Justice isn’t blind. She’s just plain dumb.
Occasionally, our faith in the cogs and wheels of justice gets a little knock: when a judge in the Appeals Court receives large amounts of cash in brown envelopes to reduce the sentence of a drug trafficker, for example, and gets a two-year sentence – as much as somebody who has stolen a couple of handbags and a car. Or when his alleged co-conspirator has yet to face trial for the same crime, and we know that when and if he is found guilty, his sentence is not going to be much more than those two years, even though his crime, as chief justice, would have been that much greater. Whether you’re a kid who’s stolen a few purses or a judge who’s stolen the country’s respect for one of its most fundamental institutions, you get two years in jail and walk out after a few months.
You can stab your wife more than 20 times while she’s lying in bed beside your toddler son, then pour lavatory cleaner over her as she dies in the balcony, and get a seven-year sentence. Yes, it happened, and her name was Diane Gerada. Or you can force yourself on a drunken adult woman who’s gone down to the beach in the middle of the night with some men she’d only just met and get twice that plus another year for good measure.
You can be in your 20s and rape a grown woman once – in circumstances far removed from the psycho-serial-rapist-with-a-knife-pouncing-out-from-a-doorway-in-a-dark-alley’ scenario, and get 15 years as one man just did. Or you can be in your 60s, make a habit of repeatedly raping your mistress’s nine-year-old daughter whenever you find yourself alone with her, and get six months less than half of that.
And of course, people are confused and they are angry. Why wouldn’t they be? Here they see an old man repeatedly penetrating a small child whose mother he lives with and getting seven years. They see Denis and Anthony Pandolfino, who each made a habit of sodomising the young brothers entrusted to their care by their wayward mother and filming the proceedings, get just 10 years each. And they see a young man who thinks that the drunken tourist he’s just picked up in the small hours wants to have sex with him, and who forces himself on her anyway when she says she doesn’t, get 15 years.
Lots of people think that what this says is that forcing yourself on a grown woman once is a far more serious crime than repeatedly buggering a small boy for the video-camera, or having sex with a nine-year-old girl who lives with you. Some people think that even seven years would have been too many for the beach rape – and believe me, I am struggling here to not to put the word rape between inverted commas, lest I stand accused of disparaging my own gender rather than of merely having lived long enough to be cynical of the exploits of some of its members. And they think 15 years would have been too few for the twisted pensioner.
Women are more sympathetic towards other women in cases of violent crime. But there’s a flipside. Women can also be more sceptical, more down-to-earth and more realistic about these things. The key people in the trial by jury of the two Libyan men found guilty of raping a Swedish woman on a beach in St Julian’s were men: the prosecutor, the defence lawyer and the judge. I imagine that the jury was composed entirely of men or that there were no more than one or two women members, because that is usually the case with juries. So there they were, getting themselves all worked up over the fact as they saw it: that the woman will never recover from the trauma of going down to the beach with complete strangers she’s just picked up at night, or who have picked her up – one isn’t quite sure – and then being unable to fight one of them off successfully.
Well, guess what, guys? Lots of women have had trouble with men they’ve gone down to the beach with at night and lots more women will. They’ve got over it and they will get over it. No woman in her right mind is ever going to begin to compare this situation with having some maniac jump out at her from behind a pillar in a deserted car-park, brandishing a knife and holding it to her throat while he rapes her, giving her a couple of stabs for good measure. The two scenarios are entirely different and every woman knows that. Most women will get over scenario 1, horrible as it is. No woman will get over scenario 2.
I found that I couldn’t read the reports of the proceedings in that particular trial without a mounting sense of outrage at the overtly patronising attitude towards women in general, and towards that woman in particular. I couldn’t put my finger on what was upsetting me exactly, and still can’t, but the closest approximation I can reach is that here we had the polar opposite of that other standard male attitude, which is: she was a slag and she asked for it/God knows how many men she’s had sex with, so why is she making such a big deal about this one? Here we had a courtroom of men behaving as though it was the sex itself that was a violation, rather than the over-ruling of the woman’s will in penetrating her.
This is what I picked up: oh my God, this filthy Libyan Muslim has penetrated a nice Swedish Christian girl. And nobody stops to ask what the nice Swedish Christian girl was doing on the beach with the filthy Libyan Muslim and his friends in the first place, drunk and in the middle of the night, when she didn’t know them from Adam and they had just picked her up off the street. A quick look through the comments beneath the on-line court report and you can see that the rape is secondary to the fact that the one doing the raping was a Libyan while the one on the receiving end was a Swedish girl. I somehow don’t think the same emotions would have been generated had the Libyan raped another Libyan, or had another Swede raped that girl. Another man who was there was jailed for 10 years for complicity. He didn’t rape the girl, but he aided and abetted the other one in doing so.
