Robert Abela, have you no shame?
Does Robert Abela really think that walking out on a child before it is born means that you have its best interests at heart?
Robert Abela, one of the Labour Party’s star candidates, demonstrated his progressive and humane star qualities in court this morning.
Meanwhile, the woman he is trying to have imprisoned once more (for presumably not allowing a hulking great 17-year-old son to visit his father, when everyone who’s had one of those will know exactly how possible that is) has petitioned his father the President of the Republic for another pardon.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
It is also very unpleasant to see a Labour star candidate actively aiding and abetting a nasty little man in trying to get the woman he abandoned while she was pregnant jailed for ‘not letting him see his son, aged 17’.
The man had his son’s best interests at heart, Abela told the court. Well, what a peculiar notion of fatherhood and best interests he has.
Not to put too fine a point on it, would Robert Abela have considered his father to have had his best interests at heart had he walked out on his mother even before he was born?
Would Abela himself, now a new father, consider that the best way to demonstrate to his baby that he has its best interests at heart is to walk out on it and its mother?
Give it a rest, will you. I have absolutely no time or patience for men who walk out on their children – in this case, even before the child was born – and then spend the rest of their lives trying to stake some kind of claim based purely on DNA.
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On timesofmalta.com, this morning:
Pardoned mother was so controlling, she sat near son while he studied, court hears
The mother who was recently pardoned after she was jailed for three months for denying her ex-husband access to their son, controlled the son to the extent that she sat near him while he was studying, the husband’s lawyer claimed this morning.
The lawyer, Robert Abela, was making his submissions in court to an appeal by the 57-year-old teacher who, in a separate case, was sentenced to serve a one-month prison term after she was found guilty of breaching another court ruling related to access to her son.
The woman has asked the President for a second pardon.
Her lawyer, Ludwig Caruana, said that that the son was 16 at the time and his mother could not control him. Had she really wanted to stop him from seeing his father, she would have done so when he was younger.
But Dr Abela claimed that the case had become a trial by media. The mother, he said, conveniently blamed the child, who had not even been brought in as witness to substantiate the mother’s claims.
Dr Abela said that it was not true that problems began in 2011 but much earlier. The father had never gone to the police before because he wanted to avoid problems for his son. But when matters became extreme, he was left with no other choice. However, the mother ignored court orders time and time again.
The boy was scared of his mother, who controlled him and his father had his son’s best interests at heart.
35 Comments Comment
Reply to H.P. Baxxter Click here to cancel reply
Only in Malta would you find members of the First Family actively involved in partisan politics.
Are you for real? You forgot the Demarcos, Mifsud Bonnicis, Fenech Adamis.
[Daphne – That’s why he said ‘only in Malta’ and not ‘only in Labour’, idiot (and I do not generally address people in this manner, but you are insufferable. And insufferably stupid, too.]
Madonna dawn il-Mintoffjani hodor. They are so narrow minded and they always jump the gun.
Money talks for lawyers, as long as one’s pocket is lined with paper, anything goes.
Idiot, stupid – you gave him what he deserves.
Belti w kif, are YOU, for real?
Are you and your followers talking to the mirror?
I see you’re quite happy to dish it out, Silvio, but you’re not man enough to take it yourself.
Joe Xuereb: We have a President Emeritus, Dr. Fenech Adami, still getting involved in partisan politics !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Squalid individual.
If the boy was controlled by his mother, he would have gone to live with his father. If there’s one thing kids don’t like – it’s control.
Robert Abela is either daft or plain stupid. You do not control a young man simply by sitting next to him. You do so by performing what is known in wrestling as a full Nelson.
Would Dr Abela’s client have been happier if his son’s mother was out drinking at Paceville or on a dirty weekend in Gozo?
The mind boggles.
Il-flus l-ewwel u qabel kollox.
Let’s not be so quick to take the defence of the mother: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121021/opinion/The-story-you-didn-t-hear.441948
[Daphne – Total bollocks. We’re talking here of a man who hasn’t a clue what it means to be a proper father, of a son who knows this, and of a woman who writes about it when she has absolutely no experience of such things and writes, as usual, straight from the seat of her pants just for the sake of being contrary and difficult. If a man sends his estranged grown son a text message and the son doesn’t reply, it’s because the son doesn’t want to reply, end of story. What was he doing texting him, anyway? Why didn’t he ring – because he wanted to save money? Simply fathering a child doesn’t make a man a father.]
On the other hand – isn’t Robert Abela part of the PRATTIKAMENT most feminist government we ever had (to live with)?
Sitting near your child/children while they do their homework is not controlling but caring and taking interest in their schoolwork. But then most men cannot control their little chunk of meat but expect to control everything else.
I pity ÿour children, Robert, if this is your way of looking at things.
First of all didn’t anyone inform the president that there was another case and that the mother could have ended up in prison again before the pardon was given?
Didn’t the president or his people check?
When the mother was pardoned I had said that there are two possibilities either the mother deserved this and a pardon was being given on populist grounds or the mother did not deserve it and so one had to see what the judge was thinking when handing the sentence.
Now we are faced with the same situation.
If the mother did not deserve to be put in prison why is she asking for a pardon and why is she being put in prison in the first place. Is Malta’s legal system in such bad shape that they cannot be just?
Is there need for a second pardon when this is just an extension of the other? Has not the son already showed his opinions and decisions being an adult?
He wants his mum who never left him and not his father who left him for a life of his own.
it would be interesting to know why only one side of the coin was shown and what the other said was kept hidden, but I sure feel sorry for children who have fathers like you.
