In 1998 I travelled to Pitcairn Island to film a documentary about the excavation of the wreck of the HMS Bounty, and the fate of Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers. It was a fascinating trip.
It is safe to say that there is nowhere in the world like Pitcairn: the people, their culture and their language is an intriguing mix of 18th-century Britain (from the Bounty mutineers) and Polynesia. It is not uncommon to hear archaic words such as "yonder" and "musket" mixed into the pidgin language "Pitkern".
The island itself is spectacular: not a paradise island in the traditional sense, but more a large rock jutting incongruously out of the Pacific. The ludicrously tiny population and the sheer isolation of the place (it took me several flights and a four-day sail in a chartered boat to get there) made for a heady mix of claustrophobia and island fever, however, and like most visitors I was glad when my time there was up.
There were only a handful of children living on the island when I was there, and in the first instance I was struck by how idyllic their life was. The gardens and the lush tropical terrain made for a stunning playground. There was a tiny but well-appointed school and a sense of freedom and safety that, on paper, couldn't be beaten.
But after hearing earlier this year that several of the male islanders were to be tried for raping young girls and underage sex, I thought about the children I had met and went back to my diaries of the time. I then realised how, when I first met them, I had been taken aback by their immediate intimacy with me. The children had flung their arms around me to welcome me at our first meeting, and then again at every subsequent meeting, even though I was a complete stranger, and the hugs lingered a little longer than I really felt comfortable with.
It was only very subtly inappropriate, and I thought nothing much of it at the time. I assumed their slightly confused boundaries were in some way connected to the smallness of the community and the unique culture of Pitcairn. But looking back on it, all those lingering cuddles take on a rather sinister significance. There is a real danger in reading too much into their behaviour with the benefit of hindsight, but all the same: there was something not quite right about it.
This week, six Pitcairn men were found guilty of 32 child sex crimes on the island over a period of 40 years. Their crimes included incest, rape and indecent assault against girls as young as seven. Two of those men I got to know quite well, as it happens. There are no hotels on Pitcairn so I stayed with Pitcairn's mayor Steve Christian and his wife. Christian has now been convicted of five rapes on girls as young as 11.
Steve's son Randy, now convicted of four rapes and five indecent assaults, lived nearby. Randy took a bit of a shine to me, but both he and his father behaved very politely and considerately towards me, and I liked them. Randy was a simple chap - I don't know how else to describe him. Steve, his father, was more savvy, but very pleasant, and his wife was really charming.
What makes me very angry now is Steve's claim to the court that all the underage sex that has been going on all these years was some kind of cute Pitcairn tradition - that the moral compass points to a different north down there in Britain's remotest outpost, and we have got no right to judge them.
Because that is of course just rubbish. The moral standards of the Pitcairners are no different from mine. We frequently discussed the rights and wrongs of Pitcairn's blood-soaked heritage and we watched videos of Hollywood movies (the ultimate barometer of social mores) together - some of which featured their ancestor's story - and I'd bet my bottom dollar that the adult men on Pitcairn have always known that underage sex was wrong. Particularly as there was, and presumably still is, such a strong puritanical feel to the island: it is, after all, a religious place. All these pieces about us butting out of someone else's culture are nonsense: no one on Pitcairn seriously thinks that having sex with a seven - or for that matter 11-year-old girl is OK.
When Pitcairn's men are sentenced next week, they could be imprisoned. If so, Pitcairn society, born out of so much violence 200 years ago, may not survive. But perhaps, knowing what we know now, that is not such a bad thing. One thing that should be remembered is that the reason there are only around 50 people living on Pitcairn is that when the young people grow up - they all leave.
· Emily Fielden is a producer at RDF Media.