They want to gag us all
Lawrence Grech, one of the victims of Giannella Caruana Curran's paedophile clients, meets Pope Benedict in Malta last April, when he was given a full account of the nature of the abuse.
The three priests who are being tried for grave crimes against children in their care have come up with yet another bald attempt to stave off what I hope is the inevitable prison sentence that hangs over their head.
Seven years into the proceedings, they have gone to the Constitutional Court, claiming that their fundamental human right to a fair trial has been breached by the media coverage of the graphic accounts of abuse, given by the men who say they were their victims.
The priests’ lawyer, Giannella Caruana Curran – let’s give her the benefit of the doubt; she may be doing it pro bono because she is a committed Roman Catholic and these are men of the Church – has asked the Constitutional Court to safeguard their right to a fair trial by upholding a court-decreed ban on reportage of the proceedings of the actual trial.
She might not have noticed that nobody is actually reporting on the trial proceedings because that trial is being held behind closed doors. Quite frankly, we don’t even know whether that trial is taking place: that’s how closed those doors are.
Instead, we are discussing what those who claim to be the victims have told us. There can be no ban on that, and if one is somehow obtained, then we can all flood the Constitutional Court ourselves with our own claims for violation of our right to freedom of expression.
Within 24 hours, the priests went to the Constitutional Court once more, this time to ask for an extension of the press-coverage ban to cover the constitutional case they had just filed.
Their nerve (and their lawyer’s apparent legal idiocy outside the realm of criminal law – no such ban is possible) is unbelievable. But then desperate times probably mean desperate measures.
When Dr Caruana Curran was contacted by reporters – or perhaps it was the other way round, because you never know – she refused to release a copy of her clients’ application to the Constitutional Court, citing – oh dear, oh dear – the ‘ban on media coverage’.
But there isn’t a ban on media coverage of the Constitutional application, is there, because her priests have only just asked for one and the Constitutional Court has not yet pronounced itself.
Besides, Dr Caruana Curran probably knows, or at least I hope she does because now I’m getting worried, that it’s not up to her and her clients to decide whether to release a copy of their application to the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction. The application is available in the court registry to anyone who asks to see it, and who can then have a copy made. Obviously, Dr Caruana Curran is a little confused here, because with cases before the criminal courts, files are not made available to the public or the press.
Also, the 2003 ban on press coverage and reportage cannot be brought into play outside the narrow and strict confines of the actual child abuse trial. That ban does not apply to any Constitutional Court hoops her clients might wish to jump through to gain time. Indeed, it took mere hours for information about the Constitutional application to leak from the law courts to the newsrooms.
Dr Caruana Curran and her clients are really pushing their luck with this one. Bans on reportage in child abuse cases are given ordinarily to protect the victims, not the accused. But in this case, the victims are actually angry that the ban was imposed, which is partly why they chose to tell their stories to the media in Malta and internationally, and why they met the Pope and told him too.
Using Dr Caruana Curran’s yardstick, the Pope was in contempt of court by talking to these men about their experiences and expressing his sorrow for what happened. The Archbishop, too, should have been brought before the magistrates’ court and fined. And the world’s media deserve a good lashing, because they reported on the meeting and some of them even interviewed the men about what they went through.
The 2003 ban was not a general ban on discussion of the case, despite these current wild attempts to portray it as such. It was a specific ban on the publication of the priests’ names, of photographs or films in which they might be identified, and of testimony during the compilation of evidence (pre-trial). That was the extent of it.
This was followed by a request, which was upheld because the prosecution strangely did not object, for the actual trial to be held behind closed doors. A trial behind closed doors is not the same thing as a ban on media coverage. With a ban on media coverage, the information is available but cannot be published. With a trial behind closed doors, the information is not available so de facto cannot be published. But if the victims wish to speak to the press after they have testified, they are free to do so, and the rest of us are free to discuss what they say, in print and elsewhere. And nobody can stop us.
