Oh for crying out loud: why are we still an offshoot of Saudi Arabia in these matters?
Whatever these two were doing on the beach in early May when it was probably half deserted, whether it was skinny-dipping or heavy petting, they should have simply had it explained to them that their behaviour was annoying other people so would they please get dressed/get a room/move along.
And if there was nobody else there, well then, who cared.
I can’t forget the case of the young couple who were arrested and arraigned years ago for being caught having sex in their car by a lone policeman on patrol in the middle of the night, in a deserted road, who shone a torch into the interior.
The deliberations in the case, reported in the newspapers, were farcical, as lawyers argued that there is no such crime as having sex in your car, that everything hinges on ‘offending public morals’, and that there was no public about to be offended, except for that lone patrolling policeman who, when he shone a torch into the car, probably didn’t see anything he hadn’t done himself a thousand times already.
I mean, this is the stuff of comedy, isn’t it. A uniformed policeman chasing about in the sand after what I assume were naked homosexuals minding their own business. I doubt that they were naked heterosexual predators: those don’t work in teams, as many a woman knows to her annoyance, and they never get arrested either.
They lurk in bushes or call you and ask you for the time/a light/whatever and when you look up, they show you their wotsit. Now that is definitely a criminal offence, obviously not because we haven’t ever seen one of those before, but because it’s harassment.
The shame is that lots of people, including the law enforcers, can’t tell the difference.
31 Comments Comment
Reply to Katurian Click here to cancel reply
you crack me up!!! good morning :)
Do we really have to explain to a a 52 and a 43 yr old that some things should be done in private and not on a public beach?
Whilst I would certainly not be bothered myself by such behaviour and would just have walked by without a second glance, it is not something I’d want my young daughter to come across whilst on a walk at the beach.
We are not an off-shoot of Saudi Arabia luckily for them, if we were they’d be getting flogged in public instead of getting a conditional discharge.
Well said, Katurian. These people should have gone private.
Wait, as far as I can understand these two MEN where having sex on the beach in full public view at five in the afternoon.
That’s not what we call civilised behaviour.I don’t find that acceptable.
[Daphne – How do you understand that? It’s not reported anywhere, and you don’t get a conditional discharge for doing something like that.]
http://www.inewsmalta.com/dart/20130505-atja-li-offendew-il-pudur-jew-il-morali
Read all the papers.
I think that was a light sentence. I don’t know much about court procedures, but it could be they admitted before the nitty gritty details were explained on the witness stand in detail to the magistrate.
Answer to your last sentence: only in Gozo.
[Daphne – Actually, what I was thinking about here is the irony of nakedness or even sex on the beach offending public morals in Gozo, of all places, the island where wives are thrown off cliffs, old ladies are stuffed down wells or murdered by their nephews in carnival masks, traffic wardens are brutally murdered because of a parking ticket, lawyers are shot in cold blood in the stairwell of their home by the estranged husbands of their clients, and girls are sequestered and used for group sex or village amateur porn.]
It seems that Gahan here is the pervert. What a conclusion!
I have no idea what these Spaniards were up to and unless you have sources I suppose we’re in the same boat.
One thing is for sure, though I now tend to frequent beaches far less than I used to, in the past I would not have complained at all, nor had and problem with, the Police taking action against the not inconsiderable number of perverts pleasuring themselves either barely concealed behind a rock (but with nothing left to the imagination as to what they were doing) or out in the open within metres of (usually) an appropriately-dressed-for-the-beach female.
[Daphne – Exactly, that’s what I meant. But clearly, this is not what those two men were doing, because they are Spanish, not Maltese, and in my very extensive experience of the sort of perverts you describe (I went to the beach every day for four months of the year over several years because that’s what you did in those Ambre Solaire days) I never encountered one who wasn’t self-evidently Maltese, nor did any other girl/woman I knew. This was and probably still is uniquely Maltese freakery, a combination of so many factors that warped them while leaving them deprived. Also, these two Spaniards would not have got a mere conditional discharge for doing that.]
