Editorial: World will keep an eye on Pitcairn

In New Zealand and other parts of the world the trial on Pitcairn Island has been followed with a sense of fascination and horror. Fascination because anything to do with that lonely refuge of the Bounty mutineers has its own fascination, and horror because, while the sexual abuse of young girls is sickening enough anywhere, it seems particularly frightful in such a tiny, enclosed community. When offending of this kind occurs over such a long period in a place as intimate and isolated as Pitcairn, it becomes harder to regard the offenders as a criminal minority. The community must have known what was going on for a long time and those who remained must have decided to live with it.

Fortunately, several women who left the island decided not to accept the abuse they had suffered as children and their testimony has brought convictions against six men, one or two of them who could previously have been described as pillars of the community. The women testified they had been indecently assaulted and raped as young as 10 as some sort of sick sexual initiation. But it was more than that. The girls were raped casually, almost routinely; one of them testified that it happened to her every time she went for firewood.

The evidence heard by the New Zealand judges could lead anyone to wonder whether something more than ordinary criminality was happening there. It is tempting to write off Pitcairn as a place beyond the orbit of civilised law, where men reverted to animal instincts and provide us with some appalling lesson about the inclinations of human nature. But Pitcairn in other respects seems not to lack a sense of law and order. Nobody in modern times has been murdered there. Property seems to be well recognised and secure. People go about their allotted tasks. One of the accused continued to ferry people and goods to the island while the trial was under way.

Reporters covering the trial have written of the air of unreality pervading Pitcairners' attitude to the court set up in their midst by outsiders. Few of the locals attended the proceedings and outside sitting hours the bailed accused could all be found going about their lives as if nothing had happened and nothing was going to change. And even now that six of them have been convicted, the guilty remain free awaiting sentence and resting their hopes on a legal challenge to Britain's jurisdiction over the island. Unless that challenge succeeds the six are facing lengthy prison terms, probably in Britain or New Zealand. It would bizarre to confine them to the jail they have built for themselves on the island.

It has been said that the removal of six men from a community of just 47 could be fatal for the island's survival. But some in that community say otherwise. Others, they say, can steer the longboat and perform the ordinary roles of those convicted. The more serious question is whether Pitcairn can remain a community as lightly policed as has obviously been the case. If Britain's jurisdiction is confirmed by the court action, then the Government in London will be obliged to see that young women are a good deal safer there than they have been.

No country can be expected to go to unlimited expense to police a community of just 47 people who choose to live in such isolation, and countries of Britain's type do not deny their citizens the right to live wherever they choose. But if the Pitcairn community relies on financial support from Britain, that is a lever that could legitimately be used. It must be hoped, though, that a community on Pitcairn can survive this ordeal. Their forbears survived a noted incident in history and the mutineers' South Pacific island has its own place in the imagination of the English-speaking world. Under the spotlight of this trial the island has lost much of its lustre. It has discovered that outsiders care for the wellbeing of young women there, regardless of what perverted practices have been quietly accepted. One way or another Pitcairn will be monitored more closely now.