It is sad to see that these priests and possibly also their lawyer are of the undemocratic and atavistic mindset in which justice is a private matter between the accused and the state, and the rest of society has nothing to do with it. When crimes are petty and irrelevant, the rest of society doesn’t give a damn but is kept informed nonetheless. When the purported crime is of such a serious and relevant nature, it is crucial that justice is seen to be done and that society is kept informed.
If the priests have nothing to hide and are truly innocent, then they have nothing to fear from public scrutiny of their trial. Indeed, they should be the ones asking for that public scrutiny rather than the opposite.
Hearing a case like this behind closed doors, particularly when the victims don’t want to be protected against intrusions on their privacy, is really an abomination. It has led to the absurd and unsavoury situation in which we hope, rather than know, that the priests are being properly tried.
We didn’t even know exactly what the priests stood accused of, or the full extent of their alleged crimes, until those who reported them, on the verge of despair at the constant delays and lack of information, called a press conference last year. I went to that press conference, spoke to some of the men, and left feeling sick.
And then I understood why Dr Caruana Curran and her clients had asked for the trial to be held behind closed doors.
But I also understood that accurate reporting of the details would have been impossible, certainly not in a newspaper or on television, because those details are so revolting. They belong on child-porn sites, and are unfit for publication elsewhere. What you have read in newspaper reports of that press conference is necessarily anodyne, all the gruesome and perverted details wiped out.
I’ll tell you one of the lesser experiences described to me by a victim at that press conference. One of the priests had gone on sabbatical to Canada. When he returned, he told the boy to come to his room because he had a present for him. The boy – rejected by his mother at birth and brought up in orphanages all his life – was happy and excited because nobody had ever given him a present before.
He went eagerly to the priest’s room and was shown not the toy he hoped against hope that he might be given, but a chocolate bar (and my first thought on hearing this was “Not just a pervert but cheap, too”). The priest told the boy that if he wanted the chocolate bar he would have to do something for it. He then fellated the boy, who was only nine years old and hadn’t a clue what was happening.
The priests are now asking the Constitutional Court for ‘remedies’ to the years of media discussion of their case, so as to ensure that they get a fair trial. What they are probably after is a suspension of these proceedings and a move for retrial. The last person who tried that sort of thing was Noel Arrigo, now serving time in Mount Carmel Open Prison.
Unnamed sources (the less I say here, the better) were quoted by The Times as having told its reporters:
“The ban has to be respected by everyone and not just by one of the parties involved. There cannot be a situation whereby people, both in the media and outside, divulge certain details of the proceedings without giving the whole picture. Otherwise, it will continue being an unfair process and totally one-sided.”
If I were a betting girl, I’m guessing that I wouldn’t lose too much money working out who those sources were. It’s not like anyone else has an interest in saying that.
The convoluted legal reasoning, designed to impress the unthinking, is a dead giveaway, too. The (stupid) argument here is that the priests are in the unfair position of being unable to give their side of the story because of the ban, while their accusers ignore the ban and talk.
Well, the priests and their lawyer are the ones who asked for the ban in the first place. If they are so mad keen on giving their side of the story to us, the reading public, then all they have to do is ask the court to rescind that ban, and then hold a press conference.
But they won’t be doing that, will they.
Instead, they have asked the Constitutional Court to gag us all. And that’s quite apart from the fact that the ban applies only to the trial proceedings and does not cover my fundamental human right (or anybody else’s) to say and write what I wish about what is said outside the court-room.
I’m told there’s some rather nice lettuce in Marsa that needs watering, but three priests and their lawyer will have their work cut out. Well, they can always use it to make sandwiches instead for the long haul through the Constitutional Court.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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Very well said.
(And welcome back!)
Hear, hear Daphne. The three priests and their legal representative are fooling no one. In fact, the interminable denial of justice for the victims is a sad indictment of our legal system. Years of dragging of feet have hurt the Roman Catholic Church no end.