We might have been told that justice is blind to nationality had there not been a near-identical case of beach-rape in St Julian’s not so long ago. A young Maltese man picked up a 14-year-old Scandinavian girl, also drunk and also in Paceville, and took her down to a nearby beach. Some of his associates followed them and thought they might get a bit of the action. Why should he have all the fun? After chasing their’ friend’ away, two of them pinned the girl down and another one raped her. The ‘friend’ ran for the police.
According to the young Maltese rapist’s own account in court, he approached the couple and saw that they were almost naked. He fought the other young man off, got hold of the girl and raped her in front of his friends, one of whom pinned her down by the shoulders. He then told his friends: “You see how I succeeded in having sex with her?” Note the fact that the girl was 14, and not over the age of consent, as in the case involving the Libyans and the Swede. The young Maltese man who raped the girl got a four-year prison sentence and – bingo! – it was halved on appeal. So he got two years for doing the same thing this other man who got 15 years did, and to a 14-year-old, what’s more. His aiders and abetters, both Maltese, each got two years, where the Libyan accomplice got 10 years in the same circumstances.
The four-year sentence was low already, but the reason given for halving it was that the rapist was 17. The law provides for softer sentencing for those who are not yet 18. But there is a strong case for arguing that rape is an exception and not to be treated like handbag theft. If a young man is already a rapist at 17, and exhibiting such contempt for others, then this is not just a passing problem to do with teenage rebellion, hormones and growing up. It is more fundamental than that. If he is raping girls at 17, then his contempt for women is manifest already, and he is going to be raping and beating them 20, 30 and 40 years down the line.
The hairdresser Alfie Rizzo was killed by a young man that age whom he had picked up in Gzira and taken back to his salon for sex at night, but there was no special pleading because of his age and it didn’t occur to anybody to cite mitigating circumstances. He is now serving a life sentence and it is not even worth bothering pointing out that he was Libyan. Had he been a Maltese man stabbing his wife 20-plus times and then covering her in bleach as she lies dying, he would have got seven years.
People don’t think justice is blind. They think that justice is just plain dumb. They think that it all depends on whether the jury likes your face or your nationality, whether prejudice is brought to bear or not, whether you have a good lawyer or not, and on the luck of the draw when it comes to which judge is hearing your case. When a pensioner rapes a nine-year-old on a regular basis and gets seven years, and a young man forces himself on a young woman once and gets 15 years, you can understand why people are angry and confused. And you can’t blame them. Malta comes across as a strange place where raping a child repeatedly carries a far lower penalty than raping a grown woman once. There’s a lot of explaining to do, and a lot of sorting out of those proverbial wheels of justice.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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Superb article. Very well said Daphne.
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!
At last someone has put the jigsaw pieces together to show just how bad things are being run.
Two comments: 1) I hope that the Ministry of justice/Judiciary respond to this article. Accountability is central to any concept of justice, and the old fashioned ‘judge knows best ‘ syndrome no longer holds water. And I hope they don’t run behind a screen of ‘respecting the judiciary’.
The second point is that this would normally have been considered news story in other countries not a commentary. But that, I suppose, is the difference between being a reporter and a journalist! The first simply states the bare facts, the latter gives us the whole picture. Perhaps someone should explain that to the sad people who make up the so called Institute of Journalists
Very well said, Daphne. Now here’s something else which is really worth a look:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081026/local/kmb-picks-up-gaddafi-prize-for-mintoff
[Daphne – I was invited to the ceremony…..]
Daphne, very well said! Impeccable and sublime!
It’s not only the Italian judiciary system that doesn’t work well apparently. Would I be right if I venture to say that racism dominates the Maltese courts as well? I would expect that at least in court this were to be avoided, but no it tends to emphasized even more! Pitiable!
@ Daphne
[Daphne – I was invited to the ceremony…..]
Nooooo, really?
Did you go? I’m sure Karmenu spent most of the time chatting to you, didn’t he? (If you did go, of course.)
[Daphne – No, of course I didn’t go.]
Well, there’s nothing to add here. Well said!
We just cannot afford to have judges who are biased by race, as is very obvious in this case.
Is it not possible to impeach the judge involved ?
Surely the lawyers defending these men can find some legal recourse .
[Daphne – Of course not. It’s not a question of impeachment, either. The law allowed him to hand down that sentence, and he did so. So he was within his rights, and within the law.It’s the law itself that’s wrong, in failing to distinguish between a serial rapist attacking women in dark alleys and men forcing themselves on women who go down to the beach with them at night.]
Daphne – Had you advertised the fact that you would not attend, there’d have been numerous would-be stand-ins to boo him (and worse) while receiving the prize.
[Daphne – I don’t have any problem with my hosts. I only have a problem with the recipient of the prize.]
