Book review: Pitcairn - Paradise Lost

April 20, 2020

Title: Pitcairn - Paradise Lost: Uncovering the dark secrets of a South Pacific fantasy island

Author: Kathy Marks

Pages: 383

Publisher: Fourth Estate, Harper Collins, Australia

Date: 2008

I bought this book before my stroke – in fact, before my ex walked out more than a year before that – so I had nothing happening which could encourage me to read it. I finally read it during the lockdown for COVID-19. I wonder if I should have.

Kathy Marks wrote a long true tale, but it told of paedophilia, incest, violence, youth, older men, women who would never believe their young girls, and just so many more stories leading up to the court case of rape and sexual assault.

Pitcairn was a very small vacant island 230 years ago in 1790, when the sailor Fletcher Christian and the other 8 mutineers from the Bounty arrived there with 6 Tahitian men, 11 Tahitian women and a baby girl, and that’s where they stayed. Most of those who live there today are related to Christian.

By 1856 the population was 193, and everyone of them chose to move to Norfolk Island, which was a bit bigger and a lot more friendly. However, 17 chose to move back to Pitcairn even before 2 years, and 5 years later a further 27 followed them. By 1881 the population had increased to 96, and peaked at 233 in 1937.

In 2000 police investigations began against 7 Pitcairn male residents and 6 men offshore who had been sexually abusing young girls – and, in some case, boys – according to one particular woman. The police believed her, and approached many of the women she mentioned (Marks listed 18 of them) who said, yes, they had also been abused, and agreed to be witnesses. There were 55 charges on the Pitcairn men and 41 charges on the offshore men, many of whom lived in New Zealand. By 2004 the court case was set up in Pitcairn and 6 of those charged, including Steve Christian who had been the mayor, were found guilty, and the off-shore men were found guilty in the New Zealand court.

Members of the Pitcairn community fully supported the men, including Meralda Warren. She had been a ‘police officer’ on Pitcairn in 1996, but she didn’t have any training. Within the 5 years of the previous police officer, Ron Christian, he hadn’t made any arrests, nor had the earlier police officers of 7 years and 21 years. Meralda felt she was just doing the job. Her brother, Jay, was a ‘magistrate’ in 1996 – and he had no training either. There are a few Pitcairn websites which jubilantly follow Pitcairn’s history and present – many of those people supported the men and didn’t believe the women. In the end the court did believe the women, and it’s extremely sad that people from communities all around the globe will put down the women who told the truth but they might not support their own men for abusing children in their own community. The worst people, to me, in Pitcairn were the pastor and his wife from the Seventh Adventist church who never supported the young girls. Kathy Marks wrote an essay for the Griffith Review #35 titled When bystanders fail, which included them.

The UK had paid for changes at the beach landing area and concreted the road up to Adamstown. The men who were prisoners helped the roadworks and other maintenance. Pitcairn became a tourist spot, again. The website titled Pitcairn Islands Tourism says it (the website) has been around since © 2019. Another one, titled The Government of the Pitcairn Islands, says that it’s a British overseas territory – with only 67 population in 2011, and they only got approval from the British Queen in 2010. It will be interesting to see if the population grows much more.

Kathy Marks wrote well. She works for the Independent in the UK and has lived in Sydney since 1999. She is now “a reporter, feature writer and columnist”, according to her own page in the back of this book.

References

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