Paradise, Lost

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Vi presenterar Young Charlock, en ny serie från Guy Ritchie. Upptäck ursprunget. Bakom historiens mest berömda detektiv. There has been a break-in. Astounding. You should be a detective. When a hero finds Tiffin, Donald Finn, and call him fur. If you start wearing a hat like that. I will no longer be friends with you. Jan Charlock, ny original serie. Titta nubast på Prime Video.

Tjaj, Krilli från Splun här. Teckvärdens nästa unikorn. Vi startar för en månad sen och nu söker vi dig som vill arbeta gilt, inte rädd för risk. Och kan investera från dag 1. Så bli en del av spronfamiljen och upptäck att arbetslivet faktiskt kan vara hela livet. Ja, eller jobba med teck på tryggrund istället. Sök en tjänst på elf.se. Välkommen.

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Have you ever wanted to disappear? To find some neglected spot somewhere, away from the maddened crowd, the strife, and live on a desert island. barefoot all the time where our house was. We had a mango tree, we had a mandarin tree and I'd be up the mandarin tree and my two brothers would be up the mango tree. I'd be throwing a mandarin to them and they'll be throwing a mango to me and we'd be sitting there like little monkeys in the tree.

This island paradise is probably as far from civilisation as you can get. I'm always amused when people say it's tropical island or there's trouble in paradise because that sort of brings to me a a sort of image of palm trees swaying gently in a nice warm breeze. White sand beaches. and uh beautiful clear blue sea. Pitkin was nothing like that. It was just a top of a mountain poking out of the sea. It's a tiny piece of volcanic rock halfway between New Zealand and South America.

But it's British territory. And it was just bashed on all sides by the Pacific. It was just a very rugged piece of geography. Pitcairn was born out of violent naval mutiny on the ship Bounty in the 18th century. It's accessible only by boat. No plane has ever landed there. For a few people, its community of 50 or so residents, Pitcairn is home. For many, it's a swashbuckling myth. But in this series, we'll examine its tragedy.

Without fail, every single one confirmed what had happened to them. Every single one. There wasn't one that said no it didn't happen to me. Every single one. I'm Luke Jones, a journalist in the UK, and for almost two years I've been investigating this story. It's the tale of a society 200 years in the making, a years-long police inquiry, and crimes which have scarred generations. I felt embarrassed. I felt awful for my husband to know what had happened to me. I thought he was gonna

Get rid of me. I thought my kids would hate me when they find out. I was about to go and pack my bags and leave because I felt it was my fault. In this series, we will hear from those at the very heart of it. Some of them speaking publicly for the first time. We'll go from the Garden of England to the to the depths of the South Pacific. The courts of New Zealand, to the House of Lords in London, will hear of unchecked power,

Cruel abuse and an island brought right to the edge of extinction. It reminds me a bit about Lord of the Flies. How when there's nobody watching, nobody going through report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. It's a horrible thing to think of it it's part of what being human's about. This is the Pitcairn Trials. Episode 1, Paradise, Lost.

This journey begins in Kent, in England, in nineteen ninety six. Detective Sergeant Peter George is at the office. I was working at our headquarters in Maidstone. And the detective chief superintendent we just passed in the corridor one afternoon, a Friday afternoon, and he said, Oh have you got a minute? I went into an office and he said, have you got anything arranged for the next three or four weeks? He said, I'm not talking about work, I'm talking about home.

So I said, not that I can recall, why do you ask? So he said, Well I I want you to go on an investigation in a job out near New Zealand. He said, in fact it's Pekken Island. If you look at a map, you'll soon realise it is nowhere near New Zealand. It's three and a half thousand miles away. That's as near as the UK is to the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the distance from New York to Ecuador.

Peter was asked to make what would be a week long journey to Pitcairn, from England, to New Zealand, the nearest country with an international airport, and then to Pitcairn. There was a possible crime to investigate. The allegation was one of a rape of a young girl who was eleven or twelve years old at the time.

uh daughter of the pastor on the island. The pastor isn't a natural islander, they come from Australia and they're seventh day Adventists and they come for a two or three year stint, replaced by another one when their term ends. I wasn't going alone obviously, I was going with chap called Dennis McGukin, who was its detective superintendent. I was still a detective sergeant then. I'd heard of Pit Ken Island, but I had no idea where it was, really.