All I can add is a huge “Prosit” to Daphne. If I had to post any comments the moderator would have to delete them. I will not waste anybody’s time on a Sunday afternoon.
Finally someone is writing in the media about something that has been annoying me for quite a while. There is definitely something wrong in the sentences being given out. This is even more worrying after the case of the judges who were paid to give a lesser sentence
I refer to comments by LONDON AREA where he / asked if it is possible to impeach the judge involved . obviously he was referring to the judge who sentenced the 2 Libyans . Well to be exact the sentence is being shown in a bad way compared to the ridiculous sentence handed to that guy who decide to have his way in a number of occasions with a 9 year old kid FOR ME THAT WAS SCANDALOUS . After all the presiding judge at that jury had to take in consideration that it was a 9-0 guilty verdict
This will sound stupid, really. But what is the real difference between a magistrate and a judge here in Malta? I ask sorry for my lack of knowledge.
[Daphne – A judge is more senior than a magistrate. Magistrates sit in the lower courts, and judges in the high court. Criminal trials in the high court are decided by a jury, not a judge – but are presided over by the judge, who decides on the sentence.]
As the article clearly points out, sentencing by our courts of justice really seems to be in a mess. It looks as if ‘blind’ justice takes a good look at the accused from underneath its blindfold before the sentence is handed down.
On a lighter note, some days ago Daphne described Gozitans as ‘people who do strange things to children and animals’, and Gozo as ‘the island of gang-rapists, goat-shaggers and horrible murders.’ Did you notice that of all the horrible misdeeds listed in the article above, not even one occurred in Gozo. It seems as if the bigger sister island is not much better than the smaller one.
[Daphne – Ahem. I made a point of leaving Gozo out of the equation this time round. But a highly relevant question is this: if the Libyan got 15 years for forcing himself on a woman just the once, what will those five Gozitan men, including the Said brothers, get for repeatedly gang-raping a schoolgirl? Life? Or three years and a suspended sentence?]
@ Luca
what a question to ask Daphne (asking her if she went to the Mintoff’s Prajs Dey
The woman has a spine.
Very well said Daphne. The verdict in the Libyans case was that the nine jurors gave a 9-0 verdict. I am under the impression that when the accused is Maltese, you never get a 9-0 verdict, the reason being that any of the jurors, if approached by any of the accused family after the trial, can easily say that they did not find the accused guilty, and get away with it. In the Libyan’s case, with no family of the accused around, they were not even bothered to ‘protect’ themselves.
Well, since the case was highly publicised in Sweden, I strongly suspect that whoever decided on the sentence (handed down to the two Libyans) wanted to send a strong message back to Sweden (and its press) that raping of foreign students is not tolerated in this country. Had sentencing followed the same weights and measures as had been used for the heinous crimes mentioned in the article, the ‘would be’ light or ridiculous sentence would have be too damaging to our fragile tourism industry, which is about to feel the effects of the global financial meltdown. A light sentence would have also made news in the Swedish media. So they went the opposite way and decided to make news by handing down a very heavy sentence.
(X’tahseb Daph?)
[Daphne – I don’t think so. I think it was a mixture of anti-Libyan prejudice and the inability of the men present to distinguish between what happened on that beach and the kind of rape that women really do fear. I don’t think you can describe this man as a rapist. Using that definition, some married Holy Joes I know today are rapists, going on the anecdotal evidence of some of the things they did in their younger years.]
@ Meerkat :)
I know….. I was kidding!
@ Daphne
Thanks a million for the explanation. Very helpful, as always ;)
Excellent column, as usual. But well done, Edgar. When was the last time that a Maltese jury unanimously found a Maltese citizen guilty? Does the final verdict of the jury (9-0,8-1,7-2) affect the length of sentence? If it does, then we can blame spineless juries for the final sentence, not the judges.
“This is what I picked up: oh my God, this filthy Libyan Muslim has penetrated a nice Swedish Christian girl”.
Am I the only one around here who happens to know Libjans who are not Muslim and Swedes who are not Christian?
I cannot understand why religion had to be dragged into the discussion on this questionable verdict. Some one earlier on commented on the possibility that this judgement was meant to give a message to Sweden and other interested countries that Malta is safe as a destination for young students. In my humble opinion, this comment makes sense. In recent years we had a number of cases of rape on young students (including males) reported where the perpetrators were non-Maltese.It is no secret that the local tourist industry does rely pretty heavily nowadays on the presence of foreign students arriving here to learn English.