Dear Daphne, sometimes I am really surprised at your bias against your co nationals! Do you honestly mean to say that you have never seen one foreigner, be He Spanish or any other nationality doing what we are assuming was done by these two Spaniards? If that is the case I assume you have been making a conscious effort to avoid St George’s bay and Golden bay for the last several years! Let me assure you that this ‘freakery’ is not uniquely Maltese, you only need to ask the residents of St Julians to be assured of this!
You are right however that you do not get a conditional discharge in these cases, what you get is a suspended sentence and a fine, still getting off the hook quite easily compared to a Saudi Arabia offshoot don’t you think?
Check out this article, by some coincidence they also seem to be Spanish and not them freaky warped Maltese!
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100811/local/students-fined-for-swimming-naked.321974
[Daphne – It is sitting behind a bush and masturbating while looking at women in bikinis that I described as uniquely Maltese freakery, Katurian, and not swimming naked, which is a universal habit as old as the human race. People didn’t always have bathing-suits, you know. Before bathing-suits, people swam naked and nobody bothered, largely because beaches and lakes were almost deserted.]
80/20 rule. 20% of your articles are dead wrong and this is one of them.
To take with a pinch of salt, but Carmel Camilleri (Whoever he is, he’s possibly a witness) said they were sodomizing each other at 5pm in a public beach in full view of everyone.
Sodomy or not, there are other non-perverted ways to show love towards your partner (straight or gay) in public. I am all in favour of anything which gives them the same rights as straight couples, but they were visually imposing sex/nudity on people who clearly did not want any part of it and that is wrong, perverted, provoking and sick.
[Daphne – You don’t get a conditional discharge for having sex on a beach at 5pm in full view of other people. As for nudity alone, nobody feels threatened or harassed by that; it’s the attendant behaviour that turns, or does not, the sight of something normal into an abnormal threat or offence. Also, it all depends on what sort of company you’re in, because that makes all the difference as to whether you feel uncomfortable at the sight or not.]
In no time you’ll be first to protest on the light sentence they got.
We need more details.
If these heterosexual predators show the girls their wotsit, these girls should have reported them straight away to the police, unless they would have been sunbathing topless or bottomless or both or doing provocative poses to attract attention, as some tend to do.
Sex sells of course!! …and for every action, there would be an equal and opposite attraction. of course the police would be duty bound to ask them whether they would have been doing so.
[Daphne – Not being a woman in Malta, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It is not at all essential to be sunbathing topless or bottomless to attract perverts. It is only essential to be alone or cut off slightly from the rest of your group. And how, exactly, is a woman supposed to ‘report them straight away to the police’? Perhaps by performing a citizen’s arrest on a bottomless man on a public beach, restraining him with a pair of handcuffs she keeps handily in her beach-bag, forcing him into her car and hoping he doesn’t assault her on the way to the police station? Or perhaps she should get up, put on her dress, pack her bag, walk all the way to her car, drive to the nearest police station, and say ‘A man exposed himself to me on the beach but I obviously don’t know who he is and he’ll obviously be gone even if you could be arsed to drive there yourself.’ Or maybe she should ask him for his details, which would only serve as further encouragement? Men really have no idea. It’s amazing. Lucky you, not ever having had to put up with this rubbish, which is why it is completely outside your experience. The only way to deal with a pervert on the beach is to pick up your bag and towel and move somewhere else.]
or if it is that bad, install cameras on the beaches too, as one finds in other places like spain itself!!! and those abuses coming from wherever and whoever will hopefully end!
[Daphne – You must be joking. Cameras invade everyone’s privacy.]
Tony Street, you’re a genius. You’ve just written the plot of an erotic thriller to rival ‘Sliver’. We’ll call it “Sliver of Sand”. I expect the Malta Film Commission’s support.
no it cannot be termed privacy when beaches are public.
[Daphne – It obviously can, Tony. It doesn’t follow that people can be filmed constantly just because they are in public.]
well, they have them in some places in spain, of all places, and well, there are coastguards too in places like Australia or the USA.