What had you heard of Pitcane Island? Well about the mutiny on the bounty. That that's um We're thinking Mel Gibson, Clark Gable. Yeah. Yeah, something like that. He said, Well look, check out with your wife, make sure she's happy for you to go on this trip. You're gonna be away for three or four weeks. What do they s tell you about the island? Did they have any warnings or wise words to pass on? Yeah, they they they said that the the islanders were only about forty to fifty strong.

sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n mynd We they didn't anticipate us having any trouble or anything like that. But of course we were going out there to investigate one of theirs, so things may change, of course. Why was Peter George from Kent having to investigate this though? Were there not any closer police?

Well it ended up with his force because the Australian family, whose daughter made the allegation, didn't know who to contact when they got home, so they reported it to the British Foreign Office, what with Pitcairn being a British territory. The British Foreign Office looked at it and thought this is a job for Interpol. Interpol said no thank you.

So then it went to the Association of Chief Police Officers in the UK, and the head of the crime committee at the time was the Chief Constable of Kent Police. Which led to Dennis and Peter.

We did some research we were told. that we'd need really some wet weather gear because it can get really uh wet on pit can and the mud on pit cane is like a red moon dust almost. When it gets wet it just clogs and builds up and you're walking along and you walk it you eventually get taller because you the mud's building up on your feet.

Peter wrote this in his diary for the fourteenth of september nineteen ninety six. Twenty past two. Picked up from home by Film Wellhard, who drives me and Dennis to Heathrow Terminal three. Now Peter is a professional, sensible sort of man, and he's off on assignment to the South Pacific, so of course he keeps a detailed diary.

They get to the airport, they board a flight to New Zealand with a business class ticket, and as Peter writes, they share a cabin with the actor Gordon Kay, best known to many as Renee from the 80s sitcom Hello Hello. As I said, the diary's deep. They fly to Auckland. They then have to get a connecting flight to Wellington. Then they Sharing a cabin with the Castor Fraser.

The journey to Pitcairn is rough. Peter suffers with seasickness, but still he manages to wander round. He even plays a bit of deck golf. They're on board for eight days in total, including, because they crossed the international dateline, a Thursday, and then immediately after that, another Thursday. Finally though, they are

On that morning we arrived at about eight AM. It was very misty, overcast, rough seas, and you could just see the outline of an island. And although we were only half a mile to a mile away, It didn't look very hospitable in those conditions. Boats.

Boats can't dock on the island so they've got to scurry out and get you. There there is a what they call Bounty Bay, a little tiny harbour but there's only a very small ships to get in there. Container ships just drift off the island because they'd lose an anchor if they were to drop it'cause it's so deep. The only way to get passengers, supplies, anything, from a ship onto Pitcairn Island

is via a longboat crewed by the locals. But we could see the um longboat approaching us and it was crashing up and down on the waves. The island is inside and there were probably about 15 of them. dressed in like oil skins. As they got closer, they looked quite an intimidating crew, and there were women amongst them. Intimidating in what way? a bit pirate like, moustaches, all had shorts. None of'em had any footwear on, all bare feet. Most of'em had big knives attached to their belts.

Um you know They look like they were about to kidnap you. Yeah, you could quite be forgiven for thinking that. Dennis and I both thought, you know, what are we gonna uh find when we get on the island?

This community began in seventeen ninety. Violently. It's a story that's been in novels and films for as long as there's been novels and films. The year before, Fletcher Christian led a mutiny on the Bounty, a British Royal Navy ship. They'd sailed to Tahiti to get breadfruit. Something the British wanted to take over to the West Indies to feed the enslaved people they had in the Caribbean. But it wasn't the right time of year to get the plants, so they had to spend five months on Tahiti and

Some of the British sailors really started to enjoy themselves. Some got tattoos, some got what they thought of as wives. So returning to the ship and the rough high seas. was tough going. Q Mutiny. A man called Fletcher Christian and his gang set the captain, Captain Bly, and the loyal crew members adrift on a small boat, and they took control of the bounty. But they couldn't necessarily return to Tahiti and live there.

The British authorities would soon find them, so they stopped off in Tahiti, kidnapped some of the local men and women, and set back off into the wilds of the Pacific, looking for a place to disappear. Now Pitcairn was not at all in the right place. The maps they had had it completely. Wrong, but they knew it was there somewhere. So Fletcher and Co. zigzagged through the oceans. and eventually found it. An uninhabited island that the British wouldn't be able to find. Perfect.

