Have you Ever Wanted to Disappear?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Pitcairn Trials – Episode 3: "Have you Ever Wanted to Disappear?"

Podcast: The Pitcairn Trials
Host: Always True Crime
Date: January 8, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode examines the unique, isolated community of Pitcairn Island—its enigmatic origins, insular culture, and the seismic impact of historic and recent investigations into widespread child sexual abuse. The narrative weaves together accounts from investigators, journalists, and Pitcairn residents to reveal a society grappling with its own mythos and the truth beneath its surface.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Operation Unique: The Major Investigation

• The episode opens with a trigger warning about discussions of child sexual abuse and suicide, setting a somber and serious tone.
• In 2000, Kent Police and New Zealand authorities launch a formal inquiry (Operation Unique) into historic child sexual abuse on Pitcairn. The team includes Peter George (Kent Constabulary), Rob Vinson (Kent), and Karen Vaughan (New Zealand Police), specialists in investigating such crimes ([03:05]–[06:04]).
• Investigators draw up a list of potential victims, focusing on every young girl who lived on the island since 1980 ([06:04]–[06:43]).
• Most victims had left Pitcairn, living in New Zealand or Australia, making contact and interviews delicate and logistically challenging ([06:43]–[07:10]).

2. Generational Abuse, Silenced by Community Pressure

• Every woman interviewed confirmed the abuse ([39:09]):

  "Without fail, every single one confirmed what had happened to them… There wasn't one that said, no, it didn't happen to me."
  — Peter George ([39:09])

• Some welcomed the investigation, others were hesitant due to social pressure and the implication that relatives could be offenders ([39:20]–[39:58]).

• The abusers weren’t just strangers but included fathers, brothers, and community figures, making the secrecy and trauma tightly woven into the fabric of the island’s society.

3. Pitcairn’s Founding & Mythology

• Journalists Laura Parker and late husband William Procnow place Pitcairn's allure within global imagination, highlighting its roots in mutiny and survival ([08:12]).

• The community descends from the Bounty mutineers and the Tahitians they abducted ([09:36]–[11:03]).

• The initial years were plagued by violence, alcoholism, cultural clashes, and rape, setting a traumatic precedent ([16:45]–[17:42]).

  “…the mutineers treated Tahitians like property… the women were routinely raped and sexually assaulted. So arguments and deadly fights were rife.”
  — Narrator (Luke Jones) ([16:45])

4. Barrier to Outsiders & Culture of Suspicion

• Getting to Pitcairn remains exceptionally difficult; visitors require formal permission ([11:12]).

• Journalist Laura Parker recounts how even credentialed reporters or public figures, such as Ben Fogle, faced immediate suspicion and ejection ([12:06]–[13:32]).

• The islanders enforced hard physical and social borders, tightly controlling outsiders and rumors ([15:24]–[15:59], [34:52]–[35:11]).

  “Pitcairn abounds with rumors and speculation and sooner or later you will be the centre of a few… as far as Pitcairners go, there is absolutely no one who can be trusted not to betray a confidence.”
  — UK Government Advisor ([34:52])

5. Daily Life and Tradition

• Life on Pitcairn, as recalled by Glenda and other residents, was both isolated and communal, with memories of barefoot exploration, unique dialect, agriculture, and local traditions ([24:10]–[27:01]).
• Community meals, communal Christmases, and scarcity-driven but generous social norms painted a dual picture of harmony and surveillance ([31:52]).
• The economy relied on visitors, sales of stamps, and later internet domains, increasingly sustained by British government grants ([30:28]–[31:30]).

6. Law Enforcement & Community Justice

• Pitcairn’s remoteness bred a tradition of “homegrown” justice, but not always successfully. Murder and other serious crimes were sometimes tried by makeshift local courts or required outside help ([32:24]–[32:56]).

• Gail Cox, a UK police constable, describes the inadequacy and at times ethical ambiguity of conventional British policing methods on Pitcairn ([35:22]–[37:07]).