Now, if one HAS to drag in religion into such issues, then one might as well mention that in countries which are predominatly muslim , a woman’s evidence in court is worth half that of a man’s and in an allegedly rape case, unless evidence to support the rape accusation is given by four men, the accusation will not hold any water. The victim risks being stoned for allowing herself to be seduced whilst the rapist gets away scott free. If the victim harms the rapist whilst defending her virtue, she risks being hanged for her efforts. If the victim ends up pregnant as a result of the rape, she is allowed to have her baby first and then stoned or handed to her family to do what needs to be done in order to safeguard the family honour. In the case of a homosexual rape, both rapist and victim are deemed guilty.
There could also be a possibility that a man coming from such a culture may not realise that in most countries , crimes like rape may be dealt with in a different fashion that back in his own home land.
Just a few thoughts on the subject, that’s all.
[Daphne – There are probably more non-Catholic Maltese than there are non-Muslim Libyans. And Christian is a reference to culture, not religion. As for the rest, we’ve been through that before. May I remind you that in Malta, until the 1990s, a man could sell off the family home, the household goods and chattels, without his wife’s knowledge or consent; that he could take out a passport for their children without her knowledge and spirit them away; that his word was law and hers did not count? ]
True enough.
Daphne,
your article as usual rush in proverbially where angels fear to tread. I have no special attraction towards Libyans, or Arabs for that matter, but the inconsistency in Court judgements is too glaring to be ignored. Surely the Commission for Justice which is presided by the President himself, should be making some investigation for itself. The only parallel I can think of is in Formula One, where Ferrari somehow ends up getting lesser penalties than their opponents for the same misdemeanour.
Daphne, I’m not quite sure why you are judging the Swedish woman? So a woman (be she Swedish/Maltese or whatever) can’t go for a walk to the beach without the fear of being pounced on? Even if she had intended on going down there to have sex (or whatever, she was old enough to make that decision) with this guy (or guys) does she not have the right to change her mind?
Having said that I do agree that the other sentences are way too lenient, but I still think the 15 years this guy got was justified. It’s just the 60 year old grand-father should have got life!
[Daphne – You’re not quite sure why I have an opinion about the woman? Let’s see now: where shall I start? She’s on holiday in a foreign country. She drinks way too much. She walks out of a bar and finds some men there trying to pick her up, men she’s never seen before. It’s the early hours of the morning. They ask her to go down to the deserted, dark beach with them and she goes. They are overheard asking her for sex – they’re strangers to her, remember – and she is overheard saying that no, she’s doesn’t want sex. But still she goes down to the beach with them, the only woman with a bunch of strange men who are pestering her for sex, in the middle of the night. And you expect me not to have an opinion? This is the sort of argument the defence lawyer should have put forward.The right to change her mind? That’s a legacy of the dangerous US new thinking on sex: that a woman can go to bed naked with a man, lead him right up to the brink, then say, hang on, I’ve changed my mind – and if he doesn’t hang on, then my god, it’s rape and he can end up in prison for years. Please. Next time you’re lying there – well, I’m going to have to use a euphemism here – raring to go and nearly out of your mind, and she says, forget it, I’d don’t feel like it, I’d like to hear you say: I respect that. We had a word for women/girls like that in my day – a hyphenated word.]
Yes, ‘justice’ in Malta is a scandal but then again, so are most things. And it’s not only Malta – there have been plenty of ludicrous sentences handed down in the UK too.
The root of the problem is that – as far as I know, anyway – the only qualification to become a judge is that you’re a practicing lawyer for 10 years, or something like that. Judges and magistrates receive a pretty paltry salary for the task they’re entrusted with, dispensing justice to the kind of people who would in many cases kill you as soon as look at you. It’s not a recipe for top judiciary. The cynics say that judges and magistrates are failed lawyers. Personally, I disagree with such a statement but there may be a grain of truth.
In theory the law usually allows judges and magistrates a wide discretion in sentencing because no two crimes are exactly alike and the judge is supposed to look at the whole picture (age, previous record or lack of same, premeditation or lack of same and several other possible extenuating circumstances) and sentence accordingly. In practice, you get the results cited above.
The only practical, but not ideal, solution is to tighten up the law and limit discretion. There is a danger that this would lead to a relatively stiff sentence in exceptional circumstances but I think that society would be better served on the whole in this way.
You also have something of a point when you say that the lack of women involved in this case shall we say hampered justice being done in the sense that women should be able to understand another woman’s frame of mind better than a man can. (let’s be honest, guys, how many men really understand women ? – their thought processes are completely different). However, this ultimately works both ways and people in the elevated position of judge should be intelligent, sensitive and subtle enough to neutralize the differences in male and female thinking processes.
So it boils down to this – we need more stringent qualifications – and better remuneration – for our judges and magistrates. Otherwise we may end up with the elephant man as a judge!
And just to pick a nit – as far as I know the accused has the option in the high court to have his trial heard and decided by a judge alone (i.e. no jury), so not all high court cases are decided by juries. As far as my memory serves I think there were only a couple of such cases in the last 30 years but I stand to be corrected as I’m a fairly irregular follower of the law reports.