In fact, many of the families on the island today can trace their roots all the way back to those original mutineers. The sunken bounty wreckage is still in the bay. The anchor is in the town square having been dredged up as a monument. But the violence didn't stop when the mutineers landed on Pitcairn, though, no. Many of them were murdered over the years, some by the kidnapped Tahitians they'd either married or put to work.

Even the place names literally mark some kind of tragedy that happened. McCoy's drop. Where Dan fell. One place is simply called O Deer. Apparently, it was Fletcher Christian's final words after he was shot in the back and killed. We'll explore the geography and the history and the mythology of the island a little bit more later on in the series. It has a really important role in the story and in shaping the events that happened and the shocking scandal that was uncovered in the 2000s.

We got just off the island, just about to go into the bay and they stopped. and the pilot of the longboat, whatever you want to call him, but who turned out to be the brother of the accused, was waiting for the right wave to come in and the and they they're watching and they said, Right, go and he powers this longboat into the bounty bay and then

Sort of puts it in reverse or something, I think to slow up quickly. It's really so you know quite an experience. Peter and Dennis quickly started to learn the idiosyncrasies of the place. They pulled up alongside and we started unloading everything. everything and all the islanders come down I think probably seventy percent of the island was there.

only about thirty or forty people, but seventy percent in the island. They used quad bikes to get about on. There were several quad bikes there and we loaded our gear onto this particular quad bike. We didn't know at the time, but it was um the father of the suspect who took us us and our luggage up up the hill of difficulty, which at the time was a just a steep, muddy, rocky track. that leads up into the centre of Pitcairn called Adamstown.

Adamstown is one of the less colourfully named places on the island. It's called that simply because the last surviving member of the nine bounty mutineers was a man called John Adams. Today it's as little like a town as it was then. There's a church, there's a community hall, a post office. So we went like up in convoy, up on this back of this quad bike, and we were staying at the

mission house, which was where the pastor and his family had been staying. They'd been taken off the island as a result of the allegation. The pastor and his family weren't Pitcairners. He was just there doing a stint running the church. They were Seventh day Adventists like the Pitcairners.

a whole community converted in the eighteen eighties. It's quite a strict religion. Dancing is forbidden, so is alcohol. You can't eat certain types of shellfish. A Seventh day Adventist, your Sabbath starts from sunset Friday. to sunset Saturday. That's your Sabbath. This is Glenda. She was born and grew up on Pitcairn. She's one of the people descended directly from the original Bounty Mutineers and their Tahitian wives. You don't do anything? You don't cook your gear. Food up.

But all your preparation is done before sun. Friday. Like your cleaning, your cooking, everything's done. Go to church in the morning, Sabbath. service and then there'll be an evening one. And would everyone go to that? Yes. Yeah ev everybody that wants to go to church goes to church.

Normally a good full church. But would that be I don't know how many people would have been living on the island when you were there, but would it be sort of Just about everybody except for the elderlies that can't go everybody even a baby in arm goes to Now let's say it out. Storspelare. Pos oss handlar det inte om de. Ögonblicken utan om något Större drömmar, större spänning, en större upplevelse helt enkelt. hos storspelare.

För dig över 18 år, stödlinjen.se ماذا تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد أن تريد Ja, men då så. Gå in och rösta på vilus.se vad du vill ha ett viljus. Och det fina: det blir fler milliers i at priserne blir lægre, även i de andre butikerne i nærheten. Glöm inte rösta på villus.se. Tjaj, Krille från Splon här. Teckvärdens nästa unikorn. Vi startar för en månad sedan och nu söker vi dig som vill arbeta gilt, inte rädd för risk.

Och kan investera från dag 1. Så bli en del av Spromfamiljen och upptäck att arbetslivet faktiskt kan vara hela livet. Ja, eller jobba med tech på trygggrund istället. Sök en tjänst på elf.seck. Микриняш. Sallandå! Vad ska jag på mig när våren är här? Ellig, nästan här. Ja ja, det får bli lager på lager. ¡Hitad en stil! ¡Salando!

