Pitcairn men win right to appeal

Some say consensual underage sex is part of life on the island

Seven men accused of sexually assaulting young girls on a UK Pacific colony will be allowed to challenge its legal jurisdiction over the island.

Pitcairn Supreme Court and Pitcairn Court of Appeal have already thrown out challenges by the island's defendants.

But on Monday three Privy Council law lords granted the men leave to appeal, although the trial will continue.

Some defendants argue consensual underage sex with girls aged 12 and 13 is traditional on Pitcairn.

The trial has already been told underage sex was a way of life on the remote island, which has 47 residents and lies roughly half way between Peru and New Zealand in the South Pacific.

Seven men are accused of 55 charges, including rape and indecent assault on girls as young as 12, and two have admitted some of the charges against them.

But the claim that consensual sex with underage girls is traditional has been supported by some women on the island.

The men's lawyers have also argued that the Bounty mutineers, who settled on the island, stopped being British subjects when they burnt the ship in 1789.

Both Pitcairn Supreme Court and the Pitcairn Court of Appeal have ruled Britain does have legal jurisdiction over the island.

But on Monday the Privy Council's judicial committee, the final court of appeal for the UK overseas territories, heard a petition from the men's barristers.

Registrar John Watherston told BBC News Online: "There was a petition heard in the judicial committee of the Privy Council yesterday in which the men were given special leave to appeal against the judgement of the Pitcairn Court of Appeal."

But he said permission to have the trial postponed in the interim was refused and the appeal would not be heard before 2005.