  “I don't think you will approve, but I took an unorthodox approach to policing and decided to get drunk. This approach is totally unethical and had I obtained corroboration, I may have had quite a bit of explaining to do…”
  — Gail Cox ([36:37])

7. Community Resistance and Psychological Toll

• Outsiders faced staged charm and calculated resistance. Even those brought in to investigate or help were quickly absorbed and tested by the island’s insular culture ([35:41]).
• Gail Cox candidly writes about shifting from respect and authority to bitterness under the weight of community suspicion and duplicity ([37:45]–[38:10]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On historic secrecy and social pressure

  “So the pressure on them was tremendous.”
  — Peter George ([39:20])

• On the Pitcairn dialect and multicultural roots:

  “My husband calls it bastardised, means it's a mixture of everything and anything that goes with it… It's a bit of Old English and Tahitian mixed in with it.”
  — Glenda ([20:23])

• On the physical landscape:

  “…it is fringed not by white sandy beaches, but by 500 foot cliffs… One of them is a favorite of tourists today, called McCoy's Drop, named after a mutineer who leapt to his death.”
  — Laura Parker ([15:24])

• On the impossibility of investigation by standard means:

  “She’d enjoyed authority and respect from the community, but… her attempts to even run mock court proceedings were undermined and challenged by lies and deceit, half truths and obstacles.”
  — Narrator (Luke Jones) ([37:07])

• Emotional testimony:

  “I just said, just shut up. And I just went – I turned into that three year old… just kept going and going and going… 'You wanna knew about it, you fucking write fucking harder.'”
  — Glenda ([40:36])

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Suggested Timestamps for Major Segments

• [03:05] – Episode begins: Police are dispatched, first investigation described
• [06:15] – Operation Unique: List of victims, methods for contacting them
• [08:12] – Laura Parker on the myth of Pitcairn and historical context
• [11:12] – Logistical and political difficulties in accessing Pitcairn
• [13:32] – Arrival process: physical remoteness and culture
• [15:24] – Daily life, landscape, and hazards of Pitcairn
• [20:23] – Glenda describes Pitcairn language and cultural amalgam
• [30:28] – The local economy: stamps, domain names, and UK grants
• [31:52] – Community social traditions and generosity
• [32:24] – Self-policing and historic cases of local justice
• [34:52] – The culture of rumor and suspicion
• [35:22] – Gail Cox’s accounts: policing methods and ethical struggles
• [39:09] – Confirmation of widespread abuse by every victim approached
• [40:36] – Glenda’s emotional and frank account of reporting abuse

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Tone and Narrative Style

The episode balances meticulous investigative narrative with a sense of haunting sadness and frustration. Testimonies are given space to breathe, and the narrative avoids sensationalism, focusing instead on the courage of survivors, the weight of complicity, and the limits of both community and law.

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This episode offers rare insight into how isolation and myth can foster both utopia and silence, and what happens when that silence finally breaks.

Transcript

[Luke Jones]

We'll get back to your true crime story in just a moment. This podcast is part of the Always True Crime Network, home of thousands of episodes exploring gripping true crime cases. If you're looking for somewhere to start, check out our recent investigative series, Project Mind Control. It uncovers a chilling chapter in history, examining the disturbing experiments carried out on vulnerable people in an attempt to erase and reprogram the human mind. Featuring testimony from one of the last known survivors of a notorious Canadian psychiatric institution, it's a powerful story that's as shocking as it is important. Check out the show and more@always truecrime.com.

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[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

A Warning this series contains discussion of child sexual abuse and suicide and contains strong language. As a child, you can't fight, you can't run.

[Laura Parker]

So they go, still, I think there's a feeling that if they

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

don't react that maybe they'll be left alone. It's the year 2000. Police from Kent in England have found themselves investigating a cluster of serious child sexual assaults on a remote island, a British territory in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

[Martin Williams]

The police were looking at something which was comparable to what might have happened in a British village, and they were very clear that this is what needed to be done.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

The police knew a wider investigation was needed, more charges would need to be leveled. But a debate on what to do shot right up through the British Diplomatic service all the way to the top.

