Unfortunately for the victims, that’s how criminal law works. To quote another Latin term: Dura lex, sed lex.

[Daphne – I don’t think Fairy was alluding to the law, JoeM. Try telling anyone that Hitler was innocent because no court found him guilty.]

If all proceedings have to stop, doesn’t that also include the media ban aimed at stopping any sort of public debate about his involvement in the abuse of boys who were in his care?

Not that the Maltese court is in any position to ban discussion anywhere but in Malta, of course.

That’s interesting reasoning, JoeM. History is replete with outrageous despots who died before they faced justice. Not that I am comparing Brother Bonett to an outrageous despot – but arguments have to be taken to extremes to test their veracity. So, taking your argument to its logical extreme, Adolf Hitler is an innocent man because he killed himself to avoid capture and so never stood trial. His men, too, were innocent – at least those legions of them who evaded capture and the Nuremberg trials. And death, as you put it in Latin, solved everything for their victims. I don’t think so. Do you?

For all intents and purposes, Brother Bonett has always been and will remain, innocent. Proceedings against him will now have to stop.

Stop whipping a dead horse, for justice’s sake!

It certainly must be most nightmarish to know that so many people with a hot line to heaven are lobbying for your early demise.

I think it was in bad taste to show that the Church was looking after him in their home for priests and that the members of the Missionary Society of St Paul mourned his loss.

Just for the record he wasn’t a priest but a ‘brother’.

Doesn’t the fact that this case is being dragged for so long, mean that once a sentence is pronounced they might appeal because the case took so long in the first place?