Back to December 1996, Peter and Dennis get to their accommodation. It's a dilapidated single-story wooden shack with a corrugated iron roof, Peter remembers. They had a tour of the island by quad bike, they had a night's sleep finally on land, and the next morning set about interviewing the suspect in the case. This was Sean Christian.

Now not only is Fletcher Christian, the mutineer from two hundred years ago, his direct ancestor, but his dad is Steve Christian. In nineteen ninety-six, he's the mayor. They came along to the mission house Peter and Dennis were working out of, Steve, his wife Olive, and their son, the accused, Sean. What did you make of him when you saw him? Oh, very nice, friendly young chap. He was about eighteen or nineteen at the time. Very pleasant.

Very open. In fact, he readily admitted that he'd had sex with this girl. You know, we'd put a rape allegation to him. He said, I've had sex with her far more times than that. Five or six straight away. At the time of the allegations she was what, ten, eleven, twelve? She was eleven but has had reached the age of twelve by now. And he was an adult, so in English law that's that's statutory right. Oh that absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. However, although he was eighteen or nineteen

he wasn't as mature as somebody in like in the UK or Australia in New Zealand at that age of eighteen or nineteen. He'd still be referred to as going out to play, things like that. So the the age difference although Yeah, it's quite large, it it sort of begins to even out a little bit. And he said, you know, we w we were having a relationship and and he said, I've got love letters from her at home.

So I went with him on his quad bike back to his house and he took me into his bedroom. He opened up his bedroom drawer. And there were five or six letters from this particular girl outlining how they're having a relationship. There's much of a relationship an eighteen, nineteen year old can have with an eleven, twelve year old. One night her parents found out. This girl had been going to bed maybe six, seven o'clock in the evening,'cause it gets dark by about then on Pitcount.

And her parents, as far as m they were concerned, she was in bed. But on this one particular night they went to check on her at about nine, half past nine. Bed was empty, window open. And she'd sneaked out. And this is what she'd been doing quite often to sneak out to see him.

Of course they didn't realise this, but they did on that particular night when they found out. So they called like the bit of a hue and cry, searching for her and of course she came back and they were very concerned and she broke down and cried, I've been raped.

So that's when it all yeah, you know, hit the fan as it were. Remember this was nineteen ninety six, and on an island in the middle of nowhere. Peter admits he didn't really know what to do. So we sought advice on the best way of dealing with this. Um Because there is no real legal system on Pitcairn as such. Even Sean's defence lawyer had to be brought over on the ship with Peter from New Zealand.

The Kent Police contact the UK for advice via the island's radio telephone, powered by a generator. What advice came back on what to do with this case? 18 year old accused of raping a twelve year old, there are letters between the two of them love less, it seems like they're in some kind of relationship. Yeah. Well the advice was to caution him for underage sex. And that's what we did. Yeah. Caution him for underage sex. And was there concern at that time that as you say

What is the legal system here? If it went beyond a caution, how would that even work? Yeah, well th exactly that would have been very difficult because you know what wouldn't we have done? Because the the m the magistrate is another islander, he's a there's an appointed appointed magistrate. The mayor of the island was his dad, the suspect's dad. The police officer uh was off the island, in fact at that time, completely untrained, but in name only. Not an ideal setup by any account.

We didn't really have the the administration, the backup to do anything. Martin Williams was the governor of Pitcairn at the time. It came with the job of being UK High Commissioner to New Zealand, so he only visited Pitcairn on a handful of occasions. For the most part, he was thousands of miles away in Wellington. I knew when I was given the appointment that would be part of it, but I had no idea about what weight what a significant part of the my activities would be devoted to.

Martin had previously served the Foreign Office in New Delhi, Tehran, Manila, Milan. His home is full of art and artifacts from his life on the road. Did you know much about Pitcairn beforehand? Very little. In fact I I was a a little bit aware of the history. Who isn't? It's a very romantic and dramatic story. But I learnt a lot more of course when I was dealing with it. Yes. And it was ex interesting actually visiting Pitcairn, which is what my wife and I did.

And finding That the memory of the Mutiny on the Bounty, and of the glorious success of Fletcher Christian's opposition to the tyrannical Captain Bly that's very much seen as being just recently and at the church service which I attended I was invited to read the lesson from the bounty bible which is still preserved on Pitcairn. Not only is the history of the mutiny seen as relatively recent to them, but also Is the spirit of the fugitive alive in them, d do you think?

