Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> A study of island records confirmed anecdotal evidence that most girls bore their first child between the ages of 12 and 15. "I think the girls were conditioned to accept that it was a man's world and once they turned 12, they were eligible," Tosen said. Mothers and grandmothers were resigned to the situation, telling him that their own childhood experience had been the same; they regarded it as just a part of life on Pitcairn.

> One councillor told him, "Look, the age of consent has always been 12 and it doesn't hurt them."

What in the bonkers hell. It seems like the place was just Child Abuse Island (r) (tm). Made their own little cult home. Crazy business.

This bit about how they were not subject to the Crown because they'd mutinied against the HMS Bounty's officers is an even better story. Unbelievable stuff.

Glad they were subject to the law. Though it looks like they're all free now, and presumably back at the noncery.

> It seems like the place was just Child Abuse Island (r) (tm).

Yep - look at some of Simon Winchester's writing where we goes into more unfortunate detail about this. Pitcairn is not a place you want to go.

It's quite possible that the people involved did their time and the island is moving on from the events of the past. It seems uncharitable to paint an entire island with the brush of a single, very bad event that happened years ago. Imagine if every country had to be judged by the worst thing that happened in the country's history.

> Imagine if every country had to be judged by the worst thing that happened in the country's history.

I think it's a little different considering less than 50 people live on the island. It's more comparable to a small neighborhood than a country.

It also seems uncharitable to describe this as a single event.

Mexico has some pretty low ages of consent, until recently it was 13 in Japan.

Age of consent in Japan wasn’t 13. That was the national age of consent, but literally every prefecture had a higher age specified in local law, and the higher number is what mattered.

Changing the national age was largely symbolic, although it did have the beneficial effect of enabling national police instead of just local police to go after these cases.

> Unbelievable stuff

And silly, as the law (esp. international) usually cares more about de facto control in situations like this. Crazy argument to raise, but I guess if you can't argue they aren't nonces...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com