They can drag their feet as much as they want, but they stand little chance of serious punishments in front of another case they have with the Tribunal. They can mitigate the first but not delay the second, for sure.
What are you saying?
Pope Benedict said this in his homily on the granaries last year: “Our first reading at Mass today is one that I know you love to hear, the account of Paul’s shipwreck on the coast of Malta, and his warm reception by the people of these islands. Notice how the crew of the ship, in order to survive, were forced to throw overboard the cargo, the ship’s tackle, even the wheat which was their only sustenance. Paul urged them to place their trust in God alone, while the ship was tossed to and fro upon the waves. We too must place our trust in him alone. It is tempting to think that today’s advanced technology can answer all our needs and save us from all the perils and dangers that beset us. But it is not so. At every moment of our lives we depend entirely on God, in whom we live and move and have our being. Only he can protect us from harm, only he can guide us through the storms of life, only he can bring us to a safe haven, as he did for Paul and his companions adrift off the coast of Malta. They did as Paul urged them to do, and so it was “that they all escaped safely to the land” (Acts 27:44).”
http://thepapalvisit.co.uk/Pope-Benedict-XVI/Apostolic-Journeys/Malta/Welcome-Address-Malta-2010
The Pope is ready to “throw the wheat overboard”. I’m sure he was referring to paedophile priests.
John, it was only when there was a global media backclash, that the Pope started to acknowledge, almost reluctantly, that there was a problem and that the Vatican was in the wrong. So, while the paedophile problem is not his making, if it weren’t for the global media, he would have tried to protect the church from these accusations rather than the victims – in true vatican tradition, I must add.
I look at it differently: in the true Catholic spirit he is on the side of the victims to whom he talked personally. We were told that at the Nunciature he cried with the victims after listening to what they went through.
I think it was the same press which called him Rottweiler.
I cannot deny that in the Vatican there are people whose main worry is how to whitewash tombs.
Is it a jury trial? If not, how can any amount of media reporting etc be held to prejudice a fair trial?
[Daphne – Valid point: it isn’t a jury trial. So no amount of media coverage can prejudice their right to a fair trial, unless we’re saying here that the magistrate is going to be influenced by what he reads in the newspapers.]
http://i.imgur.com/rfPr4.jpg
The maltese people should remeber, such cases, so next election they will not vote for the same govement ,i personally don.t want then any where near m,y door
[Daphne – Exactly what does the government have to do with this case?]
Who is it that you don’t want anywhere near your door?
The next government?
Henwood’s remark is so stupid that it indicates he will vote PL (Labour) come what may!! – really stupid
On the 11th September 1599 Beatrice Cenci parted with her head. So did her mother and her brother.
Beatrice’s grandfather was treasurer to Pope Ghislieri of Valletta Malta fame. Top Roman black aristocracy the whole lot of them.
The three were accused of conspiring to murder the pater familias, Francesco.
Francesco happened to be one of the most obnoxious human beings in history. Whoever is familiar with Shelley’s plays knows exactly what I am talking about.
In spite of an outcry of unprecedented proportions across the entire papal states the three Cencis had their plea of self defence thrown out by Pope Clement Aldobrandini and were beheaded.
Four hundred years have elapsed and the Catholic Church has come a long way since then. It does not seem like it is a very long way, though.
[Daphne – My God, that was a terrible thing. I wrote about it some years ago for one of my magazines – I can’t remember what context – and it made me so ill to think about it. Today we would know Cenci as the equivalent of that horrible man in Gozo who was killed by his son, the verdict at whose trial was self-defence, even though it technically was nothing of the sort, because the jurors were so traumatised, like the rest of the country, by the story of what the accused and his mother and siblings had to endure for decades. I was haunted by the story of Beatrice Cenci and the manner in which her family was tortured and executed in public, but what I found particularly hideous was the fact the youngest sibling, a boy of around 14 was spared but made to witness the torture and killing of his family.]
I wil never forget the footage shown on Xarabank of those children at the Grand Harbour ready to leave Malta for Australia. Lesti ghal halq il-lupu.
