Breach of ethics? For pity’s sake, this is criminal behaviour we’re talking about, not ethics
I quote this morning’s report in Malta Today:
Police have also established which pharmacy in Valletta Tanti is believed to have purchased a substantial amount of aspirin tablets.
In the whereabouts of Dingli, police say they found a bottle of whisky in Tanti’s car that suggests the two drank and took aspirin before the tragic incident.
Zahra’s family have also said that it was Tanti who drove his car to Dingli, with Zahra as his passenger.
The two persons were found on 19 March, after Tanti – whose fall was interrupted – managed to alert passers-by to his predicament. He was found suffering grievous injuries, and sent to Mater Dei’s ITU where was in critical condition.
Education minister Evarist Bartolo has said that the Council for the Teaching Profession, the body tasked with investigating complaints of misconduct by teachers, was “obliged” to investigate Tanti over any alleged breach of ethics over his relationship with the 15-year-old pupil.
“Upon the conclusion of the police investigation, the Council for the Teaching Profession not only has the right but also the duty to investigate any complaint of gross negligence or breach of ethics,” Evarist Bartolo told MaltaToday on the case.
For pity’s sake, what ethics are we talking about here, what breaches? An adult who supplies a minor with alcohol and enough paracetemol (the word ‘aspirina’ is used for all headache pills in Maltese, and should not be translated automatically as ‘aspirin’, which is a different chemical substance; it is paracetemol that is used in these situations) to kill a horse is committing a crime and not a breach of ethics.
Yes, it actually is a crime under the law. It is a criminal act, and a very serious one indeed.
Breaches of ethics be damned. What is the Minister of Education talking about? If one of his two lovely daughters had ended up in a similar situation, under the influence of a crazy teacher when at their most vulnerable, would he be talking about breaches of ethics of recognising this for the horrendous crime that it is?
It would have been a crime even if Tanti were not Lisa Marie’s teacher. The fact that he was her teacher is an aggravating factor and not the pivot of the issue or what makes it a crime.
If I took one of my friend’s 15-year-old children out, gave them a bottle of whisky and a tub of paracetemol and encouraged him or her to down both and then jump off some cliffs, I would fully expect to spend most of the rest of my life in prison. And no, saying ‘I’ll jump with you’ is not a mitigating factor. It does not change the essential facts of the case: that this man bought whisky and paracetemol for a 15-year-old and was entirely responsible for what happened next. He was the agent of her destruction.
Malta Today also reports:
Since the extent of Tanti’s and Zahra’s friendship is unclear, and whether it was confined outside school limits, it is unclear as to whether the Council will be able to sanction Tanti over any ethical breach or misconduct as a teacher.
This is insane. Sex is hardly the point here, is it. The extent of the intimacy is obvious, with or without sex. If this man – will people please stop making him out to be some kind of Romeo to her Juliet, because the reality is pretty sordid and horrid – actually did have that kind of relationship with a 15-year-old then that would be classed as statutory rape. An adult can’t enter into a sexual relationship with a minor on the grounds that the minor consents. The minor is not free to consent and the adult is not free to take advantage of that.
Again, the fact that he was her teacher is not what would make this a crime. It would a crime anyway. The fact that he was her teacher is an aggravating factor, a major one.
Is Maltese society so very sick, backward and primitive that people can’t see this?
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“Is Maltese society so very sick, backward and primitive that people can’t see this?”
I would undoubtedly say yes to your question.
I totally agree. I thought that Maltese society was ‘naive’ but this is so blatantly obvious against the ‘norm’ that people generally deem this behaviour as ‘modern’ and ‘liberal’.
No not primitive they are just so daft that they cannot grasp the basics.
Maltese society is not just “very sick, backward and primitive”. It has become infiltrated with tolerated excused corruption from top to bottom in its mad quest to become secularist and irreligious.
I think you may have failed to distinguish between the council regulating teachers which only investigates alleged breaches of ethics, and the police who can investigate if there is any violation of criminal law.
Thus the relationship with the girl may not necessarily be a crime but there may be a breach of ethics. What happened on the fateful night in Dingli may be a crime but not necessarily a breach of ethics.
[Daphne – David, you have got to be joking. Sometimes, literalism can be taken too far. Can you envisage any scenario in which a teacher buying a bottle of whisky and a tub of paracetemol for a pupil (and himself), then driving her to the cliffs at 4am, is NOT a breach of ethics as well as being a criminal act? All criminal acts are by definition breaches of ethics.]
“All criminal acts are by definition breaches of ethics”
Bull’s eye.
What’s wrong with our university that it produces this line of non-thinking?
My experience is that, with a few notable exceptions, the students atre taught to memorize, not think
The law courts rightly did not make any concessions for this 52 year old, even if he is one of to-days protected species.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140326/local/man-jailed-for-sexual-relationship-with-boy-14.512252
I like David. He’s a real trier. No matter how much he gets knocked back, he keeps on trying.
