Kathy Marks

I was watching a documentary the other day that contrasted the male-dominated chimps with the matriarchal bonobos and I was struck by just how chimp-like Pitcairn society was.

The physically-strongest men dominate every single thing on the island. Male bonding is very tight. There is universal acknowledgement of the self-appointed leader (often very grudgingly given) and there seems to be an agreement not to express violence towards each other which stops the society from becoming murderous and allows the males to do exactly as they please.

As with chimps, all the females rank below the lowest male. They cannot physically do the male tasks of running the longboats in treacherous seas out to the passing ships to obtain food, mail and all manufactured goods and on- and offload people and this is what life on Pitcairn depends on. This lack of ability to provide for themselves gives the women no choice but to accept their lowly status and all the problems that having no personal power brings including almost ubiquitous domestic violence and sexual attacks. But, knowing nothing else, and there being no possibility of effective protest anyway, this way of life is accepted not just as perfectly normal but has the defence of being their traditional and cultural way of life at least in the eyes of the men.

This book is concerned with the culture of accepted incest, paedophilia, molestation and rape of girls as young as 3, but generally from age 9 from which the mothers, often victims in their own time, are powerless to either prevent or stop for fear that they and their family be ostracised and on an island of less than 50 people, that matters.

The investigation and subsequent trials took 7 years and many millions of pounds. A whole legal apparatus had to be set up on the island. Against that, there were online campaigns to stop the men being convicted saying everything from the girls tempted the men, that they were sexually advanced for their years, that it was island culture and nothing wrong with it to the fact that if the men were imprisoned the island would die as there would be no one to run the longboats and heavy physical work. People all over the world who are generally disgusted with paedophilia and rape felt that an exception should be made for these men, 'romantic' descendants of Fletcher Christian, chief mutineer on the Bounty.

Alongside this the women who had been encouraged to finally report the sexual attacks on them when they were children faced enormous and often exceedingly nasty and spiteful pressure from their families to refuse to give evidence and to drop their charges and most did. Those that didn't, that bravely gave evidence and saw their attackers convicted now have to live with the fact that after all no one really cared about them, not the British who had been shamed into paying attention to this deserted colonial outpost, not their families, some of whom would never speak to them again, not the media who saw them as bringing low the Utopian paradise of a tiny, isolated tropical island, not any one at all.

If they had cared, the men, some charged with multiple gang rapes of prepubescent girls, wouldn't have been given community service, imprisonment within the home or a couple of years behind "bars" only being let out 3 or 4 times a week and to be able to have family parties behind the fence (which passes for prison security) once a week.

The book made me sick. The author did a good job of exposing why everyone should be moved off the island, dispersed into other communities and their wicked, brutish idea of civilization allowed to pass into history with the certainty of no more child abuse. But no, in this day and age of PC concerns, millions upon millions are being spent on this island to bring it up into the 21st century, although it wasn't poor before. But its still being run by the convicted rapists, the women still have no power and I am not convinced that there is any way young girls can be protected in Pitcairn.

Rewritten and expanded May 26th, 2011… (more)