It’s all the Roman Catholic Church’s fault that those children had to go through hell. They starved in Malta. Their families got rid of them and sent them to Australia as if they were a parcel to be sent off. Probably those parents didn’t even know that Australia is on the other side of the world and they wouldn’t see their children again.
While the families starved, the Church encouraged people to have more children. People followed the doctrine and the final result was the abused kids in Australia.
Reasoning reminds me of sleepy geometry lessons at college.QED: Quod erat demonstrandum!
To say that you’re being overly simplistic would be a gross understatement.
Similarly, it is not the Roman Catholic Church’s fault that children were abused, but the fault of some of its members. Did the Church have anything to do with the economic situation Malta was passing through? No, it didn’t.
‘The families got rid of them’ – Wrong again. The families were told that they would be relocating their children to have a better future. The parents trusted the representatives of the Church to do the right thing and protect the children. The parents didn’t get rid of them!
Pity you weren’t around at the time to tell them where Australia was.
[Daphne – Yes, I agree with you that the parents were cheated and tricked into parting with their children. In many of the most horrible cases in England, children were shipped out from orphanages, where they were billetted away from bomb-target cities, after World War II, without their parents’ consent or even knowledge. The children were told that their parents had died in the war, and the parents were told the same thing about their children. When the scandal was broken by, I think, The Sunday Times in London just a few years ago, the stories it reported were incredibly heartbreaking. It wasn’t just the Roman Catholic Church, certainly not where Britain was concerned. ]
Finally, following your attempt to annihilate logical and critical thinking processes, kindly explain how following the doctrine (sic!) of having more children produced, as a final result, abused children in Australia.
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one shocked by this. When I told a few people that I was going to write about it, their reactions where ‘not again’, ‘it’s old news’, ‘you’ll be branded as an anti Christ.’ So guess what I did ? :)
http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs/view/20110109/alison-bezzina/back-to-square-one
I remember the John Profumo/Christine Keeler/Mandy Rice Davies scandal in the UK in the early sixties. Uk newspapers had a field day and those UK newspapers which made it to Malta were in high demand. Apparently local censors could not use their black felt pen as newspapers had pages upon pages as coverage of this trial with all its juicy bits.
compilation of evidence – inexistent word
[Daphne – Compilation of evidence is not a word. It is three words. ‘Inexistent’ does not exist. The word you want is nonexistent.]
pre-trial – doesn’t exist here, as don’t the notions of discovery etc – this is a common law concept.
criminal inquiry – that is the word you are seeking for and is the word carried in our laws.
[Daphne – Criminal inquiry is not a word, but two words. Legislation does not carry words. It uses them. In English, the adjective ‘criminal’, if it precedes the noun ‘inquiry’, would describe the noun, i.e. the inquiry is criminal. There is clearly something wrong here. Perhaps the law was translated by the ‘body of evidence’ people, or the those who gave, in the white paper on rent laws, grandchildren as ‘nephews and nieces’.]
And by the way Daph….http://www.thefreedictionary.com/inexistent
[Daphne – I think we’ve already been through this elsewhere on the blog. With Reuben Scicluna, I believe. Inexistent is used only in some strains of American English, and hardly at all. Most Americans use the proper word: nonexistent. ‘Inexistent’ was fed into Maltese English by a few people writing for the newspapers. I don’t wish to mention names, but one of them was Mona Farrugia, who used it all the time, and a couple of others are on the staff at The Times. I suppose they got it directly from ‘inezistenti’. Idiomatic English uses nonexistent. I don’t want to be a pedant about it or anything, but I think it’s a real shame when these little errors (which give away so much) go uncorrected and are repeated and repeated, when fixing them is simple and makes a massive difference.]
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110113/local/priests-lawyer-pledges-to-prove-media-ban-violation
http://metatalk.metafilter.com/20205/RIP-Bill-Zeller
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/07/bill-zeller-dead-princeto_n_805689.html