[Martin Williams]

There was quite a strong feeling on some sides that the sort of test about how you should proceed couldn't be applied, as Pitcairn island was just offshore of Britain, because the fact is that it was right on the other side of the world in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and it had been left entirely to itself for some time.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

This was unprecedented territory in a far flung location. How many more cases might emerge? With more investigation, British and New Zealand police got to work looking closely at this thinly populated, long ignored rock. Was this a recent problem or an issue that stretched all the way back to the community's violent creation over 200 years ago? This is the Pitcairn Trials, episode three. Have you ever wanted to disappear. Back to Kent in England and the new millennium? Peter George had been sent to investigate that first allegation in 1996, and then he went back to investigate the third and latest allegation. Now he had new orders. So when did you get the go ahead to actually start properly investigating all of this?

[Peter George]

That was in later 2000. We came back, it was about April back, it was not long, it was only a few weeks. And we set off again.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

And by set off, Peter means the 11, 000 mile, 24 hour journey from the UK to New Zealand. His third trip on this case. And he had a new investigative partner as well. From Kent, Robert Vinson. And from the New Zealand Police, Karen Vaughan, a specialist in investigating child sexual abuse. Operation Unique, as they called it, was born.

[Peter George]

Rob and I went back out and we'd drawn up a list of all the potential victims and we decided we'd go back to 1980. So this is like 20 years at

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

the time, and that was just a sort of almost arbitrary line in the sand. Yeah, yeah.

[Peter George]

But we wouldn't Ignore. If somebody said, look, this happened to me in the 70s, we wouldn't ignore it, but we wouldn't go looking for it. So we drew up a list of all of the victims that would have been within that age limit from 1980 onwards.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Basically, what you're saying is you had to draw up a list of every young girl that might have lived on the island between 1980 and the present day?

[Peter George]

Correct.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

How big was that list?

[Peter George]

About 30 or 40 potential victims. They were not obviously on Pitcairn. In fact, 90% weren't on Pitcairn. Most were in New Zealand, some in Australia.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

The challenge now was to find the

[Laura Parker]

women at the tone, please record your

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

message and somehow contact them and speak to them about their lives as children on Pitcairn, this very sensitive topic.

[Peter George]

So we started just, you know, visiting them unannounced.

[Glenda]

Hello.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Slowly, Peter, Rob, Karen made progress and a clearer, more troubling picture began to emerge. Many of the women and men who grew up on Pitcairn didn't stay there. Some would leave for school, university, jobs, just to see the world beyond. And the crimes that Peter, Rob and Karen from New Zealand police were investigating are the kind that occur all over the world in densely packed cities, as much as in rural communities or on tiny islands. But was there something about Pitcairn in particular? Was this just an awful modern stain on its long, swashbuckling history, or partly a product of it?

[Laura Parker]

What drew us to Pitcairn is what draws and has drawn for many decades, dreamers, adventure seekers. Here is this tiny island in the South Pacific that was founded by mutineers of one of the great maritime heists in history. To this day, it has long been an exotic place, and it's just been held in the imagination.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Laura Parker's a journalist in Washington, D.C. she and her late husband, William Procnow, wrote about Pitcairn for Vanity Fair magazine.

[Laura Parker]

Jules Verne wrote about it. Mark Twain wrote about it. It was the subject of five big Hollywood blockbuster movies. It was founded by mutineers of the most famous maritime heist in history. The movies all end in the same way, with Mel Gibson or Marlon Brand standing on the cliffs overlooking the sinking ship, which is, you know, watching both the evidence and their way home sink into the Pacific. The thing that further drew us in is that's where the story of the movies and that's what made Pitcairn island famous. That's where it ended. But then this society continued to live there and lives there to this day.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

As we've touched on already, many of the families living on Pitcairn can trace their family trees all the way back to those original mutineers and the Tahitians they kidnapped and took with them. The trees have tangled a bit over the years as Irelander has married Irelander. But newcomers have come, born and raised. Pitcairners have spent time away and returned home with partners from abroad. With a family name that most people will recognise from the books and the movies is the Christians, descended from the chief mutineer, Fletcher Christian. In 1789, as the French were building towards revolution and George Washington was inaugurated as the first US president, the British naval vessel, the Bounty, was on a journey from Tahiti to the West Indies when some of the crew revolted. Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Captain Bligh. They cast him off, took control of the ship, went back to Tahiti, kidnapping some Polynesian women for wives and Polynesian men for laborers, and found an island that all of the maps had completely in the wrong place Pitcairn. It was hard to get ashore, let alone find in the first place a rocky, uninhabited outcrop for the fugitives and their captive companions to start afresh.

