KEY POINTS:
Two former Pitcairn Island men are preparing to return to the island as prisoners, after they were found guilty of historic child sex charges against girls as young as seven.
Shawn Brent Christian, 31, student of Newcastle, Australia, and Brian Michael John Young, 53, a labourer in Auckland,
had separate trials at the Pitcairn Supreme Court, sitting in Papakura, South Auckland in November and December last year.
The court was allowed to sit in New Zealand under a special act of the New Zealand Parliament.
The verdicts against the men were read out at a hearing today.
Christian was found guilty of two charges of rape and one charge or aiding and abetting a rape.
Christian was charged jointly with his brother Randall Christian in relation to the rape of a girl, where the brothers held her down as they took turns raping her.
Shawn Christian used his shirt to gag the girl's mouth, during the rape.
Following the rape, both men dressed themselves and walked off leaving the girl alone.
Young was found guilty of six charges of rape and one of indecent assault.
Young was acquitted of one charge of rape, one charge of gross indecency and one indecent assault charge.
Young and Christian were remanded in custody to Mt Eden Prison and are to travel to Pitcairn in custody on board the Braveheart on January 14, from Tauranga.
They will be sentenced in the Pitcairn Island courthouse linked by video to the court at Papakura on February 16.
Four Department of Corrections officers will travel with the men to Pitcairn where they are due to serve on the next rotation of corrections staff on the specially built island prison.
During the trial one complainant said Young raped her at various scenes and in different circumstances around the island when she was almost seven years old.
The court was told the complainant, who has name suppression, was raped and sexually assaulted "on occasions too numerous for the complainant to recall with any level of specificity".
The offending only stopped when she left the island with her family in 1978.
Another victim said she was nine years old when Young would undertake jobs for her family such as collecting firewood.
Young would ask the girl go with him to assist in various chores and would use the opportunity to carry out the sexual assaults.
Crown Prosecutor Simon Mount told NZPA the trials had been a difficult process for all involved.
"But hopefully the Pitcairn community can now move on."
The island attracted worldwide attention two years ago when six local men, including the mayor, were convicted of child sex abuse involving girls as young as seven and stretching back almost 40 years.
The first report of a rape was made in December, 1999, to a policewoman on Pitcairn.
P itcairn, the home of Fletcher Christian and his band of mutineers who took over the armed British ship Bounty in 1789 and set Captain William Bligh adrift in a small ship's boat, is halfway between New Zealand and Chile.
It is one of the most remote settled places on earth with no airstrip, and access only by sea, either from a passing tourist ship or a chartered vessel.
It is British territory but when the islanders were convicted of sex offences they argued the British had no legal standing because British law did not apply. The Privy Council rejected that argument.
The trials started in the Pitcairn Supreme Court on the island in 2004.
- NZPA