P.S. Women’s brains are smaller but work more efficiently, basically due to hormonal effects – they’re like a small engine with a turbo-charger, as opposed to a large diesel with lots of pulling power, like a man’s. That’s also why women multi-task better and men are more steadfast. It’s also why the thinking processes in women and those in men are different.
[Daphne – You’re right about the judge and jury. Disgraced judge Patrick Vella chose to be tried by a judge, rather than by a jury.]
Edgar Gatt.
If a unanimous 9 -0 guilty verdict is never reached by jurors to protect themselves when the perpetrator is Maltese, doesn’t it follow that cases in the higher courts are deliberated by a jury to protect the Judge?
[Daphne – No, of course not. That one is tried by a jury of one’s peers is part and parcel of the British justice system which we have adopted. It is supposed to be the fairest and most democratic system possible: a person, in theory, is not subjected to the prejudices and abuse of power of a judge, but is instead tried by his peers. The jury system actually works really quite well. The trouble we see is not with the guilty/not guilty verdict, but with the sentencing – so what we are seeing here in Malta is a partial circumventing of the ‘trial by one’s peers’ system, by means of this erratic and unpredictable sentencing.]
In Sweden if a woman says no or stop, the man has to stop.
A woman should be able to wear what she wants and go wherever she wants to. Malta feels very safe but it only takes one idiot to ruin your life. Men can never really understand rape, for most of us, it’s having sex with somone we don’t really like.We had a number of students that were raped and never bothered to report the cases, most of them felt a sense of deep shame and guilt.Paceville could be made so much safer for everybody, but it’s a total mess right now.
[Daphne – Stanley, in places like Sweden and the US, and increasingly Britain, where the dynamics between the sexes are regulated by fearsome laws akin to those of the Inquisition, men no longer know how or if to approach a woman – if they ever did – and women are left wondering why no man ever makes a pass at them. All the laws in the world won’t change the simple fact of nature that a woman only finds a man’s overtures offensive or worthy of calling down the law if she finds HIM unattractive. If she fancies him, then he can shove her up against the photocopier and instead of ringing human resources she’ll be making more frequent trips to that photocopier on the off-chance of finding him there. THIS IS A FACT. The mistake men make is not in misjudging what they say or do, but in misjudging the potential receptiveness of the woman they say or do it too. Overly confident men seem to be programmed to think that every woman fancies them, and get a shock when they discover this isn’t so. Less confident men make fewer mistakes of this nature. Yes, I agree that women should be able to wear what they want and go where they want, but when it comes to going down to the beach in the middle of the night with men you’ve never seen before who are asking you for sex, then I really have to say to this woman those words I thought I would never hear myself say: honey, you asked for it, and what you need is a good slap.
The laws you mention – under the guise of ‘respecting’ women – actually do the very opposite. They return women to the days when we were mere chattels handed from the care of our fathers to the care of our husbands, and to the care of our brothers if no husband showed up – because we couldn’t take care of ourselves. Women are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves – we are far more capable of taking care of ourselves than men are, because we are cannier. The wheels of a woman’s mind are always turning – and yes, even during sex, lest you are wondering. What you are saying here is that there are laws to protect a woman from the consequences of heading to a dark beach with a gang of men who are badgering her for sex because she is too brainless, stupid or generally incapable of making the right decision in a situation like that. In other words, the poor hapless woman can’t look after herself. Those laws are patronising, and they allow women to behave like utter idiots and then have some even more foolish man thrown into jail. Hasn’t anyone here noticed that it isn’t the woman’s life that has been ruined, but the lives of two men? I can never condone this kind of behaviour by women. I think it’s disgusting – about as disgusting as that of the men involved, except that they have paid a price. Haven’t you noticed that the only ones sticking up for this woman here are men? We women are all thinking: ha, she says she didn’t want sex, and yet she went down to that beach with them.]
Great article. You should post this in your newspaper column, maybe it gets read by the people who can take any action on this forum of injustice.
It should be that every lawsuit creates a precedent. But though we’re proud of this our remnant of English law, apparently it is followed only in certain cases and not in others.
[Daphne – It is my newspaper column. I forgot to post the usual note.]
Quoting: “[Daphne – Of course not. It’s not a question of impeachment, either. The law allowed him to hand down that sentence, and he did so. So he was within his rights, and within the law.It’s the law itself that’s wrong, in failing to distinguish between a serial rapist attacking women in dark alleys and men forcing themselves on women who go down to the beach with them at night.]”
I don’t agree there.
