Pitcairn sex assault allegations snowball

A rape investigation on tiny Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific has snowballed.

British and New Zealand police are now studying 15 sexual assault allegations among the island's population of just 44 people.

A New Zealand police investigator specialising in sexual assaults has joined British detectives who launched an inquiry into a single rape allegation last year.

New Zealand police have confirmed their investigator has been posted to the island but have given no further details, it is reported.

The island's New Zealand-based deputy governor, Karen Wolstenholme, has confirmed the investigation is continuing, but has declined to provide more details.

If charges are filed, they would pave the way for only the second trial on the island, which was settled by Fletcher Christian and his group of English sailors who became famous for staging the mutiny British warship Bounty some 200 years ago.

The island is a dot in the Pacific half way between New Zealand and Peru.

British police have been investigating the alleged December 1999 rape on the British protectorate for nearly a year.

The island's prosecutor, a New Zealand lawyer who doesn't live on the island, has been considering the original case for several months. Police have declined to release details.

A criminal trial for murder was staged on the island 104 years ago, according to Herbert Ford, the director of the Pitcairn Island Study Centre in San Francisco. The trial was held on the island after Harry Albert Christian was charged with killing his wife and child. He was later taken to Fiji and hanged.