Erin Stewart Palmier uploaded this on Facebook while working as a school-teacher
Published:
March 22, 2014 at 12:01pm
He was allowed to carry on teaching.
And had he uploaded it before he got his teaching job, it should have been a reason not to allow him anywhere near children.
What a rotten influence, and a sick mind. The pervert actually thinks it’s “beautiful”.
Why are schools not policing teachers’ Facebook pages to find out more about who they’re putting in charge of pupils? I hope parents are doing this at least and reporting anything untoward, and insisting that the school takes action.
It is wrong to fail to report teachers out of fear that your own children might be picked on. The result of such negligence can be fatal.
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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=352063818189798&set=pb.100001585478061.-2207520000.1395472202.&type=3&theater
Very, very sick. Perverted and twisted.
I am sure that most parents and grandparents are ever so reassured right now that teachers are vetted very carefully before being let loose on the impressionable and immature, with at times dire consequences.
This teacher needs treatment – and not at the hospital’s intensive care unit only.
Are we sure he is a qualified school teacher? Or was he just employed by a school and became a ‘teacher’?
More worryingly, the man is also a teacher at Masquerade, a fact most people seem to be overlooking.
More worryingly still, somebody uploaded a “RIP Lisa / get well soon Erin, we need you back at Masquerade” comment on Facebook and, shockingly, at least 72 people ‘liked’ it. I say ‘shockngly’, because any of those 72 must be children or their parents.
More worrying is the school who employed a 23 year old to teach drama to 5th formers – if they really wanted a teacher of Drama, they should have, at least employed, a real one.
Many teachers are that age. Some are more mature than others, and earn the respect of not only the pupils, but of parents too myself included. Others leave much to be desired, irrespective of their being older.
M. Respect has its boundaries, it must not exceed confidence, character and behaviour.
He’s a teacher by default. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Drama and because he can do nothing else with a degree like this in Malta, he teaches. A system that is an insult to all dedicated teachers who go through four years of university to become a teacher.
Kieku dan Stewart-Palmier kien xi qassis, kieku mur holl xaghrek u gib iz- zejt.
X’ bihsiebu jaghmel Varist, bhala ministru tal-edukazzjoni biex iserrah mohh il-genituri ta’ zaghzagh vulnerabbli u sensittivi li qed isir vetting ta’ nies ta’ dawk li jithallew jinfluwenzaw lil uliedhom go l-iskejjel?
Kif jista persuna b’dawn it-tip ta’ interessi (pubblici) sfaccatament makabri u sesswalment inkwetanti, jithalla f’ pozizzjoni fejn jista jinfluwenza tfal vulnerabbli ta’ hmistax il sena u jghinhom?
Dan it-tip ta’ persuna ghandu bzonn ghajnuna hu l-ewwel.
Qiesek qed titfa vampir ghassa ma bank tad-demm.
Varist huwa wiehed fost il-hafna li qieghed fuq il-lista ta’ hbieb li Erin Stewart Palmier ghandu fuq il-fejsbuk, jekk ma tridx!
https://www.facebook.com/eirestuart/friends
Possibli li Varist kif ukoll ‘hbieb’ ohrajn, li uhud minnhom huma poltici u ex membri parlamentari jew ministri ma rawx x’kien qieghed jigi ippustat minn dan l-individwu? Jekk iva,allura ifisser li HADD ma indenja ruhu jiehu azzjoni u mizuri mehtiega biex it-tfal, studenti ta’ Stewart Palmier ma jibqghux fil-periklu – kieku sar hekk it-tragedja li sehhet fl-ahhar jiem li ghaddew forsi kienet tigi evitata.
This is a private school. I suggest parents create forums or some sort of blog for schools, just to keep teachers on their toes.
I’ve approached head teachers on issues before regarding policy, teachers, school hours, other pupils and even fund raising events, nothing really happens.
No one dared criticise the Church for years and looked what happened.
That will never happen, most people being chickens. I say this from experience.
Exemplary behaviour for a teacher, freely available for his pupils to view on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=452069231522589&set=a.102411936488322.3185.100001585478061&type=1&theater
Not to mention:
https://www.facebook.com/346977295401483/photos/t.100001585478061/491028100996401/?type=3&theater
But it’s in the name of art, so that’s ok then.
