By Dea Birkett
It should be the Garden of Eden.
In 1789, Fletcher Christian cast the heartless Captain Bligh over the side of HMS Bounty and, with a handful of grass-skirted Tahitians, reached the mischarted island of Pitcairn to found their own private paradise. Today, the mutineer's descendants pass their days hoeing peppers and sweet potatoes, fishing for shark, and shooting down breadfruit from trees with their muskets.
This 1,6km by 2,4km crag of dark volcanic rock, marooned in the middle of the South Pacific, is home to just 40 people. There are no roads, no cars, no banks, no currency, no office hours, and little contact with the outside world. There is no airstrip. Even post is only delivered every few months by passing cargo ships. The nearest landmass - where you will also find the nearest hospital, supermarket, secondary school and phone booth - is 5 000km away in New Zealand.
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Alcohol and dancing (even with your wife) are forbidden From afar, Pitcairn is a paradisical vision. Or it seemed so to me.
One rainy afternoon in London, I watched the latest of five Hollywood movies depicting the events of 1789. Outside were the dull, drizzly London streets; on the screen I watched a story of liberation unfold, as Christian (played by Mel Gibson) made a dash across the seas for freedom. The film drew to a close and the credits rolled, with the words… "and his descendants have lived on the island to this very day". I decided to leave for Pitcairn Island.
But this fabulous legend, which took me on an 8 000km sea voyage to Pitcairn's craggy coastline, may be drawing to an end. For the past six years, British police officers have been visiting the remotest community on earth, still a British dependency, and interviewing every single islander as part of a sexual offences investigation. Last month, nine Pitcairn men - almost every adult male on the island - were charged with sex offences ranging from rape to indecent assault. (The names of the accused have not been made public under the island's laws.) Girls as young as seven are said to have been abused.
Once a rumour was whispered, it was as good as true. I was condemned
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