So, Pitcairn island, halfway between New Zealand and South America, one of the most isolated places on the planet. The population is a mere 47, largely descended from the mutineers of the Bounty. Pitcairn’s economy consists of publishing postage stamps for philatelists plus a few beehives. On September 14th 2003 Emily Rose Christian, descendant of Fletcher Christian, is born. Emily is the first child born on the island in 17 years.
Recently seven men on the island have been put on trial for sex offences, the first contingent of a group of thirteen men charged in all. These men have been charged with sexual offences against underage girls dating back over 40 years. The offences came to light when a then 15 year old girl complained to a visiting British official in 1999.
This group of thirteen men constitutes about half of the male population.
A group of Pitcairn women is agitating on behalf of the accused men to stop the trials. They admit to themselves taking part in underage sex with island men and claim that underage sex is something of a tradition and necessity on Pitcairn. They claim these trials will be a death blow to their little community. They claim its all been blown out of proportion, they have never been aware of a single case of rape on Pitcairn, and the testifying victims have been coerced.
I dont know what to make of this story. This little bunch of what seems a barely viable and probably dying community have themselves a highly unusual situation. Pending a lucky birth in a year or two, that young Emily Rose Christian has no real prospect of mating with an islander of similar age when she comes of age. And its not like the menfolk have an abundance of similarly aged mates to choose from. I suspect the local women may be right that the trial and probable incarceration of such a large proportion of the male population could well be a deathblow to the community.
Is that a bad thing? Local women supporting men they love is one thing, but whatever they say and whatever pressure may have been applied since, that original complaint was from a young girl who presumably had a very real grievance. And yet part of me thinks that the outside world should butt out and leave these people alone to their oddities.
Well, whatever the ‘traditions’ are, if anyone is being forced/coerced into sex against their will, that’s wrong and should be stopped. If that means that the community on the island is not viable as a self-contained unit, then so be it.
Frankly, I don’t see why older folks having sex with younger folks is a ‘necessity’ as quoted in the article. That’s pretty much a false statement used to justify behavior.
Umm, the necessity is not to have sex with underage girls but to keep the men accused of it in the community to ‘crew longboats that supply the island.’
I don’t think anyone in the article said underage sex is a necessity, although it was called traditional in the article.
Not defending, just making sure the facts are correctly reported…
After reading the article and visiting their Government’s website, I find this island’s history (and the relatives of Norfolk Island) very interesting. This community has been on the brink of collapse multiple times over the 200+ years and this is another brink-of-collapse in the making. About a third of the way down, is more news from another website relating to the alleged sex crimes. Lots of stuff to wade through.
For any born-and-bred Pitcairner, there’s just about four dozen other people. Half of whom we can exclude. So 24, into a 72-year life expectancy (to make the sums easy) says there’s one person of the opposite sex for every three years. Now I know I find 90% of the opposite sex repulsive, as far as potential sexual relations are concerned. I presume that’s the case with Pitcairners, too. So they end up with whichever person is left after that brutal logical exclusion, no matter what their age. That, in itself, seems to me a good explanation for a culture which accepts coupling across age gaps as normal.
(Disclaimer, anything done against their will is bad blah blah blah…)
So why dont thye just avail themselves of russian mail order brides…or something like that.
Hell, if they could give me a highspeed internet link that was dependable, electricity that was dependable, and a job for mrAru that would keep us in cash I’d convince mrAru to move there in a heartbeat…most of my human interaction that is not work related is frequently online in everquest, on message boards or in camera chatting with friends who are not local. As long as we could order books or stuff online and have them delivered a few times a year, we would be pretty happy. How are the gardening prospects? a lot of the food we eat is vegetables that anybody can grow, and I am happy with fish and chicken or rabbit=)
The news reports keep saying that islanders can trace their families back to the original Bounty sailors - doesn’t that mean that they are all related, bar one or two? eeeuuwww
They don’t even have nice beaches, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to live there - some leave and apparently tend to come to NZ.
This article makes it sound like the prosecution is British and the defense team is from New Zealand. No mention of the judge, but I would assume that the trial is being held by the Brits, as the original charges stemmed from the report of a British policewoman and the argument put forth by the defense is that the Pitcairn Islanders shouldn’t be liable under British law.
I’m a little unclear as to what the debate is supposed to be here. Is it:
The question of the morality of sex between adults and adolescents, specifically in a situation involving a small, isolated community.
or
The question of the morality of sending people to prison if removing them from the community would have a negative impact on that same community.
As for #1, I don’t think the size of the community should make any difference. In such a situation it would probably have to be more common to have relationship between people of very different ages, but “too young” (however you define that) is “too young” regardless of how many other people are around. If the only single person of the appropriate sex is in fact “too young” then you just have to wait until they’re “old enough”. Plenty of people in the world can’t get laid, so I’m not going to shed any tears for some guy who has to wait another year or two before gettin’ it on with a teenager.
When it comes to #2, people who make some kind of valuable contribution to their community go to prison all the time. In this particular case, couldn’t any convicted rapists be forced to work on the supply boats as part of their punishment? I’m imagining a sort of nautical chain-gang.
aru:Hell, if they could give me a highspeed internet link that was dependable, electricity that was dependable, and a job for mrAru that would keep us in cash I’d convince mrAru to move there in a heartbeat.
Swell, but this discussion is about the problems caused for the Pitcairners by the scarcity of available sexual partners. If you and mrAru aren’t planning to contribute to the pool of available mates for the other residents, why would they be interested in having you move there?