Half the men on Pitcairn Island, a remote British colony in the middle of the Pacific, are to be imprisoned in a new on-island jail being built to house them. The men were convicted of rape after a woman left the island to attend school in New Zealand and reported on systematic, society-wide rape of virtually every woman on the island. The convicted men were the only people capable of operating the long-boats that were the only way on and off of the island. The islanders are the descendants of the mutineers on Captain Bligh's Bounty, who took Tahitian wives.
A British Foreign Office spokesman said seven New Zealand prison officers would be dispatched to establish a new prison, Her Majesty's Prison Pitcairn, on the remote South Pacific island. Britain will pay the bill, expected to total about £500,000 ($1.2 million) a year.
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said on Monday the six men had lost their appeal to the Privy Council, which rejected their argument that English law had not been promulgated on the island and it was not under British sovereignty.
(Thanks, Cyrus!)
See also:
Half the men on small island charged with rape
Pitcairn rapists convicted but not jailed
