11 years old.
The girls claimed that Ricky Quinn, a visitor to the island, who’d been there for a few months visiting his step-grandmother, attacked them.
The mother of one of the girls found out about the incident and called for police officer Gail, who had returned to the island for another three month stint.
Ricky was found guilty on one charge of unlawful carnal knowledge of a child. He was found not guilty of the same charge against a different child and he was deported the next day.
It was during this case that years of secrecy began to crumble, with many women on the island coming forward to say that, for years, girls as young as 10 had been sexually assaulted and raped.
Detective Peter George and his colleague Robert Vincent were tasked with investigating the third sexual assault case which involved two suspects, the mayor’s sons Randy and Sean Christian.
They were no longer living on the island, but Peter travelled to Norfolk Island via Auckland, New Zealand, to interview them. The brothers denied all allegations and insisted they were innocent.
After struggling to find proof in the case against Randy and Sean, the detectives returned to New Zealand looking for more evidence.
Leon Salt, the Ireland Commissioner for Pitcairn, suggested they speak to a woman from Pitcairn who had recently moved to Auckland and knew the girl making the allegations.
When they interviewed her, she claimed that every girl on Pitcairn was sexually assaulted by the time they turned 10 years old.
This shocking statement suggested widespread abuse on the island, and the detectives took a detailed statement from her the next day.
According to Peter, the woman didn’t explicitly say it happened to her, but implied it was a common experience for all girls.
In 2000, Peter had returned home to Kent and discussed his findings with the British Foreign Office.
Speaking on the podcast he recalled: ‘We recommended that we needed to obviously investigate this, and they agreed that we should.
‘I don’t think there was hardly a family that wasn’t involved in it in some way. What was happening was that the daughter of one particular male on the island was a victim, but he was also offending against somebody else.’
Peter and Robert went back out to the island to investigate alongside New Zealand police officer, Karen Vaughan, a specialist in investigating child sexual abuse.
They drew up a list and were looking at a potential 30 or 40 women who had previously lived on the island between 1980 and the present day.
Many who grew up on the island left as they got older; some for travel, others for job opportunities – and some fled.
The team, known as Operation Unique, started tracking down the women, showing up on their doorsteps unannounced to try get a clearer picture of what was going on on the island.
Glenda, who grew up on Pitcairn, spoke to the team about her terrifying experience of sexual assault when she was just three-years-old.
Bravely recalling her experience on the podcast, Glenda said: ‘I was three, mum and dad had gone off, I don’t know who they’d gone to visit. I was left with my grandfather.
Dave Brown, who pled guilty to some counts, three of indecently assaulting two 15-year-old girls when he was in his mid-30s
‘And I woke up, I thought I was dreaming, and my body was rocking, literally rocking. And I, young as I was, I thought, what’s going on? And there was this guy trying to…it wasn’t a family member. It wasn’t family. It was another guy on the island.
‘He was an older guy. I didn’t tell Mum and Dad, but he came back the second night, and I screamed, and I screamed, and I screamed, and Grandad came. I said, I just want Mum and Dad.
‘I want Mum and Dad. I want Mum and Dad. And they came home. I was still crying, still upset. I was dreading him coming back, but I think with Grandad coming down the stairs, like he did, that put him off coming back. So that was my first.’
Glenda explained that it was a trusting island where everyone left their doors and windows open and everybody knew everybody.
However that wasn’t the only assault Glenda experienced. She also recalled a brutal gang rape by Pitcairn’s mayor Steve Christian and other men when she was just 10 years old.
Breaking down in tears, she said: ‘He raped me, and he tried to get the other boys to do the same.’
Glenda said: ‘Sex on the island is when somebody grabs you and you just go along with it, and you let them do what they want to you because you don’t want to get hurt. That’s all you associate sex with on Pitcairn, violence.’
Glenda, who left Pitcairn when she was 19 and now lives in England, said she was even abused for years by her male school teacher, saying he tried to rape her one school day.
Peter said some of the island men confessed when they were questioned, however others denied it.
He said: ‘Well, their attitude was very poor towards women. I mean, one in particular, we interviewed him off the island, and his attitude was, ‘well, what are we going to do about these b******?’ That was his words.’
Operation Unique considered how to move forward with a trial against the perpetrators but they had a few concerns.
Peter said: ‘You couldn’t possibly hold trials on Pitcairn, not at that time, because there was no legal system there. One of the magistrates was a suspect, so what do you do? Everyone was a suspect, every male, really.’
The detective was also concerned if they locked up every man on the island the trade would stop as the locals relied on men to ‘run the longboats, to trade with the ships and load and unload.’