Byddwn ni'n ôl, mae'n llawer oedd yn llawer oedd yn llawer oedd yn llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer o'r llawer ymwneud â ni 55 ymwneud. Yn ymwneud â ni ymwneud â ni ymwneud â ni ymwneud â ni ymwneud â ni ymwneud â ni

sent out w or when there was a problem with the generator which needed to be repaired, or when uh they decided they needed to have a uh bulldozer on the island. And so the New Zealand Air Force was given the interesting task of shipping out on one of their very sort of strong transport aircraft the

where th the engineers on the island were expected to put the bits together and drive it away. And it all worked well. So in other words, there were episodes, there were incidents which needed to be attended to. Famous last words.

The more time Kent Detective Peter George spent on Pitcairn Island, fishing, eating with the locals, taking pictures, and He also came to realise and worry that there was nothing in the way of a legal system. Or at least a workable one. So that's why we thought they've got to have some form of policing and somebody who who who's trained and knows what they're doing and really who's independent because that's the difficulty because they're all sort of interrelated in a way.

So they had an idea which they decided to put to the test. We got them all together and we had a mock court. They had Miralda Warren, who was the designated police officer, albeit with no training. And they had her brother, Jay Warren, who was the magistrate. The public hall became a court for the first time in 20 years.

Peter showed what a police officer would do when presenting a case. Dennis showed them how a magistrate would deal with it, and they enlisted Olive Christian, the mother of the man they were there to investigate, to act as the court clerk. Some of the offences are quite bizarre on Pitcairn as well. There's one of malicious gossip.

And there's one of failing to exercise your dog and things like this. So w we had a mock call about somebody who was a supposed to not have exercised A gossip who doesn't walk their dog. So we we did that. And how did they ins also interest how did they respond to it? Was it was it worrying or or w did they do it well? No, they they they all took part in in in good faith and everyone was great.

They gave Merelda a go as the police officer. They explained how she would present the case to the court, how she'd use statements that she would have gathered, and Jay had a go sitting in judgment as the magistrate. As they play acted this scene of justice, everyone seemed to know what they were doing. In fact, the last time a court had sat here, Olive, now pretending to be the court clerk, had in fact been the defendant after an accusation she'd burnt down a building.

Even though you did that mock court and it and it went well to all intents and purposes, there must have been a voice in your head saying if there's another more serious allegation of rape or if there's some other big crime How on earth are they gonna actually deal with that, especially when it's one of their own? I exactly. That that that is what we did think. You know, when when people are are on a island in the middle of nowhere they can do what they like and who's gonna know?

So we did we think that particular case finished. We didn't anticipate in a million years what was to come later. Next time. Can trials. Back in Kent, Peter was told of another problem on the island. I got a call from Dennis McGuokin, he was based at headquarters on he said, You won't believe this, but there's another rape allegation on Pitcairn Island. Up the hill of difficulty and into a can of worms. The Pitcairn Trials were an audio always production.

Presented by me Luke Jones, produced by Lucy Ditchmont. Our assistant producer was Mancy Vithlani, sound design by Craig Edmondson, and the executive producer is Joe Meek. If you've been affected by anything in this story and would like to speak to somebody, there is a list and links to organisations that can offer help and advice on our show page.

Ta, Kredli från Splom här, täck världens nästa unikorn. Vi startar för en månad sedan och nu söker vi dig som vill arbeta gilt, inte rädd för risk och kan investera från dag 1. Så bli en del av Splomfamiljen. Att arbetslivet faktiskt kan vara hela livet. Ja, eller jobba med tech på trygg grund istället. Sök en tjänst på elf.seck. Välkommen till länsförsäkringar. Amazon Spring Del Day ser här med grimma erbjudanden så Johan kan passa på att fynda, gömt från alla sina vård sysslor. Tchau, tchau.

Dags å finne elektronik, outdoorhem og mye mer. Fotsteg! Jo, tillbaka till jobbet! Men bara en kjukik på Amazons erbjudanden innan. Oh, vilket fünd! Skidda fynda under Amazons Springs från 10 till 16 mars på Amazon.se. Endast utvalda produkter i lager. Mohemshire Want more true crime? This podcast and loads more are part of the Always True Crime Network. It's packed with box sets to binge and twisted tales you won't find anywhere else. Find your next podcast obsession at always truecrime.com.