What he is doing here is a public offence.
I pray the Lord that this fellow Erin gets over his injuries so that I will be there when the judge or magistrate sends him to serve time in a mental hospital.
I also expect the principals at the school where he worked to be investigated for negligence when employing their staff, not only teachers but all sort of staff who are in contact with children.
I am too old to have any young children but I have grandchildren and I’m certain that if any of these perverts were to even look at them, I will gladly end my life in prison.
very well said Silvio Loporto
This is not a case for treatment in a mental hospital. This is criminal behaviour. He knew right from wrong.
For once, Mr. Loporto, I agree with you.
For once, Mr. Loporto, I agree with you.
Kemm sirna modern.
At this point, all I can say is at least the person in the photo he uploaded is an adult.
Not modern but very liberal, so liberal that it really must be very dangerous out there.
How are we going to protect our children?
I do not think that it’s exactly liberalism either. Having lived in a very liberal country for several years where I have never, with very few exceptions witnessed people behaving the way the Maltese do, I would say that what is occurring in Malta is due to a very high level of ignorance.
Trying to bring in liberalism in a country without first educating its people is the recipe to the depravation of society and this is, in my opinion, precisely what happened here.
I don’t think it it liberalism but libertinism.
Is this really something that is so utterly shocking to you all? Please tell me, have you all been locked inside your own homes for the last 30 years with no communications to the outside? This is just a picture uploaded onto facebook, I see nothing shocking or scandalous here…. He should have made the post private, but still I see nothing wrong here.
[Daphne – That’s why Erin Stewart Tanti is a bad influence on you, his pupils. His job is to explain to you exactly what is wrong with this photograph. Instead, he has uploaded it for your viewing and admiration and shown you that he admires it to. He has also told you that it is “beautiful”.
As a drama teacher, he should have stayed off the subject, but if he were a PSD teacher, he would have explained to you the following.
The woman is dehumanised by obscuring her with cloth so that she has no personality and no face. She is then tied up in a contorted manner which is painful and makes it impossible for her to escape. This is a combination of torture and imprisonment. Certain men are only able to achieve sexual excitement by doing things like this to women or witnessing them third hand, via pictures or films.
There are those for whom, in this kind of thing, the infliction of pain is not a necessary component, but at this extreme level, the infliction of pain is an essential component and it is what generates arousal in the man. Any such man is to be avoided at all costs. This is the primary message to girls.
The primary message to boys is that if they find themselves turning into someone like this, they should enter therapy. Young men have no need of this kind of thing to have sex. This is for old and/or debauched men who cannot have sex normally anymore because everything bores them.
When this kind of thing manifests in young/ish men, it is an indicator that normal sexual development has not occurred, or that something is going wrong psychologically.
Older women know to avoid men like this. Younger women and schoolgirls are afraid they will be thought unsophisticated if they show fear, distaste or outright disgust and anger. But it is actually a sign of maturity to dismiss men like this, because it is the passing years and experience which teach you that it isn’t normal in young men and that in old men, it is a sign of desperation and jadedness, plus the time-honoured deep-rooted fear and hatred of women.
Of course, there are also a few women who like that sort of thing, but we needn’t go into that particular pathology here.]
These children’s comments are no surprise really, given that some of their mothers were probably amongst the many reading ’50 Shades of Gray’ and discussing it on Facebook this time last year. Of course they think tying women up is good. Their mothers were busy devouring a book about it.
Wait a minute, you’re over-simplifying here. That is not simply a picture of bondage, in which case all you’ve said would definitely apply. As someone else mentioned this is by Manuel Vason, he’s had plenty of other works that show men in similarly compromising positions (hanging upside and tied up etc). What you’ve explained perfectly describes the mentality of someone like Terry Richardson.
At any rate, the image definitely wasn’t one which a teacher should have just uploaded, or left uploaded, to facebook. Its one which has to be viewed in the right context with the right information.
[Daphne – Manuel Vason’s images are deeply disturbing and cruel to both men and women. Equality in cruelity and sadism: how is that a redemptive feature?]
And no one, and I mean NO ONE, knows what happened at Dingli. Everyone assumes they were in a relationship, which is a totally unfounded claim since there is literally no evidence to support this. All that is known is that they were close friends since before Mr.Erin started teaching at the school.