[Laura Parker]

We first applied to go to the island in 1996. We applied to the High Commissioner in New Zealand, which at the time was overseeing Pitcairn.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

You can't just turn up on Pitcairn. Part of the island's attraction is how hard it is to get to. But then you've got the gatekeepers when you arrive.

[Laura Parker]

You don't go to Pitcairn island unless you have permission, because at the time, the way you get there was by ship or some yacht that was chartered and traveled from Mangareva in Tahiti. And you came near Pitcairn, just offshore. There is no harbor there for a. A vessel to moore. And you waited and they came out in a long boat and picked you up. You didn't just show up on Pitcairn. We went a year without hearing anything before. We then were rejected and denied permission to go.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Laura isn't the only person to have been refused. In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was probably harder to get access

[Laura Parker]

to the island, and I should say, at that point, the investigation had begun on Pitcairn, but it was still not known widely. There obviously were some people who knew about it, but it wasn't public.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

As police began their work, the islanders got even more suspicious of outsiders than before. One particular incident sticks out from 2002. Imagine being a small island community, being investigated for really serious crimes. And then on your shores, seemingly out of nowhere, on a private yacht, the broadcaster, explorer and British national treasure Ben Fogle arrives. He was researching a book on small islands. It took him weeks to get there. He finally found it, and when he got ashore, the pit canners arrested him. He was accused of being a spy and of having incomplete paperwork, and within an hour they deported him. So generally, and especially during this investigation period, there weren't many surprise or unwanted visitors kicking around. Tell me about actually arriving on the island, the journey itself and how you get physically onto it, because it's quite the palaver, isn't it?

[Ewart Barnsley]

Pitcairn is probably one of the most isolated communities in the world.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Ewart Barnsley used to be a reporter for New Zealand Television.

[Ewart Barnsley]

There's no airstrip there at all. So sea travel was the only way. And because of the geography of the island, there's no natural harbor there, there's no big wharf. So we had to anchor off the island and then we had to wait for the Pitcairn island men to come out in their traditional long boats and take us and all our luggage and equipment back onto the island. I think I spent a lot of time just looking at the island as we got closer and closer to it. You know, it's an island that legends have been made of. And there was a guy there, guy called Paul the Pirate, and he just looked like a pirate. He had a big shaggy beard, long hair and earrings for Christmas pierced into his body. So he was probably one of the most colorful characters on the welcoming committee. But there were others, I think the

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

mayor, that was Steve Christian. What did you make of him? What did he look like?

[Ewart Barnsley]

Oh, he was very stocky built, very healthy looking guy. I don't know if you could say a typical Pitkin Islander. But he was nothing like Paul the Pirate, that's for sure.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

These were the men who physically controlled who and what did or didn't get onto the island. On the surface, yes, you can sort of equate the community with a small English village, but one with hard borders, clear hierarchy and its own rules. Fletcher Christian set it up and 200 years later, Steve Christian was guarding it.

[Laura Parker]

Once they arrived at Pe Cairn and burn the ship and set up their settlement, life was difficult. This is not the South Sea island that you read about and dream about visiting someday. One it's very small, it's not much larger than New York's Central Park. It is fringed not by white sandy beaches, but by 500 foot cliffs. There's just enough land there they're able to grow breadfruit, which native to the island they had difficulty, shall we say. First, the cliffs were the scene of many accidents. And they have pretty interesting names. One is named McCoy's Drop. One of them is Mini off, another is Johnny Fall. And one that apparently is a favorite of tourists today visiting the island. Oh, dear. McCoy's drop took its name after one of the mutineers leapt to his death. They think he was drunk. They made a lot of alcohol and I think, yeah, McCoy, I think flung himself into the Pacific off the cliff after he was drunk.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

William McCoy made his homebrew liquor from the tea plant ti. It's known in the west as cordyline, those big palm looking plants. You might have one in your living room. Avoid distilling. It would be the lesson. The story goes that McCoy leapt to his death from a cliff. And these were violent times on Pitcairn. The mutineers treated Tahitians like property. It seems histories of the time say the women were routinely raped and sexually assaulted. So arguments and deadly fights were rife. And slowly the mutineers died.

