Lost Paradise: From Muntiny on the Bounty to a Modern-day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, The Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed.
by Gail Collins
Book Review by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.
At the Simon & Schuster web site, “Authors - Kathy Marks - Biography” section, this is how her biography reads: “Kathy Marks grew up in Manchester, England, and studied languages. She has been a journalist since 1984, working first for Reuters news agency and then for national newspapers in Britain, including the Daily Telegraph and The Independent. Since 1999 she has been based in Sydney as The Independent’s Asia-Pacific Correspondent, reporting from Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, East Timor, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, and the South Pacific. She has covered major stories around the region, including the post-independence violence in East Timor in 1999, the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, the civil war in Indonesia’s Aceh province, the Indian Ocean Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 and the 2006 Java earthquake. In 2004 she was one of six international journalists who travelled to Pitcairn Island for the child sex abuse trials.”
Why is all this biographical information important? It reveals the expertise, the journalistic precision, and the background Marks brings to this book.
What an incredible story Marks tells about Pitcairn Island! It’s not just hard to believe such a thing could happen, but it, indeed, stirs up haunting memories once read.
I knew of Pitcairn island in name only, and I always thought it was a South Pacific island paradise like Tahiti, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Easter Island, or the Cook Islands. Of course, it is a paradise—if you discount some of the people who inhabit the island!
This is a very readable telling of a story of 40 years when children were abused and raped, adult males were protected and unpunished, and an entire society of 47 people feigned ignorance or claimed it was South Pacific “culture.”
One reviewer at Amazon.com writes, “In order to make this book as good as it is the author needed to be part criminal trial reporter, part historian and part anthropologist. She was all three and more. This is a fascinating book about a terrible abuse scandal on an isolated island founded by famous mutineers.”
If you want to experience how a tiny, claustrophobic, community operates and what powerful forces can allow abuse to flourish, this is a fascinating saga that takes you through the legal battles and human trials that resulted in a paradise lost.
This book is available from Amazon.com: Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, The Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed.
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