At last, a piece of excellent news
timesofmalta.com, today
JAILED MOTHER SET TO WALK FREE AS CABINET APPROVES PARDON
A mother who was jailed for three months after being found guilty of withholding access to her husband for their son is set to walk free after the Cabinet agreed today to recommend a Presidential pardon.
The Attorney General last week advised the government to recommend the pardon. The President acts on the advice of the Minister of Justice.
The government said it took the decision after considering the circumstances of the case. This was the first Cabinet meeting after the woman was jailed.
I am so glad to hear this. The story had shocked me, and Ariadne Massa’s interview with the son, carried in The Times some days ago, brought out the full appalling circumstances of the case.
There is no woman alive who can force her 17-year-old son to do something he resolutely does not want to do, and in this particular case, nor should she have done.
A woman cannot, and more pertinently should not, force her grown son to see his father if he does not want to do so. It’s his choice. She can persuade, she can give advice, but force is quite clearly out of the question.
What was she expected to do – bind and gag a grown adult male, bundle him into her car, drive him over to his father, and unload him onto the pavement?
If he didn’t want to see his father, then he didn’t want to see his father. At that age, his wishes have to be respected, regardless of court orders. To insist on coercion by threatening his mother with prison is abusive.
By pursuing the imprisonment of his ex wife, the father of this young man merely proved her point about him – that he was an unfit father and all-round nasty person. Well, let’s face it, he abandoned his wife while she was still pregnant. What sort of man does that?
As his own son said in his interview with Ms Massa (and it was my own instantaneous reaction when I first read the court report), the courts of justice themselves should have understood that a man who pursues the imprisonment of his wife and blames her because his grown son does not want to see him does not care about his son in the first place.
You don’t prove how much you love your son by getting his mother jailed.
There’s an awkward angle to this news. Yesterday, Malta Today reported that the father’s lawyer – in other words, the one who got the woman jailed – is Robert Abela, Labour star candidate for the Most Feminist Government in History, and husband of top Labour Party official Lydia Abela.
He has got this woman imprisoned, and now his own father, the president, will have to sign off her pardon and free her.
50 Comments Comment
Reply to Spiru Click here to cancel reply
Tell me….does this mean it will still appear on her record or will the record be wiped clean?
Here is what she should have done:
Arranged with the father to meet her at the police station with her son.
Mother leaves son with father as witnessed by police on desk duty.
Son then walks away from father.
Son was with father so it is not mother’s fault.
Sorted.
But why should the son’s emotional well-being be further bruised and battered by making him deal with an ugly situation at the police station? Why distract him from his studies by making him face a situation he probably wanted to forget?
What you’re saying is OK if the whole problem was between adults only.
Because evidently both parents are immature and far too interested in their own piques then the son’s well being.
All well and good when the child is old enough to impose his wish but just think about those that aren’t and are continuously used by their parents to wage war and blackmail the other parent.
This is such a sad situation and we have only seen the tip of the iceberg, thanks to this publicised case.
Interested Bystander: totally wrong to involve son in such decisions and machinations. The adults have to sort their matters, not a juvenile.
What a load of tosh.
I’ve often thought that court orders about access seem to be more about parents’ egos than about the child or children.
This case proves the point. No one acting in the interest of a child would put him in the ghastly position of having to be frogmarched to the police station so that his mother won’t go to jail.
Listen, you muppets. I am taking the piss out of your system and also the fact that apart from a handful of protesters there was no lobbying done to change the law.
How many women have the vote?
Now if only the mother had been a hunter.
I believe the son did see his father in the presence of police – on Christmas Day 2010, when he (the father) tried to exercise his “right” to see his son over Christmas, despite his son not visiting him for several months previously.
I read it in the court judgement, which has since been taken offline.
I don’t like this word but in this case, I can’t help it: MISKINA.
Miskin ukoll it-tifel, with a father like that. As they say, anyone can be a father, but not everyone can be a dad.
I agree and I too was appalled when I heard about this woman’s imprisonment.
