Islands Sinners
p. 58 · Read in the full issue
Busy Courts in Cook Is.
From Our Own Correspondent.
Rarotonga, March 12.
OERSONS concerned with the moral A behaviour of their fellows will derive a vicarious pleasure from the Cook Islands Annual Report for 1936, in which it is shown that 32 cases of “cohabitation ’ and four of adultery were heard in the local High Court during the year.
It also is shown that 599 natives also illegally consumed “home-brew,” while six gambled, 24 failed to register their dogs and 14 more kept pigs within the prescribed area of the settlement.
Out of a total of 1,144 cases, 1,046
convictions were secured, 17 cases being
dismissed and the balance either with
drawn or adjourned.
EDITORIAL NOTE.—It is time that public attention was directed to this curious and unique Cook Islands law relating to “cohabitation”, which appears to be a survival of the notorious mis sionary regime of last century. Very earnest and very narrow-minded old gentlemen, bearded and top-hatted and frock-coated, set themselves grimly to the work of flailing heathenism out of Raro tonga. The Rarotongans, like dozens of other races, had —and still have—a free-and-easy pre marriage relationship between the sexes. The missionaries somehow had this offence against their moral code (“cohabitation”) included in Rarotonga’s Criminal Code, and there it remains to this day. If ever some clever writer gets hold of the facts, and presents them effectively, the Cook Islands will be made the laughing-stock of the world. Imagine a “cohabitation” law being put into operation in Australia or New Zealand!