What the law states, in the case of ALL criminal offences and not just rape, is “punishable with imprisonment from (for example) 2 years to 5 years”. I say ‘for example’ because there are crimes which are punishable from 5 years to 15, others from 10 years to life etc etc…
The job of the jurors is just to give a verdict of guilty or not guilty. They have NO say on the amount of years imprisonment. They can say that they suggest to the judge that the sentence be given on the low side, and they must state their reasons why they think so.
When the jury decides on guilty or not guilty, the result given is applied whether they’re 5-4 or 9-0 (and btw this was the first time I’ve heard of a 9-0 verdict too).
At his whim, the judge then decides whether, in the case of a crime punishable from 5 years to 15 years, whether he gives 5 years, 15 years or somewhere else in the middle.
Let me bring the example of wilful homicide. One can get scot free for homicide if done under self-defence. However the line of demarcation of self-defence is very thin. It would make no sense if for self-defence one gets acquitted, and for all other homicides one gets life. For example, if a guy knows that someone is coming to his house to kill him – if the killer enters his house and the defendant kills him using a weapon proportionate to the one of his attacker that’d be self-defence, if the killer enters the house with a pen-knife and the defendant shoots him with a gun… there’s no self-defence! But should the defendant get a life sentence? Same as if the killer is on the doorstep about to jump through a window, and the defendant opens the door and ‘tackles him’ outdoors (to protect his family inside?) that’s bye-bye self defence plea. Only that doesn’t mean that the defendant should get a life sentence, same as someone who premeditates and kills someone out of vehemence should.
This is where the ‘saggezza’ of the judge should come through. The judge shouldn’t base his judgement on nationality, race or such frivolous items, but on the facts on how the crime took place.
[Daphne – I know all of this. I’ve lived with a lawyer for 24 years or so…and even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be much of a current affairs columnist if I didn’t. My point is that the law allows too much room for manoeuvre in sentencing. This can be a good thing where there is justification for clemency, but it can be a bad thing where it is used as the tool of prejudice.]
Talking about dubious sentencing,
what about that chap charged with defilement and kicked out of his home because a 16 year old girl saw him naked?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081012/local/man-arraigned-after-exposing-himself-in-his-home
Don’t you think a word of caution could possible have sufficed? Also if it were a 16 yr old boy who spotted a woman in her home he would be arrested as a peeping tom?
[Daphne – This is exactly what I mean. Oddly enough, in the ‘Fifty Years Ago’ section of The Times, some years ago I had read a report of an Englishman at Birzebbuga who was arrested for offending public decency because he preferred to be naked in his own home in the summer. Apparently, the villagers used to make a point of walking up and down the street outside his window so as to be offended by the heathen practice. And the poor man ended up with the police behind the door. I read it and I thought: kemm kienu minn ta’ wara l-muntanji; how horrible it must have been to live in a 1950s Maltese village. And now I find that nothing has changed.]
I dont usually comment here but this article calls for a little note:
Prosit, really. It takes a rare kind of courage to argue in favour of a human being who is on the wrong side of the law because of his actions, and on the wrong side of public opinion because of his nationality, on the grounds of the assymetric application of ‘justice’.
It is good to hear that not everyone jumps on the bandwagon.
I can’t say that I disagree with anything you said.
The behaviour of the girls was really stupid, but we are talking about a crime here. The Swedish girls did not commit a crime.They are guilty of stupid behaviour but not a crime as such.I have been living with a Swedish woman for the last decade so I do understand what you are saying and agree with you but I guess that the law courts deal with crime not silly behaviour.
I don’t think that I was sticking up for the girls really, just said that they have different written and unwritten rules when it comes to sex. I am not saying that I agree with them. It’s hard to draw the line, there are a lot of men that say that a woman who goes out wearing a short skirt and a wonderbra is asking for it, so not too sure how as a society we can decide when a woman overstepped the mark.In this case, it is kind of clear, and you are right of course that they were really dumb.They have to live with their mistake for the rest of their lives.
I read this article in the Independent – You might find it interesting.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/is-helen-mirren-right-about-date-rape-915788.html
[Daphne – Thank you for the interesting link. I’ve posted the article so that more people will read it.]
What the media forgot to mention in the 15yr old girl gozitan rape case is that she willingly tries to seduce every man she sees! The girl has quite a name for sleeping around… and no one forces this upon her. Her parents have been telling her to stop running around for ages. Truly unbelievable for a 15yr old but nonetheless true. Still it doesn’t justify how desperate these men were!
[Daphne – I thought as much when the case first broke, and posted comments to that effect beneath the story on timesofmalta.com. Little changes in human nature, or even in human situations, and the village bicycle got a name because she was a factual cliche. Unfortunately, the case has come across as that of five men sequestering a virginal schoolgirl and raping her, possibly on her way back from school. It is more a case of what in the US would be called statutory rape: having sex with someone below the age of consent. The men still need a good rapping for their crassness, though, and for their contempt.]