In fact he’s very, VERY trying indeed.
It’s called clutching at straws. Some people are in denial.
They can’t believe this happened to someone they’ve known for a long time.
They can’t come to terms with the fact that they understood his personality – they seem to know him well enough to be able to speak for him – but never reported the wrongdoings so it must be their conscience speaking for them
They are defending the indefensible so as from tomorrow if things go right and they manage to get far with defending him, they can wake up assured that their conscience is no longer going to tick on this matter.
Stocking up with alcohol and pain killers before driving off to a notorious favourite suicide spot would strongly suggest premeditation.
Well said, Daphne.
A brilliant article that needs to be revisited:
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2006-06-11/opinions/the-ghost-of-rachel-bowdler-92615/
Is the Council saying that a transgression had to happen on school grounds for the relationship to be wrong? Please tell me that I misunderstood because I am suddenly feeling very, very sick indeed.
The transgression was the relationship itself. All else followed from there.
Playing with words rather than facing the truth has become endemic. In the hands of journalists this is tantamount to misleading the readers, listeners and viewers.
I was with Erin Tanti in a show a few years ago – and even then you could see that the guy has a few wires crossed. I was also in another show with his ex-business partner – and quite frankly the same applies.
I was one of the people who wished him well on Facebook at the very beginning, when we first heard the news. Yet after reading all that has been going on, I really want him to get well soon – only to be in a well enough state to face justice for what he did.
We people involved in theatre, the performing arts, television, must be clear with the directors or the people producing the show that we cannot do certain things, irrespective of the fact that it is acting. Nobody is a full-time actor or performer in Malta. We have to earn our living in other ways. And there are particular restrictions on those who teach.
Imagine teaching religion as a day job, and being in a play about rape in the evening.
Erin Tanti would have known better had he any common sense. His ‘stand up’ gigs show he had none of that at all. Expressing your feelings of sexual violence towards a blogger is not funny at all and cannot be considered stand-up comedy, for instance. But Erin minn dejjem kien xi hadd li minghalih jifhem hafna – look where it got him now.
As for those readers who are making him sound like a hero – please, don’t. Just think of how you would feel if that poor girl was your daughter/sister/cousin/niece. You would be outraged and horrified.
‘Whose fall was interrupted’. Yeah right.
Looks like there is more than one criminal act here.
She was with him without the consent of her father, so that is abduction.
If there was sex then he is a paedophile.
If he supplied her with alcohol and drugs that is a criminal act too.
Assisting someone commit suicide, also.
All aggravated by the fact that he was her teacher and therefore in a position where a higher standard of care was to be expected from him.
This man should spend the rest of his life behind bars but knowing our system which is so flawed he will walk with a suspended sentence, free to destroy another vulnerable life.
To all those who are trying to romanticise it or somehow come to this pervert’s defence – what if that vulnerable life was your sister, your cousin, your own child? Would you still react the same way? Or would you react the way that any normal person would and do all you can to control yourself not to kill him with your own bare hands?
Do we need to keep repeating that a 15 year old girl is dead – and that everything indicates to the fact that this man’s actions caused that death?
Even befriending your pupils on Facebook is unethical…need I say more?
The active ingredient in aspirin is salicylate, and the liver can only remove so much of it. Therefore an overdose of aspirin is toxic to the liver and you also stand a risk of bleeding to death internally as Salicylate inhibits your blood platelets from adhering to each other to stop bleeding. Why would anyone in their right mind try to kill themselves with Aspirin?
[Daphne – It’s probably an error in translation, Paul. In colloquial Maltese, all headache pills are ‘aspirina’, and that’s what the police source must have called them. But it was probably paracetemol, which in the vernacular is either ‘aspirina’ or ‘pundol’.]
In the UK, you cannot buy more than one packet of paracetamol at one time from a pharmacy.
This policy has been put in place because 8 out of 10 suicide attempts are caused by the swallowing of a large quantity of this analgesic.
To augment the effect, they are washed down with spirits.
I fully support that claim. Whilst working in casualty in UK hospitals in the not too distant past, most overdoses I observed there were caused by paracetamol and alcohol. The combination is lethal to the liver as well.
In the UK, paracetamol is classified as a GSL. A pack of 16 tablets can be purchased from convenience stores, petrol stations and the like.
Aspirin and alcohol is more of a theatrical way of going. The reality is less glamourous, barring choking in your own vomit you are more likely to pass out and wake up with a damaged liver in ITU (and under 24/7 watch).
This is a silly law as I can walk into 10 different shops and buy 10 packets of paracetamol in a matter of minutes.
Also the way they are displayed in supermarkets under no form of control they can be stolen by anyone with a mind to do so.