After much debate UK government officials agreed that if the effects of prosecution meant that a community on Pitcairn would cease to exist then, so be it, and voluntary depopulation should be looked at.
What started as 30 alleged perpetrators was whittled down to 16. Some of the accused had died; while police hadn’t been able to gather enough evidence in some cases and in others, complainants withdrew their evidence because of pressure from other islanders.
The British Diplomatic Service had given the newly appointed Pitcairn Public Prosecutor Simon Moore the right to prosecute.
Simon had visited the island previously to understand the community. He’d been through the case files and in April 2003, he returned to Pitcairn with his final decision.
In total, it was 21 charges of rape, 41 for indecent assault, and two for gross indecency, The trial took place on Pitcairn in September 2004.
Lawyers, judges, media, and officials from the UK government descended on the small island for the trials, doubling it population.
Nine men had been charged in total. Two were going to be tried at a later date, because they lived off the island, leaving seven men to be tried there and then.
Dennis Christian, a local postmaster, pleaded guilty to three counts – two of unlawful sexual intercourse with a child when he was between 16 and 19, and the sexual assault of a 12-year-old when he was 27.
Randy Christian was found guilty of eight counts in total, including gagging and raping an 11-year-old with his brother Sean
Dave Brown also pleaded guilty to three counts of indecently assaulting two 15-year-old girls when he was in his mid-30s.
However Brown was also facing trial for 12 other counts relating to indecent assault and unlawful intercourse with children. One of them was 13 years old when he was 35.
Terry Young faced eight counts, including indecent assault of a girl under the age of 13 and raping a 12-year-old.
Randy Christian, one of Steve’s sons, faced 15 charges, including raping a girl when she was 10 and he was 20, and raping and then assisting his brother, Sean, who lived off the island now, of raping an 11-year-old.
Finally, the mayor Steve Christian faced six charges of rape. Four of those related to Glenda.
The first count related to Glenda when she was between 11 and 12, and he was between 14 or 15.
She told the court that Steve pushed her to the ground, raped her, and encouraged others with him to do the same as they all laughed at her.
Glenda managed to get free and ran home, her mother saw her trying to dispose of her underwear. When she asked what happened, Glenda replied, ‘nothing’.
She also alleged her mother called her a ‘liar’.
The second attack on Glenda came when she was 14 or 15 while Steve was 16 or 17.
He pushed her into a shed before church and raped her, telling her, ‘don’t say anything, nobody’s going to believe you’.
Because of the rape, she was late for church and as punishment, her father beat her.
During the third and fourth counts of rape, Steve pulled Glenda onto his motorbike and took her off to an area known as the Flatland. He pushed her to the ground and again raped her.
The seventh man on trial was Steve’s father-in-law Len Brown, who faced two charges of raping Glenda when she was 18, and he was 46.
The defence tried to portray the women as ‘unreliable and liars’, calling one girl in her 20s who recounted a rape when she was 10 years old as ‘a woman scorned.’
On October 24, the men were brought back to the pitcairn Courthouse for the verdict.
Steve Christian’s son, Randy, was sentenced to six years for four rapes and five indecent assaults.
Len Brown, then 78, was convicted of two rapes and sentenced to two years. His son, Dave, was convicted of nine indecent assaults and sentenced to community service.
Dennis Christian, then 49, was convicted of one indecent assault and two sexual assaults he pleaded guilty to at trial. He was sentenced to community service.
Terry Young was convicted of one rape and six indecent assaults, he was imprisoned for five years.
Jay Warren, the island’s magistrate, was found innocent of indecent assault.
Inside the church were residents would go every day to say prayer
Peter said: ‘It meant the victims were believed and it was justice for them. We knew they weren’t going to get really long sentences, but it was just the fact that they were convicted was all important to us.’
Four men, including Pitcairn’s former mayor Steve Christian, were sentenced to prison for two to six years, meaning that almost half of the island’s male population were locked up.
Two others were given non-custodial sentences in 2004 for raping underage girls.
In 2008 Peter and Robert received an MBE at Buckingham Palace for helping to bring the Pitcairn abusers to justice.
At the time Peter told BBC South East: ‘Every single Pitcairn girl that we knocked on the door of, disclosed to us they had been the victim of sexual abuse, ranging from a more minor perhaps indecent assault, but many to really serious, nasty child rapes.
‘The island magistrate, the island mayor, leaders of the council, became involved in it. Many of the victims’ fathers were offenders with other victims.’
‘Obviously I’m very proud and very pleased to have been awarded this. This is something I never dreamt of having. ‘But to me the real heroes of this are the victims who have been brave enough to stand up and give evidence.’