[Laura Parker]

All of the rest had died or been killed in fights with each other. Fletcher Christian was one of the first to die. He was working in his garden tending to yams when he was shot in the back. And this was less than three years after they had arrived on Pitcairn.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Shot, it's thought, by one of the kidnapped Tahitians. The only mutineer to survive all of this was John Adams, left with just the Tahitian men and women and a load of half British, half Tahitian children. John Adams made himself the community's leader, and not just in administrative matters. He also took it upon himself to save souls with the Bounty's Bible and prayer book. He had everyone attend Church of England services. He had the children learn and recite the Lord's Prayer. Harmless enough, you might think. But one historian, writing a few decades later, noted that Adams didn't always get things right. He got confused about fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday each year and instead instructed his flock to fast every Wednesday and every Friday.

[Laura Parker]

Almost two decades passed before they were discovered. A passing ship in 1808, it was an American sealing ship called the Topaz, chanced upon Pitcairn and they were shocked when they saw this longboat paddle out to their ship carrying three tall, strapping teenagers. And if that wasn't a shock enough, these teenagers spoke English and introduced themselves the leader introduced himself as Friday October Christian. And in that moment, the captain of the Topaz realized he had uncovered one of the great mysteries of the sea, which is what happened to the Bounty that just vanished after the mutiny. It was still pretty clear to the captain of the Topaz that this was a descendant of Fletcher Christian. They take him ashore, he leaves his crew and he goes ashore to see what's on the island. And when he gets there, he discovers there is only one of the remaining mutineers still alive, which is John Adams.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

John Adams was found to be living with nine Tahitian women and 19 of their children. These part British, part Polynesian children had already developed hybrid accents, sort of a

[Laura Parker]

combination of heavily accented English, some of it from the era with a little Polynesian accent in there.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Words changed, slang evolved, and it's a twist on English that remains on Pitcairn to this day.

[Glenda]

My husband calls it bastardised, means it's a mixture of everything and anything that goes with it. I say go back in my lingua, any I know Italian.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Glenda was born and raised on Pitcairn. She's descended from two of the mutineers. What are sort of words that you must know? Now, that is a sort of tickly Pitkeny word, which, like, I wouldn't know.

[Glenda]

Nawi. Nawi. Nawia means going swimming. It's more or less like Old English. You've got the English, the mutineers, and then you've got Tahitian. So it's a bit of Old English and Tahitian mixed in with it.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Now the community had been discovered, more ships began visiting occasionally from Britain. John Adams was pardoned for his role in the mutiny, in part because of the good, pious work he'd apparently done on the island. And the population started to grow. There were a couple of attempts over the decades that followed to try and decamp the population to Australia or Norfolk island, which is a bigger island much closer to New Zealand. But the Pitcairners always made their way back.

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[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

People like Glenda, who grew up there in the 1960s, remember life with a lot of fondness. Norway Swimming to you was a popular pastime, but without beaches per se. The main swimming spot was called Down Rope, so called because it was at the bottom of a sheer volcanic cliff, which you went down with the rope.

[Glenda]

You literally have to be a goat to get down. It's a teeny little path going all the way down and it's a heck of a climb going back up again. But the main places that we go swimming is the harbour or Isaac, where there's two pools. Literally they're natural pools that you go

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

swimming in because it is all volcanic, isn't it? So it's dark, sharp rock. I mean, how would you describe It.

[Glenda]

It is dark volcanic rocks and we do have some smooth ones as well. But a lot of it is the volcanic rock and we used to walk on those in bare feet. Because I. In all honesty, I never ever wore shoes until I went to New Zealand at the age of 10 and they were alien to me.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

I'm not going to get you to show me, but what must the soles of your feet be like?