@ DR C
a 5/4 jury verdict is a non-verdict…. cannot be given in court. As to the rest correct.
@ Daphne
I agree with most of her solid arguments. Yet i would like to point out that in my opinion – the crucial argument is that some court punishments / judgements / prison terms are simply too lenient. The judge handing out the judgement post verdict in the recent jury was right yet the 15 year prison term seems excesively high compared too super light judgements by other courts – when in fact it is not!
[Daphne – That is exactly what I wrote.]
“what about that chap charged with defilement and kicked out of his home because a 16 year old girl saw him naked?” Careful here. An informed source told me there is more to that story than what was actually reported.
[Daphne – What did he do, then? Flip open the curtains and give her a flash? Come on – it’s nothing a knock on the door from her father wouldn’t have sorted out in minutes. What’s this girl going to do when one of them jumps out at her from behind a bus-stop at night – scream and pass out?]
It might have involved stalking.
[Daphne – Stalking is not a crime. It becomes a crime when the stalker threatens you using the post or the telephone, or when he/she damages your property or uses violence on your person. So maybe the ‘naked’ accusation was a way of nabbing him. Stalking really should be made a crime because it is an extreme form of harassment.]
Yes, probably that was the case (the nabbing him bit).
Kenneth,
Unless the report purposely left out a lot of details, this was really a stupid case that should never have reached the courts. The paper specified that there was NEVER any contact previously!
So you think this poor sod should have his name in sexual offender’s register (if we had one) and be branded a paedophile because a 16 year old looking into his house was traumatized because she saw him naked? Come on! At the most a word of caution by her Dad as Daphne said would suffice!
If a 16 year old boy reported seeing a naked woman in her house HE would probably be arrested! However he would probably never report it in the hopes of another show …
I would add that stalkers never stalk neighbours – what’s the point when they can sit at their window!
[Daphne – That’s right. I really can’t understand why people have lost the ability to deal with normal human situations without recourse to the law: send a male relative round to give him a good talking-to and it’s over in minutes.]
The tone of the article suggests that the reporter was quite amused too!
@ David Buttigieg:
If the case was exactly as reported, I agree with you that it would be a silly case.
So no, if the case was as reported, I wouldn’t think that this poor sod should have his name in a sexual offender’s register. Neither should he be branded a paedophile.
I only wanted to point out that the case could not have been that simple, and I have reason to believe the informer who told me that stalking could have been involved.
Regarding stalkers not stalking neighbours (because they can sit at their window) this would be true if the teen or the “flasher” never went out of their town or village. Stalking does not only happen near one’s home.
Seeing Daphne’s comment, I would like to add that we do not know for sure whether “a male relative” did or did not give him a good talking-to.
I have no interest in neither defending the teen, nor attacking the “flasher”. I don’t know either of them. I’m just raising some possibilities.
“E.C Monday, 27 October 0238hrs
What the media forgot to mention in the 15yr old girl gozitan rape case is that she willingly tries to seduce every man she sees! The girl has quite a name for sleeping around… and no one forces this upon her. Her parents have been telling her to stop running around for ages. Truly unbelievable for a 15yr old but nonetheless true. Still it doesn’t justify how desperate these men were!”
If one goes by the sentiments expressed in some earlier comments, then one might as well conclude that raping a prostitute is no crime either. What has also been sidelined in this interesting exchange of opinions is that rape is also known to be committed on old, (really old) women, men, and women who are covered from head to foot with all types of stifling garb , and that includes burqas. What possible acceptable excuse will the rapist have then., that the woman should not venture out not unless accompanied by a male relative or in the company of a dozen other females or covered by a blanket as happens in places like Afghanistan , (which country was used in an earlier discussion in comparison with Malta) ? And what about the increasing incidence of grown up men gang-raping younger men in the streets. We have seen that reported in the papers of late too.
One must be extra careful not to be seen to be giving the wrong message in the media to rapists or would-be rapists, or run roughshod on the sentiments of rape victims or their families.
Daphne….superb article, maybe even groundbreaking. What perhaps we all forget is that Malta is so small, everyone knows everyone else.I have no doubt that there are more third party contacts between judges and those who are being judged, and I am sure that this happens mainly in civil, and not just the criminal, field. Something that may have escaped all and sundry is the fact that a magistrate was credited with being a Grand Master of a Masonic Lodge here in Malta. Now it is a basic tenet that brothers in a lodge have to help each other, no mater what. I happen to know one of the highest members of english freemasonery, also a judcant, who told me clearly that even in judicial circumstances, they are bound to help their brother if he is in the dock. How about if the juduciary had to come clean and state who of its members is a Freemason? I have lost a case aganst someone, whom I have heard is a freemason. There was no way he could have won the appeal, but he did. This old boy network in Malta works. It permeates even political divisions. At the risk of being pronounced a conspiracy theorist, I would like to hear everyone’s views on the subject.
