Best-selling author Colleen McCullough said six men found guilty of a string of sex attacks on Pitcairn Island were following a Polynesian custom of having sex with young girls and called their convictions "an absolute disgrace," a newspaper reported yesterday.
McCullough, the author of the 1977 international best seller The Thorn Birds, lives on Australia's Norfolk Island, a former penal colony that is home to a number of Pitcairn Island descendants.
Late last month, six Pitcairn men were convicted of rapes and sex attacks dating back as far as 40 years on the remote island, which is located midway between New Zealand and South America and is home to descendants of the Bounty mutineers and their Polynesian wives.
"They are as much Polynesian as anything else," McCullough told The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. "It's Polynesian to break your girls in at 12."
McCullough said the UK-led rape trials were "an absolute disgrace" and should not have interfered with local customs.
"These are indigenous customs and should not be touched," she said. "It's hypocritical too. Does anybody object when Muslims follow their customs? Nobody's afraid of 50 Polynesians, but they are very afraid of a million Muslims," McCullough said.
But Karen Willis, a rape crisis counselor, said child rape is not an accepted practice in any culture.
"This is just one of those myths," she said. "It's not a cultural thing. It's about patriarchy and male power."
Willis said some societies do initiate children into sexual relations at a young age, but celebration and ritual are key.
"In Pitcairn it was done in secrecy, and that's one of the main differences between sexual assault and normal sexual relations," she said.
Children who experience sexual assault often develop depression, phobias, flashbacks and panic attacks as adults, Willis said.
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
END OF AN ERA: The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an indigenous coca farmer, was elected president A center-right senator and a right-wing former president are to advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed. Bolivian Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise front-runner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed. He was followed by former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast. Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped
RSS