According to Hannah, Belinda, in particular, was ‘dying to tell’ her mother about Randy, but could not summon up the courage. She even begged her friends to speak to her mother on her behalf, and wrote her a letter, which she then burnt. Belinda was anxious about damaging the friendship between her family and Randy’s, and was sure her mother would not believe her. Hannah told Sheils, ‘She wanted to write to her mum saying what had happened, and that she wanted it to stop. I mean, if her mum knew, maybe it would.’ To which Neville Tosen comments, ‘How the mother didn’t already know about it—I’ve never answered that question. Because from my rather limited access to the girl, I was aware that she’d been interfered with.’
Gail Cox was supposed to leave in late November, on the same ship as the Carnihans, but agreed to stay on longer to deal with the fallout from the thieving revelations. By chance, then, she was still on Pitcairn when Ricky Quinn, a visitor from New Zealand, turned up.
The step-grandson of Vula Young, one of Pitcairn’s matriarchs, Quinn struck Pitcairn like a tropical storm. A good-looking 23-year-old, he had past convictions for possession of LSD, morphine and heroin, which, to the local teenagers, gave him an exciting aura of danger. Quinn had brought with him a stash of marijuana, and he slotted straight in with the minority of islanders who formed the ‘drinking crowd’.
A visiting policewoman on the alert; a handsome newcomer with drugs in his pocket; young girls tired of being preyed upon and itching to talk. All the elements were in place. Now all that was needed was the spark.
The drinkers got together most Friday nights. Two weeks before Christmas, Pawl Warren had a party. Most of the young people on the island attended. They stole some alcohol from their parents, and also some Valium tablets.
Gail Cox was still awake at 1.10 a.m. when Dave Brown, one of the partygoers, knocked on her door. ‘There’s trouble at Pawl’s house,’ Dave announced. At Pawl’s, Cox found several frightened and sobbing youngsters, who admitted that they had been drinking. The police officer went on to Belinda’s house, where Belinda and Karen had taken refuge; once inside, she got the feeling that Belinda wanted to tell her something. But when Cox tried to speak to her, the teenager’s mother stood up and blocked out her husband, who was lying behind her. ‘Not now,’ she mouthed.
Belinda’s mother took Cox aside and told her what the two 15-year-olds, both very distressed, had confided in her. They had been sexually assaulted by Ricky Quinn—and also, in the past, as Hannah had signalled, by Randy Christian. (A third girl, 12-year-old Francesca, had accused Quinn of similar behaviour.)
At 3 a.m. Gail Cox telephoned Dennis McGookin. It was Saturday daytime in England, and he was on his way to watch his favourite rugby team, Gillingham. Cox explained that she needed a specially trained officer to take a complaint from a child. ‘I knew that wasn’t practicable,’ he told me over a pub lunch in Kent in 2005. ‘I told her to take down a detailed statement, making sure an adult was present, and then fax that over to me.’
Cox also emailed Leon Salt to inform him about the weekend’s events, including the allegations against Randy. As I later found out, Salt’s response was swift. ‘If we dig into this, we’ll open a right can of worms, and we’ll have every man on Pitcairn locked up for life,’ he warned her.
* The names of all victims in this book have been changed.
The morning after Pawl Warren’s party, Gail Cox had an uproar on her hands. Ricky Quinn had admitted to assaulting Belinda and having under-age sex with Karen, and the Pitcairn community was furious with him. Cox had to intervene to prevent Karen’s father from attacking him, and Quinn was so afraid for his safety that Cox installed him in the schoolhouse.
The islanders appeared disgusted by the New Zealander’s behaviour. Yet within a few days, public opinion had swung in his favour. Brenda Christian, Steve’s sister, told Cox that some of the locals were saying ‘the girls had asked for it’. Olive Christian’s sister, Yvonne Brown, who was visiting Pitcairn, claimed that Quinn was being ‘treated disgracefully’.
Now the community turned against Gail Cox. Only Brenda Christian and her husband, Mike Lupton-Christian, supported her. The others—as well as resenting an outsider ‘interfering’ in their business—regarded Ricky Quinn as an extremely hard worker and therefore ‘above the law’. Moreover, news had spread that the girls were accusing local men of similar offences—and who knew where that would lead? It was the start of the community resistance that was to characterise the sexual abuse case for years to come.
Despite opposition, Cox was determined to prosecute Quinn, and she scheduled a trial for ten days after the party. In the interim, she found herself undermined by the locals. On one occasion she agreed that Quinn could go home with Meralda Warren, the island police officer, and work with her on her wooden carvings. She was incensed to learn that he had spent several hours with Meralda’s brother, Jay, the magistrate who would be deciding Quinn’s fate, and had also gone fishing with another Pitcairner.
Jay, meanwhile, telephoned Quinn’s father, Richard, in New Zealand and, according to Richard, informed him that he was ‘looking after Ricky’. It subsequently emerged that Jay was hoping to buy a cheap motorbike that Quinn planned to import.
At his trial, Quinn surprised Gail Cox by denying the indecent assault against Belinda that he had earlier admitted. She discovered afterwards that he had acted on advice from Meralda, who knew that Cox was unwilling to call Belinda as a witness. Forced to drop the charge, the policewoman was livid: Meralda had betrayed her confidence and ‘perverted the course of justice’, she says. (Meralda denies it.) The complaint by Francesca had been dropped, at her parents’ request. Quinn pleaded guilty to ‘unlawful carnal knowledge’ in respect of Karen, and was sentenced by Jay to 100 days in prison. As pre-arranged between Cox and British officials, the Governor, Martin Williams, then ordered him to be deported and remitted his sentence. In essence, he was let off.
A few days later, just before Christmas, the young New Zealander left on a ship, carrying two letters addressed to his parents—one from Meralda, the other from Yvonne Brown. Meralda apologised to Richard and Diane Quinn ‘for this whole mess’, saying their son had been ‘a great asset to our island’, and it was ‘our loss that he is leaving’. Yvonne wrote, ‘We have a British policewoman here and boy is she a “pig” … the policewoman blew everything out of proportion.’
Commissioner Leon Salt wrote to Meralda and Jay, admonishing them for unprofessional conduct. He asked Jay, ‘If it is so difficult bringing a case against an outsider, how on earth could a case be brought against a local?’ Of Meralda he inquired, ‘How can we have any confidence that the law is being upheld on Pitcairn?’
With Ricky Quinn gone, Gail Cox was finally able to address the other matter that had arisen from Pawl Warren’s party: the allegations against Randy Christian. And there was a second man in the picture. Belinda had approached Cox three days after the party to divulge that Randy’s younger brother, Shawn, had also raped her. The Englishwoman urged her to let her mother know. Belinda said, ‘Thank you for believing me.’
Cox informed Salt about the development relating to Shawn, and Salt phoned Randy and Shawn’s father, Steve. ‘Tell the boys to get a lawyer,’ he told him.
Belinda’s friend, Karen, had already left Pitcairn for New Zealand, where she would be finishing her schooling, as many local teenagers did at 15. Before departing, she had spoken to Gail Cox informally about one relatively minor assault by Randy. Cox had the strong sense that she had more to tell; however, that was all Karen would say—and she was desperate to get off the island.
Belinda