Haven't we heard about this before?
This report in The Times rang a bit of a bell Haven’t we heard about this case before? Didn’t it involve a video or something? Or was that another bunch of bored men raised in oppressive rectitude in a Gozitan village? If memory serves me right, the ‘rape’ in this case is actually what the Americans call statutory rape – the sex was consensual, but the girl (or boy, in some cases) is below the age of consent. I wouldn’t bother prosecuting an 18-year-old boy/man who has sex with a 15-year-old girl: a sound ticking-off would serve the purpose because, after all, it’s normal for an 18-year-old to be attracted to a 15-year-old. It is far from normal, though, for grown men to prey on school-girls – whatever the wildest dreams of some of them – and yes, I think the law is correct in this regard when classing it as a criminal act, particularly when there are so many of them involved. Even if she went in willingly, and even if she is the village bicycle – and there is no proof of that – it is still deeply, deeply wrong for grown men to take advantage of an under-age girl’s vulnerability. It is criminal. For this same reason, I believe that there should be legislation which makes it a criminal act for men to pay to have sex with women kept in captivity by their pimps. Don’t just prosecute the white-slavers. Prosecute the customers, too. Women should be free to charge a fee for sex. That’s up to them, after all, and lots of women do it in an indirect way with their partners, even their husbands, keeping them happy in exchange for getting what they want. In that case, the man who pays for sex is free to do so, too. But when the woman is a white slave, that changes everything. And for a man to pay another man to have sex with his ‘slave’ is quite obviously a criminal act – except for the fact that it isn’t.
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This is not statutory rape at all.
In terms of Article 201 of the Criminal Code, there is a presumption that the carnal knowledge was unlawful when the victim is under twelve (12) years of age (not 15).
What is being alleged here, is that the sexual intercourse was done without the victims’s consent i.e. by violence, ergo rape.
If the sex was consensual, the applicable legal provision would be “defilement of minors” – Article 203 of the Criminal Code. There is an aggravation if the victim is less than 12 years of age (on the presumption that the victim could never have consented freely to the sexual act, due to his/her mental immaturity).
Interestingly (or sadly), local jurisdiction strongly emphasises that for the criminal act of defilement of minors to subsist, the victim must have been “capable of being defiled”. Essentially, if the victim was initiated to sex, then there is no crime, if the sex is consensual, as the minor, would already have been “defiled”.
To put this into persepctive, an adult man may have consensual sex with any girl aged 12 and over, with legal impunity, provided she has lost her virginity to another man. It is the latter who would risk prosecution.
I leave the moral debate to you. Any ulterior comments on this one is utterly superfluous.
(Daphne – That’s why I said it’s what the Americans call ‘statutory rape’, because we call it by another name. Statutory rape covers consensual sex with a minor and has nothing at all to do with rape – that’s why it’s statutory, not actual. Our law clearly needs to be amended to cover cases like this, and to be more specific about statutory rape. The phrase ‘defilement of a minor’ carries an in-built loophole if it is argued, as in a recent case, that the girl had already slept around a bit.)
I’m sorry for the girl. She will live with that scar for a very long time, possibly forever. I don’t know the girl but knowing the guys makes it hard to think she consented to be gang-raped by the tal-Ganga brothers. It’s also a pity for their elder brother, who has got nothing to do with his brother’s violent, arrogant and illegal behaviour, but can’t distance himself enough from it.
(Daphne – The sooner Gozitan society opens up, the better. The argument that these things happen in Malta too holds little water. The larger island’s population is much, much bigger. Gozo’s population is tiny, and when there’s a crime involving sex or murder, it’s always something abnormally ghastly and complicated, with an AMORAL rather than IMMORAL undertow.)
Sad and yet so common an occurrence.
I wonder if anyone of you has heard of tales regarding Gozitans who after many decades abroad as emigrants decide to return with their savings and invariably end up having arranged marriages with girls who could be their nieces and from day one getting pregnant!
Until some years ago, this was the order of the day for many old (dirty) men…
So are these men the younger brothers of Nadur’s mayor Dr Chris Said?
(Daphne – That’s the problem, you see, Aldo. Because these places were so cut-off in the past (….), many of those who live there have ended up with the same surname. Hence the preponderance of Said in Nadur, of Galea in Bidnija, and of Vella in Mellieha.)
I have never had the need of using a prostitute’s services until now, but, if I ever feel the urge, how could I know if the woman I’m paying for her services is a free agent or a white (or black, or yellow, for all that matters) slave?
I would expect it would be rather difficult to prove such a case in court.