My ex was just like that wastrel of a client of Dr Abela’s. That is why I fully sympathize with what that poor woman had to go through to raise her child single-handed after the father who helped conceive him walked out on his family leaving her literally holding the baby.
That poor woman must have had to make all sorts of compromises with her career and with her personal life to bring up her child well, irrespective of any maintenance money that her husband saw fit to throw in her general direction.
The father should go down on his knees to ask forgiveness of his wife and kiss her feet for being such a caring devoted mother to his son, not persist in hounding and persecuting her.
His lawyer should talk sense into him not egg him on.
Perhaps you do not really know what the wastrel of a client of Dr. Abela’ s client is really like just as we do not know all facts behind the story.
Please keep in mind that the woman was sent to prison after losing the appeal. The original court judgment had already sentenced her to prison. How come a 17 year old STILL refused to see his father just to spare his mother a prison sentence?
And are you really sure the father knew that his ex-wife was pregnant when he walked out of the marriage? It is very easy to take a pregnancy test by yourself and hide the results – and an 8 week pregnancy is not exactly visible!
[Daphne – No, but a six-month pregnancy certainly is, and a baby more so.]
Since you seem to know what this wastrel is really like and feel you know more facts behind the story than anyone else, I would like to add to the information you think you know that not only was he aware that she was pregnant but also said that she was making the whole story up, and it took him ten days after the birth of the child to go to see him in hospital.
And what arrogance to judge an 18-year-old man who refuses to see his father for reasons of his own, and say he did this to spare his mother’s imprisonment! Just like the said wastrel you too think that the boy is a puppet and has no feelings.
If I recall well, the young man told a newspaper that he does not wish to live with his father and I’m sure that if he still, as you say, does not visit, it is because he DOES NOT want to.
I’m sure you understand that however hard it may be his father just has to accept harsh reality and not blame it on someone else.
How many people go back to a broken marriage once they’ve walked out of it?
[Daphne – More than a few do just that.I think a more pertinent question would be: how many men walk out on pregnant women?]
I am not justifying the father’s behaviour in ‘abandoning’ his family but perhaps there is more to it than that.
Yes, perhaps there is more to it than that. Perhaps the father does not know how babies are conceived.
@ Belti w kif; idiot nahseb huwa int. Il tlett gentlomi gew elleti Membri Parlamentari ezatt kif jew spicca jew wasal bix jispicca mill kariga ta President Missierhom. Tara Il differenza?
Frankly, the law is an ass.
It makes no distinction whatsoever between an errant father and one who, in spite of life’s vicissitudes, remained closed to the family even if out of the matrimonial homes.
I’m sick of seeing “repentant” fathers turning up after a decade of absence, expecting that the mother and child fling open their arms to let him back into their life again.
The law is so bloody insensitive. A man makes his choices. Period. He takes one road which leads him away from his family. Tough on him (and them).
But for that man to then expect to come back to find that family waiting for him, well, it is not only unjust but immoral, when it was he who abandoned them years back, leaving them to rebuild a life without him, without all the problems that entails.
The law gives access rights to any sort of father (and mother) in the ill-judged belief that it is in the child’s best interest. How ludicrous and insensitive.
The law needs to be amended.
Have courage, young man: you will not be deprived of your mother again as I’m sure it’s clear to all by now that your father is acting out of spite towards her rather than out of love for you.
You have spoken your mind. Continue to be strong and happy with your mum who never left your side. To your dad, I say: stop hurting your son by continuing this hatred towards his mother. There is nothing to be gained from it and a great deal to be lost.
How telling, you refer to Robert’s baby as ‘it’.
[Daphne – Tom, all babies are ‘it’ in English. They become ‘he’ or ‘she’ at toddling stage. This is one of the quirks of the language. If you didn’t know that, you know it now.]
How telling what? You’re not one of those Vincenti loonies are you?
Actually, that is not a rule (if the gender is known), you do have a choice and you made it by calling her ‘it’.
[Daphne – You are quite wrong. Babies are always ‘it’ unless you are particularly close, familiar and in their presence. ‘He’ and ‘she’ denote a personality, which babies are not not deemed to have. You may agree or disagree with this, it may be true or untrue, but that is the way it is, linguistically. Now let’s take Maltese, where babies are all female even when they’re male, because the gender of the noun takes precedence over the gender of the child…]
since you seem to know………
Without taking any sides. Is it possible that two mature adults do not realize that a 17-year-old can think for himself? Why do they keep involving their son in their spite for each other? I think that the son is much more mature than his parents.
Those on the man’s side of the family, who have seen this saga unfold, know what bullying, manipulation and hatred has dominated the generations. A & D (mother and son) please note that those who have moved out from under the dark cloud of manipulation are those who have created their own lives.
D, when your father was young there was hope that he would not emulate his own father, but unfortunately he was not strong enough. You can be strong enough, however. Others have done it, and so you can too.
This is what I call wisdom.
If ‘A lesson to be learnt’ knows what he/she is saying, D (son) has to break the karma that has apparently dominated the family from his father’s side. By being a witness to these events unfolding before his eyes, D can gain strength to learn and to start anew.
This could be an occasion for D to break from the past and to start a new future for himself.
Live and let live. The end of this saga is “and they lived happily ever after”.
Why don`t those who have moved out from under the dark cloud of manipulation and have created their own lives start feeling a bit of happiness so they let others who have moved happily on with their lives continue to do so without any more manipulation, hatred and despair. Do live and let live please. Wish you luck!