A lawyer for two men convicted of sex charges on Britain's remote Pacific territory of Pitcairn Island told an appeals court yesterday that they did not know it was illegal to rape women, news reports said.
He claimed that Britain's 1956 Sexual Offenses Act, which specified the offense and the penalties for it, was never published on Pitcairn, one of the most isolated places on the globe, Radio New Zealand reported.
One of the defendants is Steve Christian, a former mayor of Pitcairn who was found guilty in 2004 of five rapes, including that of a 12-year-old girl.
He is a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian, who led a mutiny against the bullying Captain William Bligh on the British ship the Bounty and settled on Pitcairn -- halfway between New Zealand and South America -- with eight other crewmen and some Tahitians in 1790.
Six islanders -- including Steve Christian's son Randy, who was convicted of four rapes and five indecent assaults -- lost appeals to the Supreme Court last year against their convictions in crimes against women and girls.
But they are appealing again in the first-ever hearing before the Pitcairn Appeal Court, sitting in Auckland, New Zealand, in a courtroom where a framed photo of Britain's Queen Elizabeth is on the wall, the New Zealand coat of arms has been covered up and the Pitcairn national flag is hanging in front of the judges.
Four of the six men face prison sentences in the jail built on the island pending their original trial, but it cannot be occupied until all appeal avenues have been exhausted. The other two defendants were given sentences of community service.
Two weeks have been set aside for the latest appeals hearing, at which the defence is to introduce a new argument claiming it was wrong for British authorities to use New Zealand judges and lawyers in the trials, Radio New Zealand said.
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