Pitcairn sexual assault trial of 2004

On 30 September 2004, seven men living on Pitcairn Island (including Steve Christian, the mayor, and representing a third of the male population of the island) went on trial facing 55 charges relating to sexual offences. On 24 October, all but one of the defendants were found guilty on at least some of the charges. Another six men living abroad, including Shawn Christian the current mayor of Pitcairn, were tried on 41 charges in a separate trial in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2005.

The trial was punctuated by legal challenges from island residents, who denied the island's colonial status, and with it the United Kingdom's judicial authority. Defence lawyers for the seven accused men claimed that British sovereignty over the islands was unconstitutional: HMS Bounty mutineers, from whom almost all of the current island population is descended (together with Polynesians), had effectively renounced their British citizenship by committing a capital offence in the burning of the Bounty in 1790, they said. In a symbolic rejection of British rule, islanders still celebrated this act annually by burning an effigy of the Bounty, according to Paul Dacre, the Pitcairn public defender. The defence maintained that the UK never made a formal claim to Pitcairn, and never officially informed the islanders that British legislation, such as the Sexual Offences Act 1956, was applicable to them.

In a judgment delivered on 18 April 2004, the Pitcairn Supreme Court (specially established for the purpose of the trial, consisting of New Zealand judges authorised by the British government) rejected the claim that Pitcairn was not British territory. This decision was upheld in August 2004 by the Pitcairn Court of Appeal, endorsing the claim of Deputy Governor Matthew Forbes that Pitcairn was British territory. A delay of the trial until the United Kingdom's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) decided on an additional appeal was rejected. The trial started on 30 September 2004.

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