“Why would anyone in their right mind try to kill themselves with Aspirin?”
No one in their right mind would even consider killing themselves.
Suicide by paracetamol overdose is hardly a walk in the park either. It is extremely painful and could take hours to days.
Poor girl, what chance did she have! At least he did not die. Whilst many might think he should have, that would have been the easy way out for him. Now he has to live with what he has done for the rest of his life.
Who knows? Some people don’t have a conscience let alone guilt feelings.
Who says he won’t try to end his life at the very first chance he gets?
I don’t think all this was about ending his life. A man with his type of ego, surely, wouldn’t think of suicide.
Those type of men usually think they are God’s gift to children.
@ Ruth: http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2014/03/the-girls-family-are-right-to-blame-the-teacher/
…and the school didn’t know.
I don’t believe his intention was to die either. Maybe he jumped with her, maybe after her, maybe he ‘fell’ a few metres just to injure himself. We don’t know what truly happened that night, but as a matter of fact I think whatever happened was merely a dark, acting performance in his twisted mind.
That’s why I believe he should be under supervision at all times and kept under psychiatric care and not locked up in jail. You never know what he might come up with next. Even more so now when one might argue that he has ‘every reason’ to end it all.
Well said, Daphne.
No doubt he should be banned from teaching or working in any capacity with children and teenagers. No doubt he should face criminal charges too.
No doubt the minister should be overhauling the teacher selection and monitoring system or at least introducing new policies. I am disappointed that he didn’t even mention that.
But let us also remember that when someone chooses to take his/her own life, it is usually a result of depression and mental sickness. Therefore the school and system is more guilty than the ‘criminal’ in this case, for not being diligent enough to notice what was happening.
In Malta, God forbid a well-loved, decent teacher hits a bezqa of a pupil for putting crap in his sports bag and provoking him in front of everyone, because he’ll be fired and driven through hell and back.
But if you rape, supply drugs and alcohol and help a pupil commit suicide, “LEAVE HIM ALONNEEE… you don’t know him”.
This country is going full retard nearly every week.
Does the concept of statutory rape apply in Malta? I sure hope it does, because, if I’m not mistaken, some ‘enlightened’ judge some time ago let a perpetrator off easily because the minor was consenting. (I do hope my memory is incorrect in this case.)
This guy had a following wherever he performed.
The whole of society is to blame. Bar owners, sponsors, schools, teachers, pupils, broadcasters, parents.
What the hell happened?
Having a following is no qualification for having authority over others, particularly if that means being a teacher if minor pupils.
@being pressed
It is the end result of the rot that set in, way back in Dom’s golden era. No respect for life and human values, flaunting with pride one’s ignorance and disrespect for society and traditions, living for the day and to hell with tomorrow, talk of ”rights” (a word that covers a multitude of sins) and perfect silence where the word ”duties” is concerned, no sense of guilt and accountability (and blame it all on society, the ”pigs”, the church and authority), anything goes AND, when things go wrong expect the tax payer and ”gvern” to foot the bill and keep you in social services for the rest of your life, and f*ck all.
A following? Everyone I know who knows him really finds him annoying.
“Is Maltese society so very sick, backward and primitive that people can’t see this?”
Unfortunately, I think so.
The thought struck me the other day about how, if it had been Erin Tanti who had died and Lisa Zahra who lived, the former would have been rendered some sort of tragic martyr who never lived on to complete his art, whilst the latter would have been depicted as some sort of ‘slut’ or ‘temptress’ who caused his downfall. That’s how bad it is.
And even if this had been the case, Tanti would still have been at fault for socialising with an underage pupil of his outside school hours, keeping her away from her family and friends.
Stewart Tanti’s defenders seem hell bent on erasing the victim’s rights completely, and portraying Tanti as some sort of misunderstood and unfairly maligned individual who did no wrong. It’s all a popularity contest: Lisa Zahra is an anonymous teenage girl to most, whilst Tanti is seemingly some sort of artistic maestro to his peers in the Maltese theatre scene.
Public or social discourse about mental illness, sex education, rape culture (of which Maltese society is chock full) and women’s rights is near to non existent in this country. It’s almost no wonder that people are so uneducated and misinformed about social issues.
This guy (and the snotty -nosed twats that pass off as today’s intelligentsia) is the typical product of a generation of young people whose teachers, lecturers and parents got their education and ”values” from the questionable experiments in education that were a hallmark of the Socialist ”golden” era of 71/87.
Paracetamol is a popular medicinal that people overuse deliberately to provoke an overdose meant more as a cry for help rather then a serious attempt at suicide.
The teacher has a lot to answer to once he is fully recovered,
Meanwhile, the school has issued its statement as well:
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-03-26/news/lisa-marie-zahras-funeral-to-be-held-friday-4386881536/
If this is what Maltese Society has come to, please stop the bus I want to get off.