[Glenda]

It was tough as old boots. Literally. When I came to a England and I started wearing shoes, my feet was shedding. The bottom of my feet were shedding dead skin, thick skin.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

What you're doing there with your hands, two inches worth.

[Glenda]

Yeah. Really good thick skin. I mean I could still walk bare feet even now outdoors, but not like I could do back home permanently.

[Ben Green]

Yes.

[Glenda]

I've got to toughen my feet back up again to be able to do it, you know, to go back supplies,

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

not shoes, but food and the rest makes it to the island. Now on passing cargo ships, the ships stop and float past and the pit Kerners long boat out and bring the goods back. They have big chest freezers at home to keep stuff in. But they also have around them an absolute abundance of fresh produce.

[Glenda]

There was watermelon, pineapple, pawpaw, jackfruit, as we call them. Pawpaw. You had guevara, you have mandarins, you have had orange, you have mango. That's what I'm missing out. Oh, crikey. Grapefruit this lemons, lime.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

And is it as plentiful?

[Gail Cox]

Oh yeah.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

As I was.

[Peter George]

As.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

I'm picturing it. Like you're just wandering along. Oh, there's a pineapple. Oh, let me pick myself off though.

[Glenda]

Everybody owns their own patches.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Yes.

[Glenda]

They own their own patch of bananas, their own oranges and everything else on

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

their own land or. Here are a load of banana plants. These are yours, these are ours. These are those persons.

[Glenda]

Different places it is. There's two variety. You've got the plantain, which we call the bananas and the bananas that you actually buy in the shops we call them china.

[Ben Green]

Why?

[Glenda]

That's what we used to create to make banana pillay with.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

What's that?

[Glenda]

Banana pillai. To me it's gross. I hated it. You just grate yoller it as we call it. Then you wrap it up in banana leaves and then you boil it and it is.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

But there's like a kind of like cooked banana y mush.

[Glenda]

Yeah, but it's solid.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Oh, I see.

[Glenda]

It comes out solid. Yeah. And it's.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

That sounds worse.

[Glenda]

It's called Banana pillai. And we have potato pillai.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Yes.

[Glenda]

Grated again. Put it. But that's baked in tins.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

But why China? Why are bananas as I'd know them? Why are they called China? Do you know?

[Glenda]

I don't know. I've always. We've always known it as that.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Ewart Barnsley spent a few months on the island, reporting for New Zealand TV in 2004.

[Ewart Barnsley]

It was fish that was the sort of staple diet. And breadfruit. And nothing flash.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

It was just honest fare, the breadfruit, a very common food on Pitcairn with a very unique means of harvest.

[Ewart Barnsley]

And they said the only reason we've got guns is the breadfruit trees are so high, so we can shoot the breadfruit off the branches.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

One way of doing it, yeah. Breadfruit, the Internet tells me, is the highest yielding food plant in the world. It, of course, was the whole reason that the Bounty was in the Pacific back in the 18th century. The British wanted to take it to the Caribbean to feed their enslaved populations in their colonies there.

[Ewart Barnsley]

I'll tell you what, it was a pretty miserable excuse for the Bounty to go down to the Pacific and they were coming down to get plants, I think, perhaps take them back to the Caribbean. To me, it's not great fruit to eat. Pretty dry and tasteless.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Is anything about it like bread?

[Ewart Barnsley]

No, nothing at all. One of my most treasured possessions and memories of the island is a document signed by the UK High Commissioner down here in Wellington, who is also the governor for Pitcairn. And that document gave me permission to import alcohol onto Pitcairn. It was a dry island. All the islanders were apparently Seventh Day Adventists, so no alcohol was involved on the island.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Theoretically, very theoretically. Prohibition was in force until 2009, but it seems in name only and not necessarily in practice, according to Ewart Barnsley.

[Ewart Barnsley]

But we were allowed to bring our own alcohol onto the island to get us through fairly torrid months.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Pitcairners could pay for this imported food and imported booze because they had goods to trade.