Ahh… bewildering court sentences. Here is my two cents.
A few years ago, a man was sentenced to a four year old jail term for the rape of a woman.
During the summary court proceedings, it emerged that the alleged victim had known her assailant and that they had been actually dating for a few weeks. Later on in the proceedings, the woman, pardoned the man and withdrew the complaint lodged to the police and which had given rise to the court proceedings. (Everyone is free to draw his/her own conclusions – but my personal view it does not sound like the typical behaviour of a rape victim).
In any case, although the alleged victim’s complaint was withdrawn, since the alleged rape had been perpetrated in a public place, the police could prosecute ex officio.This left the prosecution in the uncomfortable position of seeking a jail term for the alleged perpetrator, when the alleged injured party had pardoned her agreement and had incidentally resumed her relationship with the accused.
The alleged perpetrator was found guilty but in passing judgment, the Court, having taken into consideration the pardon of the alleged victim, sentenced the accused to a four year term suspended for two years.
End of it? – No!
Immediately after judgement, the Attorney General appealed and successfully argued that a suspended sentence was not permissible for the offence of rape, or for any criminal offce which carries a jail term exceeding four years (the jail term for rape is 3 – 9 years).
The Court of Appeal reversed the judgment and sentenced the man to four years imprisonment. The man is currently serving time.
He’s Libyan by the way.
Daphne- Ok, so not only did she not change her mind, but she said no before! That, I didn’t know. Yes, I agree she was stupid to go down to the beach with these men, but as Stanley rightly said she’s guilty of being stupid (and being drunk), and not guilty of a crime. Also, as Stanley rightly said, she probably expects that a no means a no, so didn’t see the danger in going down to the beach with them when she’s already said no. Stupid, yes, and very much so. It’s still rape in my book!
[Daphne – Ask your women friends and relatives what they think. But be sure to tell them that she went down to the beach at night with a bunch of strange men who were asking her for sex.]
I still think you are treading dangerous ground here. She was stupid and naive to go down to the beach with them, but that doesn’t give them the right to do what they want. I’ve been in a situation where I was with a woman, back at her place, and at the very last minute she goes ‘stop, I can’t do this’. She had invited me back to her place, I don’t think she was drunk, and I don’t think she was naive. She invited me back to her place for one simple reason(and it wasn’t a mixed message!). Then for whatever reason she changed her mind. When I say the last minute, I mean the last minute. I stopped. I’m your proverbial red-blooded male, so it wasn’t easy, but I did. Are you saying that had I ignored her very definitive ‘no’ and forced my self on her, I would have been been within my rights?
[Daphne – It’s so sad that legalisms have come to regulate intimacy between men and women, don’t you think? It’s like a nightmare world dreamed up by Ben Elton.]
“It’s like a nightmare world dreamed up by Ben Elton”
Except in Ben Elton’s world the man saying no would have most likely been publicly persecuted.
@ Steve:
Suppose that I know that in the next room there is a person who has a gun and had told me a few minutes earlier that he wants to shoot me. Suppose I enter the room. The person shooting me would be guilty of murder, but it still would be my fault that I am killed.
I think the same applies here
@Steve,
“. Are you saying that had I ignored her very definitive ‘no’ and forced my self on her, I would have been been within my rights?”
Well perhaps not “within your rights” a male in that situation can hardly be considered a rapist and locked up for life so to speak!
@David, ok, not a rapist, but common decency dictates that a no means no whenever it is uttered.
@Kenneth, ehhh? If I entered the room it would because I was naive and stupid, and would have believed that his earlier threat was a bluff. This Swedish girl, was in my opinion naive and stupid, and thought these men were just being machos, and wouldn’t force the issue. I maybe wrong
@Daphne, yes I agree it is very sad, but the example I gave, had nothing to do with and legalisms. I stopped out of common decency, and perhaps I’m old fashioned in thinking if the woman says no then it’s not going to be much fun anyway. Had I ignored her no, would I have automatically become a rapist? I don’t think so. Should the law be involved? Probably not. I guess it all comes down to common decency, which unfortunately a lot of men (and yes even women) seem to have lost (or never had)
I think the effect of bringing the law into areas previously governed by decency and common sense has led to people losing their sense of decency and common sense. Try living in the UK!!
@ Steve:
That’s what I’m saying. Naivety and stupidity are nobody else’s fault.
@Kenneth: “Naivety and stupidity are nobody else’s fault”
Maybe so, but going back to your example, the guy who shot you, would still be guilty of murder no matter how stupid or naive you were to enter the room!