[Daphne – The known facts are these: he drove her to Dingli cliffs in his car in the afternoon or evening. He is 23. She was 15. He is a teacher. She was one of his pupils. She was found dead below the cliff. He was found alive and seriously injured next to her. Could they have climbed down and fallen? No. If she went down first, is it likely that he climbed down to save her? No. It’s too steep, and the thing to do in those situations is to ring for immediate help. Can a man in his early 20s be “close friends” with a pubescent teen (which is what she would have been before he began teaching her)? No. It’s psychologically, emotionally and intellectually impossible unless the man has failed to develop normally. Can a girl of 14 or 15 believe that a grown man is her friend and nothing but that, and that the situation is normal? Yes. Girls are programmed biologically to admire older boys and to want the admiration to be reciprocated. When it never, or rarely, is, they don’t realise that this is how it should be, so when an older ‘boy’, who is actually a man, takes an interest in them they are delighted and fail to realise that there is something wrong with him, not because he is taking an interest in them per se, but because he is taking an interest in any 15-year-old. Unfortunately, perversion can be sometimes held up as socially acceptable: I still remember all the newspaper coverage given to Bill Wyman’s (Rolling Stones) pursuit of 13-year-old Mandy Smith as though it was normal and she was lucky. I was sickened, and I can’t have been more than 24 at the time.]
I stand to be corrected.
Notanidiot tells us that they “were close friends before Mr Erin started teaching””.
That means over two years ago, which means that she was 13 and he was 21.
Why and again, WHY, should a 21 year old man be a ‘close friend’ of a 13 year old girl?
In my opinion perverts and all those who approve of them should be either treated or jailed.
And again, I agree with you here too.
My God, Daphne must have the patience of a spider, three pages full of people still insisting ‘nobody knows what happened that night’.
You don’t need to be Ludwig Van Beethoven to understand that most people know what happened that night because one thing is certain: he’s the man who was with her that evening / night and on Dingli Cliffs not at Bay Street. And he was her teacher. And she was 15.
That is enough to understand, so if most people know this and some ‘don’t’, something really must be wrong.
Dear NotAnIdiot, let us get a few facts straight. First of all, I have been teaching upper forms for the last 20 years or so in a church school and private lessons too, so I can draw on some experiences. And I am also a parent of teenage children.
A teacher should never place himself in a compromising situation such as driving about in his car with a pupil, let alone to a secluded place. This applies to both male and female teachers.
It is always good practice to leave the classroom door ajar when pupils want to talk to you individually after class, even about something as innocuous as a homework difficulty.
I have a Facebook page which I use to keep in contact with relatives abroad and to pass silly harmless comments about my friends’ favourite soccer teams’ performance, or lack of it. I do not accept as FB friends any past or present pupils or their parents, nor do I upload any controversial comments and photos.
We have to keep in mind that our pupils are still vulnerable children and it is we, the parents and teachers, who must set the example, guidelines and boundaries, and that these should not be elastic.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
This implies that beauty is subjective.
This bizarre photo speaks volumes of the beholder in question.
Anthony, this has nothing to do with beauty. The photo speaks volumes about the person who seems to have an immense amount of interest in the picture in question.
For example I like guns and collect them but you would never see me in a photo with a gun in my hand on Facebook or wherever. So my interest is a healthy one.
Maybe you did not notice that, in one of his comments below the uploaded pic, this creep referred to it as being beautiful.
I think that there are many things heads of schools should be looking at, and that includes what an educator wears to school, attitudes towards school policies, respect towards and collaboration with colleagues and abuse of practice.
Such behaviours, together with what one posts on Facebook does say a lot about a person.
It’s all because of the stupidly misguided and dangerous idea circulating in academic circles that a teacher should be the pupils’ friend. We no longer even call them teacher and pupils/students, but “educators” and “learners”.
Beware language manipulation. That is where the rot starts.
And never was there a clearer example than this. Now we can all see what we have come to.