[Martin Williams]

At one stage, the island received very little money from outside because it was able to raise money internationally through visitors to the island.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Martin Williams was British High Commissioner in New Zealand, a role that also made him governor of Pitcairn from 1998 to 2001

[Martin Williams]

through sales of postage stamps, subsequently through sales of the Internet domain names which bring small amounts of money in, but nevertheless, for a small community, small amounts of money suffice. There were some collectors of Pitcairn island stamps from around the world, in fact. And my wife designed several sets of stamps. As she's an artist, she's contributed considerably to the income of the island. And also for such visitors as go there, there's a post office where mail can be left eventually to be delivered anywhere around the world.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

But alongside the stamps and all the rest, and especially from the 90s to the present day, it's a UK government grant that has kept the community afloat. Between 2021 and 2023, 9 million British taxpayer pounds were spent on Pitcairn. Glenda remembers a generous community, one that was happy to share whatever they had.

[Glenda]

Every Christmas everybody comes and put their Christmas presents on. You'll have about four or five further Christmases, then you go swimming and New Year's Eve, everybody will be ringing the bell. Everybody having community meals together. You cook what you want and you take everybody out and themselves. Birthday parties. The whole majority of the island would come. So that community spirit.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

This was clearly a community that had two sides. They could live, but how much could they live together? Could they police themselves? Their efforts have been quite sporadic over the years when the community was still hidden and some of the original mutineers were still alive. One of them, a man called Matthew Quintal, was put to death for being drunk and threatening. And 100 years into the community's existence, the community on Pitcairn had to prosecute a murder. In 1897, 24 year old Harry Christian, yes, a relation killed his 21 year old wife, Clara Warren, and their child, who was just one year old. I bring this story up because it's actually an example of the island policing itself to a certain extent. A visiting British captain reported to London that the governing body of the island questioned Harry Christian, but they were unsure about whether they had the right to hang him or not. So they kept him prisoner until the British captain arrived on his ship to advise island records detail what Harry Christian could and couldn't do. During this time, he was allowed to stay at home. There would be no carpentry and he could only talk with his parents and siblings. There was a tree that he was not allowed to sit under except if he felt unwell and the guard watching him thought it was okay. The islanders wanted him tried in England. The authorities thought that transporting him and 12 witnesses that they wanted to call would be too much faff. So they decided to try him on Pitcairn. A judicial commissioner was brought over from the British colony of Fiji. A court was assembled and Harry Christian was found guilty. The archives note that when he was asked why the sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he just replied, I do not know what to say. He was put on a Royal Navy ship, taken to Fiji and hanged. Swift justice. But clearly that's not always been the case. There are often two sides to Pitcairn, it seems. They have rules, but they aren't always followed. The community are Christians, Seventh Day Adventists, for whom drinking alcohol is not permitted. But over the years, many were big boozers. They were capable of generosity, as seen in their Christmases and community parties, but could also be voracious gossips. It's something officials who dipped into island life sometimes noticed. Take this 1992 handover note from a UK government advisor writing to their successor.

[Ben Green]

Pitcairn abounds with rumors and speculation and sooner or later you will be the centre of a few. By careful listening, you may find the

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

source and should it be potentially harmful,

[Ben Green]

you can knock it on the head.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Just remember that as far as Pitcairners

[Ben Green]

go, there is absolutely no one who can be trusted not to betray a confidence.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Remember Gale Cox from our last two episodes? The police constable from Kent? Police who felt so welcomed by the islanders on her first visit. She soon became aware of the challenges on her second trip.

[Gail Cox]

Hi, Leon. Many apologies for the delay in replying to your email.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Gail wrote to the island Commissioner, Leon Salt.

[Gail Cox]

With the arrival of Rob and Karen, it's become a tad busy. With the arrival of the Queensland Star and all its passengers, the island community seems to have cheered up a bit.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Gail saw the impact that the arrival of fresh visitors had on the the island community.

