[Daphne – Did anyone say that the courts are swamped with this kind of request? Nobody did.]
What you actually said was this: “The police, apparently, receive many hundreds of these false or vindictive reports every year, but are still obliged to take the ‘accused’ to court, or so they say, because the law does not allow for discretion even if there is clearly no case, no medical certificate, no testimony, and no evidence, log-jamming the Family Court and creating a great deal of inconvenience for all involved”.

The police cannot act on these reports – if any are indeed lodged – because the threat, intention, or the formulation in one’s mind, to commit a crime is not itself criminal. There are lawyers who frequent this blog who can bear me out on this one.

[Daphne – You are wrong. Under the provisions for domestic violence, the police are obliged to pursue the case in court without first checking whether the report is false and vindictive, without a medical certificate, and even when the person who has made the vindictive report wakes up the next morning to the full horror of what s/he has done and writes formally to the police to withdraw it, pointing out that they have no case because s/he will not testify. The statistics released recently, showing an increase in domestic violence reports/cases failed to mention that much of this increase is due to a recent change in the law which obliges the police to proceed ex ufficio, without the consent of the party who made the report. The net result is that reports which were until then vindictively made and then immediately withdrawn, causing the report to drop off the list, are now being forced through without the consent of the party involved, and then dropped in court when the party who made the report either refuses to testify or says that the report was made vindictively. This is a crazy situation – any fool could have predicted that the new law would be wide open to abuse of this nature. A law designed to protect women who are regularly beaten to a pulp by their drunken husbands and who are too scared to testify against them is being abused, because it was so badly written, by all sorts out of spite, anger and irritation.]

It’s not a question of how Dr. Justyne Caruana would feel in a particular, hypothetical situation. Morality is not based on feelings.

@ John Schembri

If the case that you mentioned is true, it might be a case of malpractice. No surgeon can diagnose internal cancer just by a manual examination.

As a minimum one would need to have at least an xray and ultrasound and today an MRI would also be indicated.

@brian
Well let us reverse the tables. If I were a woman, I don’t have to work all my life, instead I’d find a richy rich husband, offer him some good sex and make him commit himself and marry me then divorce/seperate get half his money or threaten to take custody of the child which falls on the mother, unless he pays me. Then if I commit a serious crime such as murder I put up an innocent defencless look and get 4 years jail instead of 10 to 20 years just becuase I’m a woman. You can also get paid for sex instead of paying. It’s good to be a woman, I would have loved it.

My understanding of what that article is saying is that Maltese citizens or permanent residents of Malta are protected even if abroad from acts committed against them by other Maltese citizens or residents which violate Maltese law.

[Daphne – No. Speak to a lawyer.]

This cannot be strictly about fact (if as we are seeing from our little debate): two people understand this law so differently; let alone what our judges and magistrates would come up with should the matter come before them.

[Daphne – Yours is a lay interpretation, Jon. In a way, so is mine – the difference being that I’ve studied these matters.]

hehe i’m just putting in my contribution – this is a discussion..

Anyway, Article 5(1)(d) (Persons subject to prosecution) of the Criminal code say:

‘…a criminal action may be prosecuted in Malta – against any citizen of Malta or permanent resident in Malta who in any place or on board any ship or vessel or on board any aircraft wherever it may be shall have become guilty of any…offence against the person of a citizen of Malta or of any permanent resident in Malta’

[Daphne – You are quoting things out of context, and worse, mixing up the territoriality of the crime with the citizenship of the person. You are a Maltese citizen. Abortion is illegal in Malta. You go to Britain. Abortion is legal there. You have an abortion. You come back home. You cannot be prosecuted. Why? Because you didn’t commit a crime. Abortion is legal in Britain. Now let’s look at it the other way round. You are a British subject. Abortion is legal in Britain. You live in Malta. Abortion is illegal here. Instead of going back home to Britain to have an abortion, where it is legal, you decide to have it here in Malta, after finding a doctor willing to risk imprisonment and being struck off the register. You have the abortion. You are found out and prosecuted – because despite coming from a country where abortion is legal, you chose to have that abortion where it is not legal.

Ships, planes, vessels and the prosecution of a citizen in his own country for crimes committed thereon – that’s international law. It has nothing to do with territorial jurisdiction.]

You may feel totally convinced about what you are saying. However, there does exist an argument against it just based on this single article of the law.

[Daphne – This is not about conviction, Jon, but about fact. I really despair at what is happening in Malta, which is fast becoming a place where ‘conviction’ and ‘this is my opinion’ are seen as adequate substitutes for fact.]

@ Ms. Vella: Currently legislation permits forced treatment of severe addiction, if it is construed as a mental disorder and there is danger to the addict herself (or himself) or others.

Dr. Toni Abela’s ‘boast’ that he was the only lawyer to have succeeded in preventing a woman from flying abroad to abort her unborn child is further indication of how very few males (if any) are currently trying to stop their former partners from flying abroad to abort their unborn children.

If you could let us know where you gleaned the information that the Courts are swamped with this sort of request from, I would be glad to withdraw my statement that your article is based on the wrong facts.

[Daphne – Did anyone say that the courts are swamped with this kind of request? Nobody did. But if the law makes it possible, then yes, the courts will be swamped with cases of vindictiveness.]

By the way, I am a Labour sympathiser, not a Labour voter. Due to Labour’s attitude towards political violence and human rights in the pre-Sant days and, subsequently, their stupid stance on Europe, I have unfortunately had to cast my vote for the PN or AD more often than for Labour. With Joseph Muscat virtually promising the propoasl of divorce legislation if elected, the trend will probably continue.

So long as you are domiciled and resident in Malta, you carry Maltese rights and obligations where ever you go.

[Daphne – ‘As far as you know’: this is a fundamental issue, and not an opinion on whether the cake tastes good or not, so I suggest you check and discover that you are wrong. Your rights and obligations are not covered by the same laws which govern crime. Criminal law is territorial, with very, very few exceptions. If you murder somebody in Britain, for example, you have to be extradited to Britain to face trial. You cannot be tried in Malta for a murder you committed elsewhere. It’s the same thing with abortion. If abortion were illegal in Britain, and you had one there, you would have to be tried there, not in Malta – let alone when it’s not illegal in Britain.]

As far as I know, if the authorities have proof that a Maltese couple decide to have an abortion, even if in a foreign country which permits abortion, they would be prosecuted.

[Daphne – That’s for planning to have an abortion, not for having one. The planning would have to be done here, within Maltese territory. And that’s never going to happen because, whatever the law says or not, it’s a little bit hard to drag a couple to court and charge them with planning to abort. They will refuse to testify against one another, which is their legal right, and there the case falls.]

The same principle applies for euthanasia. It’s not a case that Malta doesn’t offer the service so you may seek it elsewhere. It is illegal under our law as would be the selling of drugs in a foreign state while on holiday for instances.

[Daphne – You are VERY confused. Of course you can go to a Swiss clinic for a planned death. Nothing and no one can stop you. However, if relatives accompany you, they can be charged with aiding and abetting – for that part of the aiding and abetting which takes place here, within Maltese territory. Selling drugs while on holiday – assuming the drugs are illegal in your destination of choice, you would be committing a crime THERE, not here in Malta. And so you would be charged THERE, not here. Do you have a vote?]