My only question here, though, is this: was the son aware that in the eyes of the law, his mother risked jail?
If he was, shouldn’t he have made the sacrifice and visited his father, even if this was against his own wishes, in order to keep his mother on the right side of the (ridiculous, in this case) law?
[Daphne – Absolutely not, ma tarax. It is completely wrong to cooperate with injustice – far more principled to fight it no matter the consequences. What happens if everyone behaves like that, cooperating with unjust rulings and laws instead of defying them? Nothing changes and it becomes a downward spiral. It’s not as though we haven’t had enough experience of that in Malta in various spheres. And anyway, do you think for one moment that this young man thought his father would request his mother’s prosecution?]
If, by my fighting injustice, I would be knowingly condemning my mother (or father, or brother) to prison, then I would unwillingly cooperate. If, on the other hand, I was the one risking imprisonment, it would be a different story altogether.
Of course, if this young man had no idea of the consequences it is an entirely different story. I am not judging, just asking.
If he knew the consequences, that’s just one more reason to sever all ties with this despicable man who claims paternal rights but knows nothing of paternal duties.
Not just rights and duties, but paternal behaviour, too. What real father would put his child through all that, simply to exercise his own, selfish, “rights”.
It’s about time that Maltese chauvinistic men realised that a father must earn love and respect from his children by his own behaviour towards them, and that such love and respect are not “rights” which come with the “territory” of being a father.
The above comment sounds like Franco Debono on a quixotic mission.
Justice is not an absolute and sometimes the lesser of two evils has to be chosen.
The law is not there to be observed on the basis that it is compatible with an individual’s value judgement. That would be a recipe for anarchy.
Actually I can imagine Franco Debono behaving like this father were he in a similar position. Only a narcissistic parent could behave like that.
Makes one wonder whether this was mere coincidence or whether the ex-husband foresaw the possibility of a presidential pardon and thought of all possible ways to preempt it.
Son gets her imprisoned, father pardons her. You can’t make this up. Great news but only in Malta.
I beg your pardon? Are you high?
SC is talking about the father’s lawyer, Dr. Robert Abela and his father, the President of Malta. He /sheis not talking about the 17 year old son and his father.
Ouch, talk about family matters. He’ll say he was looking after the interests of his client next.
As a lawyer of course, nothing wrong in that.
I have always been highly sceptical of our ‘justice’ system. In my books, it is only those who are at fault that should pursue the legal route.
In doing this, they can only ‘gain’ something, be it time or anything else.
On the other hand, those who are ‘right’ have nothing to gain by seeking redress in our courts. These lose time and do not gain anything except that what was theirs in the first place, and this is only ‘maybe’. When one sees Maltese court judgements and rulings, one cannot help but notice diverse sentencing and rulings for offences which are similar to each other.
It seems like the law is not the same for everyone. The ruling in this case was especially abhorrent, while the ruling on the Mellieha attack of last week verged on the ridiculous (if not on the tragic).
To add on top of all this, those who are sent to prison for serious crimes have their time considerably reduced for a variety of reasons. In short, if one needs to seek redress in our courts, may God help him/her.
Absolutely right, Another John. And everybody knows it!
Our justice system is a complete joke. The rampant abuse of suspended sentences especially springs to mind. Criminals systematically get away with it, while the law-abiding inevitably get screwed. Our lawmakers, lawyers and the judiciary have a lot to answer for, if not in this world, in the next.
I really admire this mother. She didn’t force her son into something he did not want to do.
One could find plenty of parents who force their children into what is only good to them.
Still parents with a submissive character would never accept a no from their children. They are so used to saying yes to everyone that they expect their children to do the same. Probably they are even shocked by having children of strong characters.
Lex injusta non est lex.
Truth be told, the courts are medieval when it comes to this issue of visitation rights.
Indeed, why should a father who, fully wittingly and knowingly, abandoned his child, be accorded by the court full rights to visit and have access to the child? Frankly, the court is only co-operating with the fathers who abandon their children.
