Pitcairn case complaint

An alleged victim of sexual abuse on Pitcairn Island claims a New Zealand police officer asked her to make false accusations against her attacker.

The Police Complaints Authority has confirmed it has a letter of complaint from a woman on the island. The authority says it expects to decide within days whether the complaint falls within its jurisdiction.

The complaint comes at a time several women have withdrawn their co-operation from the police investigation into the Pitcairn sex abuse allegations.

The woman, in her 20s, did not want to be named. She said a New Zealand and a British police officer visited her while she was living in New Zealand in 2000.

"They said they had insufficient evidence against one particular person and can I make up a false allegation against him. I said no, I could not do that and in fact I wanted to withdraw my statement from the cases they were trying to set up," she wrote in her complaint, which she also sent to the Herald.

The victim, the first to speak publicly, alleges she was abused on the island as a child, but did not want to reveal details.

She had been harassed and humiliated by the police, she wrote. She has also complained to the Kent police in Britain.

" ... they have hurt all of us deeply in the way they have gone about this and so I'm lashing back the only way I know how," she told the Herald.

In a separate letter, her husband said he heard the officers ask her to make a false statement. "That was utterly and truly disgusting." Police began investigating allegations of sexual abuse on Pitcairn in 1999. Charges, ranging from under-age sex to child abuse, are to be laid against a number of men in April.

Islanders have complained about the investigation taking three years and tainting them all.Authorities say the trials will set legal precedents and are complex.

About 45 people live on Pitcairn, 5000km east of New Zealand.

The woman first made her complaint in early February, during a public meeting, on the island. Her letter arrived by boat from Pitcairn on Tuesday.

Pitcairn public prosecutor Simon Moore said he was surprised by the complaint, but the prosecution was "on track".

The woman is one of at least three to have withdrawn from the case, saying they had not known police planned to charge the alleged offenders, often extended family members.

"My reasons for withdrawing are simply that this whole mess could destroy our tiny community," she said.

Another witness to have withdrawn her co-operation said the men operated the longboats - the only way on and off Pitcairn. If they were imprisoned, the island would have to be abandoned.

The Howard League for Penal Reform co-chairman, Peter Williams QC, urged a restorative justice approach, saying trials would be "corrosive" and the money spent on thethem would be better used improving infrastructure and education on the island.