a former islander, in a written statement read out by police, (name withheld) alleged that Mayor Steve Christian had raped her twice in 1972 when she was 12, once in bushland and once in a boat moored at Bounty Bay. She said that he used adolescent girls as his personal harem. "Steve seemed to take it upon himself to initiate all the girls, and it was like we were his harem," she stated. She had not informed her parents or others in the community, she said, because she "knew nothing would be done about it because of previous experience on the island." On the same day, another woman alleged that she had been raped twice as a school girl by Steve Christian. She had been a virgin at the time of the first rape, she said. Postmaster Dennis Christian was the first defendant to plead guilty at the trial, the following day. He pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual assault against a 12- to 14-year-old girl from 1972 to 1974, when he was 16 to 18, and one charge of indecent assault against another 12-year-old girl in the early 1980s, when he was in his late 20s. Detective Inspector Rob Vinson of Kent Police, who had conducted the investigation, described the confession as a "significant development." Pitcairn public prosecutor Simon Moore expressed relief that the two women had been spared having to testify in public. Crown prosecutors said that they would not offer evidence for a fourth charge against Christian, as the victim wished to withdraw it and it would not affect the sentence. Christian was remanded on bail pending the completion of all seven trials. On the next day (6 October), the prosecution produced a videotape of a police interview with Steve Christian, conducted at Auckland Central police station in New Zealand in 2000. Christian denied "breaking in" four girls in their early teens or younger. (He was later accused by a fifth woman of having raped her in a similar fashion.) Christian agreed that it "could be the case" that he had sex with one girl of 13 and another of 15. He said he could not recall the specific incidents but admitted to two other sexual relationships with girls under 16, both of whom, he insisted, had consented. He emphatically denied ever having forced sex on anybody. Christian pleaded not guilty to all charges of rape