I cannot see how a father who has abandoned the wife and children to set up home with another woman (and children) expects that he be given the same rights with respect to the child as though he never left the matrimonial home.
This is not totally related to this post.
However, this case is symptomatic of hundreds of others where a husband who has abandoned his family and (in some cases) philandered his way through life finds an accomplice in the court which accords him very generous access rights and times.
It is wrong and, frankly, immoral. The Court cannot condone such behaviour and, yes, in some cases, children are worse off with their fathers in their lives rather than without.
Well, I happen to think that the woman who abandons her home and children should not be given custody of her children as happens in most cases. As it is, the Courts almost automatically grant custody to the mother in rulings which are totally unjust to the children and father.
It is equally anguishing to the dedicated, selfless father who truly loves his children, to be reduced to seeing his children a mere four hours a week just because his wife found a better specimen.
So we celebrate when justice is done but do nothing to rectify the fact that some idiot sent her to prison in the first place! The thing that passes for justice in this small country of ours is a joke.
Ma naqbel maghkom xejn.
Kif kien ihares it-tifel lejn missieru kieku ma iggilidx ghalih b’kull mod possibli?
Forsi kien jghid li missieru qatt ma impurtah minnu? U biex inkunu cari, il-qorti mhux taqbad u titfek il-habs, ikun hemm sentenza etc. So she was advised.
Forsi baqet timpika? U sorry ta…imma under 18 jibqu tfal u jaghmlu dak li nghid jien. X’iggifieri ma ridtx jara il-missieru? Dak xorta kien ghadu u jibqa missieru.
Hekk nifimha jien.
[Daphne – Tifimha hazin, mela, Steve. U turi li qatt ma kellek guvni ta’ 17-il sena d-dar. Imma int darba kellek 17-il sena. Il-mummy kieku kienet kapaci tisfurzak tmur tara l-missierek? U kift – kienet tigbdek minn xahrek u tkaxxkrek tul it-triq? Ta’ 17-il sena jekk ma tridx tmur taghmel 4 sieghat fuq is-sufan ma’ missierek, huwa d-dritt tieghek li ma tmurx.]
Tfal ghandi and just about that age.
Niddiskuti, nifhem u hafna drabi nara kif nakkomodhom….pero f’ affarijiet serji (u li tara il missierek hija xi haga serja) id-decizjoni finali tkun tieghi u tal-mara.
[Daphne – All well and good, but how do you actually force a 17-year-old youth to visit his father and stay put for four hours? Bring out a whip? Withdraw all privileges (and thereby make him resent his father even more), escort him to his father’s house in handcuffs?]
Kieku inkun sew jekk ta’ 17-il sena inhallihom jaghmlu li iridu f’affarijiet daqshekk importanti…kieku id-dar gungla. Jien ukoll kelli dik l-eta.. li ma kellix suppervja…u kelli rispett ghal ghax min ghandu il-gid tieghi ghal qalbi u ghandu missjoni li jmexxini.
[Daphne – Steve, those who don’t rebel at 17, which is the appropriate age, are setting themselves up for problems later on. Few things are less attractive than rebellion at 40 and 50. Look at Franco and Jeffrey. They were nerds and they waited until now to get it out of their system. Too effing late.]
Kemm tifimha hazin, Steve. Mela ta’ 17 it-tifel/tifla huma xi bicca ghamara, jew propjeta, jew xi baqra jew hmar, igorrhom fejn trid int?
It-tfal ma humiex propjeta tal-genituri taghhom.
Il-genituri ghandhom obbligu jiehdu hsieb it-tfal minn kull aspett imma ma ghandhomx dritt jimponu fuq it-tfal specjalment jekk ikunu waslu ta’ certa eta’.
Jien ghandi wild ta’ ghaxar snin u ga ghandu sens u maturita kbira. Jaf x’inhuma id-drittijiet u l-obligazzjonijiet. Ma titrattahx bhala bicca ghamara tghid!
