"Is that a sword in your scabbard or are you just happy to see your cousin?"
Posted on 07/16/2002 8:08:56 AM PDT by dead
Up to 20 men from the tiny South Pacific island of Pitcairn - which has a total population of 44 - may face charges of sexually abusing girls on the island after a police investigation, a New Zealand radio station reported yesterday.
Police from Kent in southern England, joined by New Zealand detectives, began investigating an alleged December 1999 rape on Pitcairn almost 18 months ago.
Since then the New Zealand media have reported that the number of complaints has grown, and that about 20 former Pitcairn dwellers had been accused of sexually abusing girls on the island.
The report said it was likely the trial would be held in Auckland where many of the men now lived.
Pitcairn Island prosecutor Simon Moore, an Auckland lawyer, declined to comment on the report, or the fact that a new law would have to be passed by New Zealand before the trial could be held on its territory.
The tiny island, which lies halfway between New Zealand and Peru, was settled by a group of English sailors who staged the famous mutiny on the British warship Bounty some 200 years ago and is a British protectorate.
If charges are laid and a trial is held on the island, it would be only the second trial in the territory. The last was 105 years ago, according to Herbert Ford, the director of the Pitcairn Island Study Centre in San Francisco.
In 1897, Harry Albert Christian - a descendant of mutiny leader Fletcher Christian - was hanged in Fiji after being convicted on Pitcairn of killing his wife and child, Mr Ford said last year.
British High Commission staff in Wellington were not available for comment.
Associated Press
I think we have a former president who could use a new land to rule. His kinda place.
"Is that a sword in your scabbard or are you just happy to see your cousin?"
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