Pitcairn Island rapist gets longest sex trial sentence yet

dpa German Press Agency Published: Sunday March 4, 2007

Wellington- A 53-year-old found guilty on six charges of
raping young girls on Pitcairn Island was sentenced Monday to six-
and-a-half years, the longest prison sentence yet in a series of
child-sex trials on the remote British colony in the South Pacific.
Chief Justice Charles Blackie said he was extending the sentence
of labourer Brian Michael John Young because of his abhorrent attacks
on girls aged from 7 to 15 over a long period of time in the 1970s,
Radio New Zealand reported.

Sitting as the Pitcairn Supreme Court in Auckland, Judge Blackie
said that six years had been the longest prison sentence imposed in
the trials in which eight men - or a quarter of the male population -
were found guilty of repeated sex offences against young girls.

Young received his sentence by video link from Pitcairn Island,
where he was being held in custody in the jail built specially to
hold the convicted sex offenders.

Shawn Brent Christian, 31, a student in Newcastle, Australia, was
due to be sentenced later Monday on two counts of rape and one charge
of aiding and abetting a rape.

Their sentencing ends a saga of sex abuse over nearly 40 years on
the island of fewer than 50 people, a population founded by survivors
of the mutiny on the British ship HMS Bounty in 1789.

The case began more than seven years ago, when the first
complaints were made to a British policewoman visiting the 4.7-
square-kilometre island, located halfway between New Zealand and
South America and accessible only by ship.

Young was sentenced to a further two years in prison on each of
three counts of indecent assault, to be served concurrently with his
six-and-a-half year term.

© 2006 - dpa German Press Agency

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