[Daphne – You mean lifeguards. And they’re there to save your life if you’re drowning or being eaten by a shark, not there to make you put your clothes back on. Coastguards are not based on the beach. They’re at a depot.]
you have a point about coastguards and lifeguards. very well explained. from my experience in australia and also in parts of spain, the installation of cameras in some beaches, and the use of lifeguards have also deterred thefts and the things you mentioned in your blog too.
Like your article. Cannot stop laughing imagining whatsit.
Is it anything different from others? You made my day.Thank you.
I don’t have the faintest idea what these two guys were up to at Ramla.
Maybe, if the media bothered to inform me, I would have an opinion.
Forty-eight years ago, as a student, I was involved with the running of a major European conference held in Malta.
In those days we hosted one of these every ten years or so.
I distinctly remember the Swedish delegate’s reaction when informed that no naturist beach was available.
He was appalled.
May I add that this guy was an eminent academic and that he was here with his wife.
Half a century later and we are still taking people to court.
Not quite Saudi, I must say, but still years away.
Swedish dental students were they? The IADS conference that is the stuff of legend? A Charles could tell us more.
Agreed, totally. In Malta we still seem to judge petty crimes, if one can call this a crime, with great zeal. Ghall-ghajn in-nies imma biss, because underground sexual perversion is rampant, and accepted.
Does any police officer ever visit what we call Orange bay in Gnejna? Or the adjacent bay Riviera?
All sorts goes on there – gy men parading themselves, exhibitionist couples…
Not a problem for me, but why do we pick on two tourists? Ma naqbel xejn. Its about bloody time that we grow up in this sense.
I sometimes feel vexed at such situations. We are giving the impression that we are a sexually starved nation, when something like this hits the headlines.
I think we need to grow up and start being a bit less prudish. We should start frequenting more European nudist beaches. We all need some fun.
“We are giving the impression that we are a sexually starved nation.”
This is an interesting observation. Have you ever been to Level 22 on a Saturday night? Or Stilletto, Steam, or whatever the other gentlemen’s clubs call themselves these days?
It’s like watching Biafran children around the UN food truck.
@ Baxxter
I have never been – I lead a very simple life and these very trendy expensive exclusive places do not impress me.
But considering that sex has become much more easy I am very surprised at the way people are behaving. There are times when I feel lucky that I am structured differently. Your comparison is very proper.
These places are neither trendy nor expensive. And that is precisely the problem.
I have always thought there was a market for high-class, high-quality escorts in Malta. Level 22 has been taken over by the desperate forties crowd, full of middle-aged MIRNFs (MI Rather Not F) hankering after bronzed Latino louts.
The other places are full of the fattest, most unattractive, lowest ranking specimens of humanity you can find, buying fifteen-minute palpitations with the lower end of the Budapest-Bucharest spectrum, while their Maltese girlfriend is enjoying herself elsewhere.
It’s a sight to strike the smile off the merriest of mortals.
I have just returned from spending the best part of this morning waiting at the ENT out-patients at Mater Dei Hospial with a very ill relative.
We were there for at least a couple of hours with several other people complaining to the reception staff about the lengthy delays.
To my disgust, Albert Marshall and Mrs Marshall waltzed into the waiting-room and were immediately shown into the consultation room.
The man did not even hand in his appointment book to the the receptionist. He should have sat his fat arse down like the rest of us and waited his turn. Labour should practise what they preach – int min int, stenna fil-queue bhal haddiehor. Shameful.
In Spain, in Catalunya to be exact, it is not illegal to show your wotsit in public. There are people doing the rounds of Barcelona with no clothes on, with locals not bothering to look or judge, even when coming out of the church.
But in contrast, Americans have the laugh of their life and want to try to take pictures with them, as it seems theirs are different.
Perhaps these two guys were just sunbathing in the nude, thinking that it is OK to do so, especially if they were on the other side of the beach.
Just Jack, I believe the Catalan government has weeks ago passed a law to prohibit walking around naked.
I believe it was ruled out. But thanks for informing us.
Are they really running out of stuff to write about?
Yepp. At the moment the country has 2 oppositions and no government. The elected ones are still thinking like an opposition, and this is set to continue like this for some more time. Writing about 2 oppositions is not that interesting.
Perhaps. But we’re still being sodomised. And no lube.