The Surgeon Of St Helena – Details, episodes & analysis

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The Surgeon Of St Helena

Always True Crime

True Crime

Society & Culture

History

Frequency: 1 episode/51d. Total Eps: 14

What happens when a dangerous surgeon arrives on one of the world’s most remote islands? How much damage can he do before he is stopped?

St Helena is a small British island in the South Atlantic, over 1000 miles from the nearest landmass. It is famous for hosting Napoleon in exile, and boasts the world's oldest living land animal, Jonathan the tortoise, as one of its residents.

But this tiny British Overseas Territory has been gripped with scandal. When orthopedic surgeon Dr Sergio Villatoro Bran arrived in 2015 he was supposed to revolutionise care on the island. Instead he caused unimaginable harm.

Was it incompetence?

Or was he deliberately causing harm?

And is the government of St Helena trying to block the residents' fight for justice?

Following on from the critically acclaimed The Pitcairn Trials, Luke Jones investigates another scandal unfolding in one of Britain’s most isolated territories

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https://www.childhelphotline.org/
90 shares
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/
59 shares
https://thesurvivorstrust.org/
32 shares

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Score global : 69%

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Your Questions Answered

Season 1 · Episode 9

jeudi 13 mars 2025 • Duration 33:25

Luke Jones takes you behind The Pitcairn Trials, to answer some of your most-asked questions. We hear how he navigated interviewing Glenda, who grew up on Pitcairn and experienced abuse there, how he found his way through a maze of official legal documents and whether he would ever visit Pitcairn himself. Luke reveals the unanswered questions he still has from the series, and the areas he’d like to explore further.

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The Aftermath

Season 1 · Episode 8

jeudi 30 janvier 2025 • Duration 40:25

The Guilty men of Pitcairn received remarkably short prison sentences. Some on the island, sent to the luxury jail they helped to build. Some received community service, with time off to help with the island’s harvest and work. In the end the Pitcairn Trials cost £47 million, paid by the British taxpayer and government. By 2009 all the convicted men had been released. But the problem did not vanish in the years since. We examine what the future holds for Pitcairn. Can Pitcairn escape the shadows of its past?

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Taking a Stand

Season 1 · Episode 7

jeudi 23 janvier 2025 • Duration 33:39

Glenda takes the stand. Through interviews and court transcripts, we examine the Defence team’s arguments, and the legal debates that surrounded them. Glenda and police officer Peter George wait for the verdict in the UK. Peter gets it first, then phones Glenda.

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White Wigs and Red Dirt

Season 1 · Episode 6

jeudi 23 janvier 2025 • Duration 33:52

Judges, lawyers and a press pack make the long journey to Pitcairn and the trials begin. Journalists are summoned to a meeting of all the women on the Island at Big Fence as they argue that their men are innocent, and there are claims that the trials are a British conspiracy to reclaim Pitcairn. A punishment for the mutiny on the Bounty in 1789, revenge on Pitcairn, being a dish served well and truly cold.

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Order, Order

Season 1 · Episode 5

jeudi 16 janvier 2025 • Duration 34:27

Despite immense pressure to withdraw their testimony, key witnesses for the prosecution are secured. A campaign to undermine the victims to withdraw from the trial begins, led by Pitcairn women.

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Glenda, A Survivor’s Story

Season 1 · Episode 4

jeudi 16 janvier 2025 • Duration 33:47

Luke Jones meets Glenda at her home, in the UK. Glenda grew up on Pitcairn but now lives in the UK. She was abused growing up but told no one, until she was contacted by Kent Police during Operation Unique. This is the first time Glenda has recorded her story and it is very emotional. Glenda is supported in the room by her therapist and friend Sandy. And what about justice for the victims and survivors? Some fear the risks to the Island are too great to take this to trial. Politicians and lawyers around the world fiercely debate whether there is a case to answer.

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Have you Ever Wanted to Disappear?

Season 1 · Episode 3

mercredi 8 janvier 2025 • Duration 36:19

What is the history of the Island of Pitcairn, its myths and realities? Born from the 1789 Mutiny, the mutineers, led by Fletcher Christian stumble across Pitcairn. Handily wrongly located on maps, this is their opportunity to escape the British Navy and disappear, today all Pitcairn families are descended from the mutineers and their Tahitian ‘wives’. But they were not a contented community, marked by violence and death, which are marked on the Island in place names. Abuse survivor Glenda, now living in the UK, paints a vivid picture of life on the Island, eating breadfruit, swimming, the unique language, the red volcanic dirt. But her memories are not all full of sunshine.

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Up the Hill of Difficulty

Season 1 · Episode 2

mercredi 8 janvier 2025 • Duration 32:51

Kent WPC Gail Cox is chosen as the woman to bring law to Pitcairn. She sets off to Pitcairn to teach the locals how to Police themselves. At a drunken Pitcairn party, one evening, another girl makes an allegation of rape. Detective Peter George returns to Pitcairn and a distressing and astonishing picture begins to emerge of child sexual abuse on an unimaginable scale.

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Paradise, Lost

Season 1 · Episode 1

mercredi 18 septembre 2024 • Duration 27:08

In Kent, UK, Police Officer Peter George is asked to investigate an alleged serious crime: the rape of a child. The crime is not in England but on the remote Pacific Island of Pitcairn, and what Peter and his colleague find is a complicated story. They decide that modern British law and policing must be taken to this worryingly lawless Island, but how to implement an entire legal system on a remote Pacific island? And what are the secrets that are hidden in plain sight?

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Introducing: The Pitcairn Trials

Season 1

lundi 9 septembre 2024 • Duration 01:41

Halfway between Peru and New Zealand is a tiny volcanic island, a little known British Territory. The community of Pitcairn is home to 37 people and a terrifying scandal. In The Pitcairn Trials, British Journalist Luke Jones uncovers a story of historic abuse in a remote place where prosecuting secrets and challenging centuries of power has left deep scars on generations of women and girls, and brought a unique, lonely, pacific island to the brink of extinction.The Pitcairn Trials is a chilling lesson in what human beings can be capable of when they think no one is watching them.

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