Book
Lost paradise : from Mutiny on the Bounty to a modern-day legacy of sexual mayhem, the dark secrets of Pitcairn island revealed
Edition
1st Free Press hardcover ed.
Publication Information
New York : Free Press, 2009.
Physical Description
xxiii, 326 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., map ; 24 cm.
Summary
Remote Pitcairn Island, a place of towering cliffs and lashing surf, is home to descendants of Fletcher Christian and the Bounty crew, who fled there with a group of Tahitian maidens after deposing Captain Bligh in 1789. Shrouded in myth, the island was considered a tropical Shangri-La by outsiders--but as the world discovered two centuries later, it was also a place of sinister secrets. In 2000, police descended on the British territory to investigate an allegation of child rape, and uncovered a trail of child abuse dating back at least three generations. Most islanders, including the victims' mothers, claimed it was the Pitcairn "way of life." The ensuing trials commanded worldwide attention and tore the close-knit, interrelated community apart. Journalist Kathy Marks lived on Pitcairn for six weeks and observed how the tiny, claustrophobic community ticked: the gossip, the feuding, the intimacy--and the power dynamics that had allowed the abuse to flourish.--From publisher description.
Notes
Includes index.
Map on endpapers.
Contents
- A surreal little universe in the middle of nowhere
- Mutiny, murder, and myth-making
- Opening a right can of worms
- No amnesty
- The fiefdom and its leader
- The propaganda campaign starts
- Key witnesses evaporate
- The trials begin
- Let's make believe
- Judgment day
- "You can't blame men for being men"
- How the myth was forged
- Politics, poison, and power plays
- Britain's "ineffective long-range benevolence"
- "I just did my job and minded my own business"
- Interdependence + silence = collusion
- Making legal history
- The final trials
- Reaping a sad legacy since Bounty times
- Lord of the flies?
- The last throw of the dice
- Epilogue : Isobel's story.