Jiena minn dejjem kien idejjaqni l-fatt li l-qorti tiddeciedi sahansitra l-granet meta t-tfal ghandhom imorru jaraw lil missierhom.
Jista dan it-tifel jew tifla dak in-nhar li jmissu jmur jara lil missieru m’ghandux aptit johrog mid-dar u jixtieq joqghod relaxed ghall-kwiet u ma jkellem lil hadd per ezempju?
Hafna tfal jispiccaw jaraw lil missierhom gol playing fields u mhux fir-residenza minhabba xi ragun jew jekk tkun ix-xita jispiccaw joqghodu fil-karozza. dik hajja!
“…jaghmlu dak li nghid jien”.
Franco iehor, dan.
Is-suggeriment tieghi lil Labour huwa li ma jbiddel xejn. Dan kapaci jghamel aghar minn hekk.
U mhux ridikolu kien Franco meta qal lil Bondi qieghed tghir ghalija meta cempel it-telefon jghidlu li il-mobile huwa mitfi jcempel quddiemu u jibqa jghid li huwa mitfi. Dan veru ridikolu. KBURIN LI HUMA HMIR.
“Malta Today reported that the father’s lawyer – in other words, the one who got the woman jailed – is Robert Abela, Labour star candidate for the Most Feminist Government in History, and husband of top Labour Party official Lydia Abela”.
Star candidate of a party which proposes to give the right to vote to sixteen-year-olds. Great! According to this star candidate’s reasoning, it seems that our youth will have the right to participate in the selection of MPs, MEPs or local councillors, but it seems they will not have the right to decide whether they wish to see their father or not.
You would quote malta today where it suits you don’t you ?
[Daphne – Yes.]
Well said, Daphne. At last some good news and common sense.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121015/local/it-torca-ordered-to-pay-maximum-damages-in-bwsc-libel-case.441199
There must be some conspiracy in the courts. It’s uncanny.
The fact that she will be released from prison is a good thing.
However releasing her on the basis of a pardon rather than a revocation of the unjust sentence implies that she was guilty.
It makes it seem as though the state is doing her some big favour rather than giving her what she is due.
True. It would have been much better if the ruling was reversed, after appeal, in court rather than in this manner.
[Daphne – Only the Constitutional Court can overturn a judgement by the Court of Appeal, and there are specific grounds. Also, by the time it was over, she would be out of prison anyway. Now that she is out of prison, she might still be able to try that.]
I hope she does ….that’s why I asked early whether the pardon would mean that her prison sentence is on her record.
Meanwhile, the court judgement seems to have been removed from http://www.gov.mt. It was there until last Thursday.
Daphne, I have a question. Does this mean that parliament has indirectly acknowledged a lack of faith in the judiciary that handled this case by, in effect, over rule a court’s decision?
My thinking as well. I think that either the judge did something very wrong or else we are setting someone free just because she seems innocent.
When I first heard this story I said but the judge must have seen the case and decided the mother really deserved it maybe for spiting the father or something.
When I found out that this is a 17-year old boy I started to see that this was not a simple case of the mother keeping the kid away from the dad.
If I heard well the judge gave the maximum sentence possible – which would mean that this woman really deserved it in his mind – so now that parliament and the president have revoked the sentence shouldn’t the judge tell us what he was thinking?
One last point. I always remain impressed with these sentences. So a paedophile walks free whilst a mother who did not take her son to see his father gets jailed?
Feeling appalled was an understatement when I read about this poor woman’s imprisonment. I was very sad, angry, outraged…Words failed me. Feeling extremly sorry for the mother and the son.
Now the news that she is going to be pardoned does not make one feel rejoiced either. This mother should never have been sent to jail.
I was pleading with some lawyer friends to help her, willing to pay her legal cost, but was told that only a presidential pardon could set her free.
I felt despair. Even one day imprisonment for this mother is an utter injustice.
Her ex husband is not fit to be a father. What kind of a father is he? knowingly let his son suffer by sending the mother to jail?