[Gail Cox]

The new people at present are taking the brunt of Ireland slagging, although Petcurn charm is working at full capacity at the moment in the direction of Rob and Karen. Poor Rob. Mirelda jumped on him, not literally, and confided, what a nasty visiting police officer I am. Rob and Karen seem overwhelmed by the place. They were definitely on stage one of Pitcairn. Shields and Daniel had reached stage five and I am staged 27,500 at the moment, although I still have three days left.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Gail had gotten close to the Pitcairn community and it seems that she understood that orthodox investigation methods weren't likely to be as effective. She wrote to Leon Salt, the Commissioner of Pitcairn, about how she approached interviewing potential witnesses to some of these alleged rapes of girls on the island. We've obscured this interviewee's name because. Because in this instance, Gail was talking to him as a potential witness rather than as a suspect.

[Gail Cox]

I don't think you will approve, but I took an unorthodox approach to policing and decided to get drunk. This approach is totally unethical and had I obtained corroboration, I may have had quite a bit of explaining to do. In any event, the approach was unsuccessful and I only ended up supporting a hangover which to paracetamol couldn't shift. Confided heaps about him and Steve for 30 years, but there was no mention of recent activities.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Reading the letter that Gail Cox sent to Leon Salt, I get the sense that she started to see this darker, duplicitous side of Pitcairn's community. Her appointment as the police officer there for a while was to establish a reliable system of law and order that was more in keeping with the British system. She'd enjoyed authority and respect from the community, but in her letter you can see that she was really aware that this was changing and souring, and her attempts to even run mock court proceedings were undermined and she was challenged by lies and deceit, half truths and obstacles.

[Gail Cox]

I feel sorry for Rob. I don't think he knows who to believe at this stage. I'll give you six months before he moves to stage two. Nope. Perhaps I'm being too generous to the community. Make it three months. I apologise if I sound bitter. It's been a long week and it's only Tuesday. Best wishes, Gail Cox.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

I apologise if I sound bitter. It's been a long week and it's only Tuesday. That sums it all up, really, doesn't it? It's dated January 2000. Gail Cox's time on Pitcairn was nearly done, but the strain of these rape allegations was starting to show. Little did anyone know at this time that this was only the beginning.

[Peter George]

Hello.

[Martin Williams]

Hello.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Back to where we started this episode. Operation Unique. The investigation, now in late 2000, was underway looking into historic sexual abuse of girls on Pitcairn. Karen Vaughan from New Zealand Police, Peter George and Rob Vinson from Kent Constabulary were traveling to New Zealand, Australia and further afield. They had a list of women who grew up on the island since 1980 and were out to find and interview them face to face. They thought was best.

[Peter George]

And without fail, every single one confirmed what had happened to them.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

Every single one.

[Peter George]

Every single one. Every. There wasn't one that said, no, it didn't happen to me.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

What did they think about you arriving unannounced, asking about this? Was there a sense of thank God, someone's finally asking. Or were they cagey about it?

[Peter George]

Some were like that. Some were, oh, I can't believe someone's doing something about this now. Others were, I don't want to talk about it. You know, a lot of them actually, although they'd made statements to us later, pulled out and you can understand why the pressure they had from the islanders, from their. Because they knew their dad was probably an offender for somebody else. So they think, well, I'm going to lock my dad up or my brother or something like that. So the pressure on them was tremendous.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

This was the picture slowly emerging to Peter and his colleagues. Generations of women abused, raped or sexually assaulted as children by their neighbors, family, friends, men in their community. And in a community of 50 people or so, it had been kept quiet, especially from the outside world, until now. With every door knock, hello, every Pitcairn girl now woman contacted, with every traumatic conversation, the secrecy that had held for generations began to crumble.

[Glenda]

One of them was sat at the table taking the notes and they were both asking questions and I just said, just shut up. And I just, I just went. I turned into that three year old, I'd gone back and I just went, da da da da da da, da,

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

da, da da da da.

[Glenda]

Just kept going and going and going and going. And they said, could you slow down, please stop a minute, I can't keep up with you. I said, you wanna knew about it. You fucking write fucking harder.

[Narrator (Luke Jones)]

That's next time in the Pitcairn Trials Episode 4 Glenda the Pitcairn Trials were an Audio Always production. The series was presented by me, Luke Jones, produced by Lucy Ditchmont. Our assistant producer was Mansi 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.

[Ben Green]

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[Luke Jones]

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@always truecrime.com.