UK law applies to Pitcairn
FOREIGN STAFF
SEVEN men facing a string of sexual assault charges on remote Pitcairn Island will be tried under British law in New Zealand, the island’s supreme court said yesterday.
Pitcairn - a British dependency that lies halfway between New Zealand and Peru - has been wracked by a scandal implicating 13 Pitcairn men in multiple sexual assault charges with women and girls as young as three years old. Some of the allegations date back 40 years.
Defence lawyers for seven of the accused had challenged Britain’s sovereignty over the island, which is governed by the British High Commissioner in New Zealand.
Most of the island’s remaining 44 residents are descendants of sailors who staged a mutiny 214 years ago on the British naval ship HMS Bounty. Most of the victims of the alleged abuse now live in the New Zealand city of Auckland.
The lawyers argued that the islanders severed all ties with Britain when they burned the Bounty on 23 January, 1790. They said the men should be tried by the Pitcairn community, not by a British court in New Zealand created specially for the case.
But Pitcairn’s three-judge supreme court, sitting in Auckland, ruled on Monday that Pitcairn Island and its residents are still governed by British law.
"We have not been persuaded that there are any grounds to doubt the historical traditions surrounding the establishment and development of a British settlement on Pitcairn, nor the applicability of the laws enacted for Pitcairn," Charles Blackie, the chief justice, said.
The seven defendants, who were not in court yesterday, are due to appear on 16 June to discuss trial procedures. Their names have not been released.
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