Were that magistrate and that judge really acting in the best interest of this 17 year old young adult?
Whatever happened to the so-called children’s rights to family life? This boy’s father abandoned him before he was even born. The only family he has ever had, mother and son, was broken by this mother’s imprisonment. What a shame!
This woman should never be prosecuted in the first place. Her ex husband, on the other hand, ought to be put on trial, for his despicable behaviour, for his abandonment of his young family & unborn son, for torturing his young adult son by sending the mother to jail. (Isn’t it another form of psychological abuse?) Not a trial at our law courts, of course, that’s too much to ask or that’s just many decent people’s wishful thinking. He should be trialled by his conscience, at least. If he has conscience, one suspects.
Sometimes somewhere something is terribly wrong in our society. Common sense, common decency, humanity & humility are sorely missing.
My heart goes out to this mother and her son.
Truly a case where the law is an ass and our courts even bigger ones.
I just do not get the inconsistency of our courts. People get suspended sentences for all sorts of crimes against society, and here a woman got sent to jail in what was an essentially a private matter between a father and son.
How can a woman realistically force her 17 year old son to visit his father when he does not want to?
Pull him by his ear or kick him on the seat of his pants or threaten to flush his mobile down the toilet?
Doesn’t the judge who sent this poor woman to jail have any teenage children of his own?
This poor woman should have not been jailed in the first place.
OK, so my wife prevented me from seeing the children in my home and forbids them to see me outside. I tried seeing them through the police station but they were quite traumatised by this and there is no provision in the station to change nappies, warm milk for the baby etc.
I haven’t seen my children for one year now except for once when I got to see them from a distance across the street, and my youngest did not even recognise me.
She forbade them to even cross the street. What other option do I have but to take her to court seeing she has ignored all the instructions for access using a variety of tricks (failing phone battery, no credit on phone, not enough internet bandwidth for skype etc)?
I am at the point of desperation. I think my wife deserves not only jail but a life sentence because she has sentenced me to a life of torment.
By the way she threw me out and I did not abandon her. But I am in same boat as this teacher and I know what he is going through, for all you know he hasn’t seen his son for ten years.
[Daphne – I don’t believe you. Under Maltese law, one spouse cannot throw the other out of the marital home, even if that spouse owned the property before marriage, let alone if it was bought in both names. Also, no wife even seeks to throw her husband out when there are babies around at the nappies and bottle stage, but rather the opposite, unless he has done something gross like have an affair. I am always suspicious of men who whinge that their wives don’t allow them to see the children. I always feel they’re only telling a part of the story that makes them look nice.]
She threw me out, changed the locks ,and no explanation, and yes baby in the nappy phase still, two years have gone and still i have not been allowed to enter the home, what do you expect me to do? Force entry? Why dont you believe me? I swear it, i have had no affair, never even looked at another woman, why wont anybody help me, i am indepths of despair. Tried the police but they were hipeless, tild me to stop wasting their time, they had real crimes to solve, this is the greatest crime of all, my wife deserves a life sentence. This presedential pardon is yet another nail in my coffin, at this rate my son will be 17 before i ever get to see him. He wont even recognise me.
[Daphne – ‘She threw me out, changed the locks’. Not legal in Malta. It is in fact a criminal offence. That’s why I don’t believe you.]
Perhaps the judge was angry because the rise he is getting in salary is not big enough
However satisfactory the end result of this story is, there is much which has been omitted from the press releases/stories.
On the surface, the judgement was defective although as explained by people in the know, the Court operates within the legal parameters and sometimes the Judge’s hands are tied.
Maybe because the law is an ass?
Pertinent details were left out like, why did this case take eight years to be finalized, presumably after judgments were meted out several times before reaching appeal stage? Why did previous judges not interview the son and the father, separately and take into account what they had heard in passing judgment? Was the son playing games? Was the father lying? What about the mother?
The transcripts of the trial will never be made public but even so the way the events unfolded raises doubts and speculation which undermine the repute of the judicial system.