The next morning the visitors were invited on a community fishing trip. At one point Simon Moore found himself in a small boat driven by Dave Brown, one of the alleged child abusers. Dave instructed him to lie flat, then he revved up the engine and the boat shot forward. ‘I looked up and saw that we were hurtling towards this solid rock face,’ says Moore. ‘Just as we were about to hit it, or so it seemed, the swell dropped and exposed the mouth of a cave.’ Dave deposited him on a patch of sand deep inside the cave, where the other visitors had already been dropped off. ‘I thought perfect,’ says Moore, rolling his eyes. ‘If they wanted to abandon us, this is the way to do it.’ A little later, though, they were picked up, and everyone proceeded to fish for a local species, nanwe. Despite the rough seas, the islanders hauled up hundreds of fish.
The catch was destined for a ‘fish fry’ that afternoon at The Landing, in celebration of Dave’s birthday. The fish were cleaned and the guts thrown off the end of the jetty, attracting a reef shark, which Randy Christian, another of the accused men, caught. Then, as one witness tells it, ‘Randy got a sledgehammer and hit the shark so hard that the hammer went right through its head and came out the other side. The shark was writhing in agony, the women were gagging, and Randy just stood there grinning, with the bloody sledgehammer in his hand.’
By coincidence, it was also Simon Moore’s birthday; so after regaling Dave with a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, the Pitcairners sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to their Public Prosecutor. Dave later complained to someone, ‘That prick Moore, we put on a birthday party for him the first time he came, and I thought he’d go easy on us as a result of that, the bastard.’
The fishing expedition was the first of numerous communal events, including dinners and sports days, that were staged for the visitors’ benefit during their fortnight on Pitcairn. At a tennis tournament, Karen Vaughan found herself partnering Dave in a doubles match. Simon Moore played cricket in a team skippered by Dave, and at a picnic later on chatted amicably with Randy, the rival captain. The prosecutors also attended a ‘cultural day’ at the school, where Christine Gordon was taught basket weaving, and Steve Christian, the mayor and another child abuse suspect, showed Moore how to carve a wooden dolphin.
That must have been weird, I say. Moore leans back in his hair, hands behind his head. ‘Yes. But then everything was weird on that trip. Normally we never see the people we’re prosecuting until we get into court, but here we were mixing with them quite closely.’
Some of the outsiders on the island voiced cynicism about the community activities, saying they had never seen the Pitcairn people display such unity and goodwill. Then, just before the visitors left, the islanders sang them their traditional farewell song, ‘Sweet Bye and Bye’, in the public hall. Moore says, ‘I was genuinely quite moved by it, but others, apparently, were not, because they saw it as yet another show for us.’
While they enjoyed sampling the local cuisine and learning new sports such as Pitcairn rounders, the lawyers had serious business on the island. At a public meeting soon after he arrived, Simon Moore explained the role of a public prosecutor, emphasising that his job was to serve the islanders’ interests. Privately he was optimistic that the men would plead guilty, enabling the matter to be settled with minimum damage to family relationships. The locals warmed to Moore, a man of considerable natural charm. But, according to one person present, ‘they didn’t get it … They saw him as their friend, even the suspects did. When he talked about the good of the island, they thought that meant that nothing would happen to them, whereas he was talking about the law being upheld.’
Moore had been told there was a widespread belief that the alleged crimes were minor, even though police had spelt out exactly what they were investigating. At the meeting, therefore, he took care to stress that some of the offending was exceedingly serious. ‘I could see some of the older people gasp,’ he says, ‘and I was told later that a number of islanders were quite upset.’
During their stay, he and Christine Gordon spoke to nearly every Pitcairn resident. Many expressed fears for the community’s future if men were imprisoned. But no one suggested that the allegations were untrue, and the overwhelming message the lawyers received was that prosecutions ought to go ahead. This was unexpected, since the islanders had previously resisted the notion that sexual abuse even existed, let alone needed to be tackled. Yet according to Moore, ‘The feeling was, if these are crimes elsewhere in the world, then we shouldn’t be treated differently. That came through really loud and clear. It was also said that if they would attract prison sentences elsewhere, then Pitcairn should be no exception.’
Only one person dissented, and that was Len Brown. Len was concerned because, as he saw it, women were hopeless in the longboats. In his quaintly accented English, he told Moore, ‘The island will be doomed, Si-mon.’
Never before in his long career had Moore had ‘a more profound feeling of the difficulty and significance of the decision we had to take’. It was not until February 2002 that he finally made up his mind. The prosecution would go ahead. He informed the community in a videotaped message that reached the island in May. Moore said he would not be laying charges, however, until the vexed issue of a trials venue had been resolved.
Faced with an indefinite period of limbo, the Pitcairners decided it was time to fight back.
In August 2002 the New Zealand Herald ran an article across two pages, quoting three ‘former Pitcairn Islanders’ living in Auckland. The three said that their cousins on the island were frustrated by the media coverage, which in their opinion was based exclusively on information from the British. One of the interviewees, ‘Alex’, who revealed that he had been questioned by police, suggested that Britain was trying to rid itself of its financial obligations. He also told the Herald that, on Pitcairn, teenage sex was common and even some ten-year-olds were sexually active. His companion, ‘Sarah’, said that Britain was partly to blame for this, as it had failed to provide the Pitcairners with guidance. The third interviewee, ‘Mary’, claimed the islanders could not be judged as if they lived in New Zealand. ‘Different countries have their own way of life,’ she explained.
This article, presenting the child abuse case as a David and Goliath contest, set the tone for the way it was reported until the trials two years later. Almost every news report reproduced the Pitcairners’ claims of a culture of under-age sex, and a plot by Britain to shut down the island. It was the mutineers’ descendants versus the big bad colonial power—and the fact that the alleged victims were Pitcairners too, with an equally impeccable lineage, was rarely mentioned.
From mid-2002 the islanders were able to use email, and they joined the propaganda campaign, corresponding regularly with their supporters and with journalists whom they believed to be sympathetic. They also bombarded Richard Fell, who had replaced Martin Williams as the British Governor, with angry emails.
Meanwhile, the other parties were quiet. Simon Moore was unwilling to comment until charges were laid, British officials were cautious, and police were not talking. Neither were the complainants, of course. As for those Pitcairners who, as it later turned out, were horrified by the men’s alleged behaviour, such as Pawl Warren and Brenda Christian, they were keeping their own counsel.
That left the accused men and their families in a position to monopolise the debate,