The way I see it, your teacher in kindergarten is your nurse, your Ph.D. supervisor can be your senior colleague in the same way that CEO sometimes invites the lower ranks to an office party, but for anything in between, a teacher can never and should never be your friend, any more than your corporal or platoon sergeant. It is entirely possible not to be a sadist, and to be fair, while being firm and keeping the professional aloofness that is essential for any organisation.
Incidentally, boundaries are being horribly fudged in the Maltese civil service too. This time it’s the misguided idea that a happy workplace is one where the boss and the underlings go out on the town together on a Saturday night.
Jew nejja Jew mahruqa jghidu.
So, in kindergarten I had to sign a form so that my son’s teacher could unzip his carnival costume so that he could visit the bathroom. While, in senior 5, it is OK to go out to Dingli cliffs with your teacher.
Something’s somewhere definitely wrong .
Actually during the B.Ed course, students are continually told that they cannot, under any circumstances, be friends with their pupils.
They are also constantly told not to ‘friend’ them on Facebook. Of course, some teachers don’t see the harm. Some teachers also don’t see the harm of wearing overtight clothes to a boys’ school or being to familiar with pupils as a way to bolster their egos because girls fancy them.
The change in the language from teacher/pupil to educator/learner is purely Freirian in that teachers should no longer see pupils as empty vessels to be filled with information, but learners who are involved as much as possible in their own learning.
This is by no means saying that boundaries should not be upheld at all times.
Professionals, and here I mean all professionals whether teachers or civil servants, know this. Unfortunately this is lacking all across the board in Malta.
The semantic change is symptomatic of something deeper. It seems to be an attempt to make learning structureless.
Far from turning a passive receiver into an active participant, “learner”, to a layman like me, seems to mean that you learn at your pleasure, and that the relationship of rank between teacher and pupil/student is now completely erased. In other words, it’s the thin end of the wedge.
Again, let’s look at the Army as an example, because this institution knows a great deal about educating all manner of miscreants. The directing staff are your superior officers.
You salute them and follow their orders. But they are your teachers, and you are expected to apply yourself actively in the learning process. There. No semantic obfuscation.
Let’s not go to extremes. In life, the best choices are somewhere in between. Let me explain.
Regarding teachers. On one extreme, your teacher is your lover and on the other, your teacher is your nightmare. As a teenager, many years ago, I never had a teacher as a lover, but I did have teachers as a nightmare. Today I realize that as a class, we hardly learnt anything from those horrible teachers. All we got from them was sadistic bullying, stress, duress, and a huge waste of time and energy. Obviously, this is bad, so the best teachers are somewhere between these two extremes.
[Daphne – The personality of teachers is not a sliding scale, as you describe it and you fail to understand that teachers who are ‘lovers’ are committing a criminal act while teachers who are nightmares are not.]
The image in question is from a series by Manuel Vason, an acclaimed artist who has published and exhibited worldwide. Is everyone who has appreciated his work a sick pervert, by your standard?
[Daphne – Yes, and so is he. Oh, and not by my standards, either, but by general consent. The fact that somebody is celebrated does not mean he has special licence to operate outside the bound of normal decency, which is why, elsewhere among these comments, I gave the example of how the newspapers presented Billy Wyman’s marriage to Mandy Smith as normal.]
Oh well that’s okay then. Acclaimed also doesn’t mean good or right. Hitler was acclaimed by many people. This is misogynistic rubbish. I wouldn’t go anywhere near a man who had this in his Facebook. It’s an instant creepy bastard alert.
There are many other people rather than teachers, who are over 20 years old and date underage teenagers. Apparently everyone seems to close an eye in these cases, which are as well WRONG!
[Daphne – Well, in that case it’s up to the parents and not to anyone else to interfere.]
Daphne, it is not entirely up to the parents. What if these, like many Maltese people, are uneducated and haven’t got the slightest clue of what parenting entails? The police, social services, and the teachers need to work together and act.
Dear Mrs. Caruana Galizia, I am purposefully changing my name for this post, for privacy reasons, though you can see who I am.
One of the comments said that this guy did four years Theatre Studies. That on its own is not a prerequisite for a teacher. His current school owes it, at least to its pupils, and fee-paying families to clarify the following.
Has this guy gone through the process whereby the employer gets further details from the courts of any previous history of any wrongdoing? This is a prerequisite for anybody in contact with children – ironically enough, not mini-van drivers, although having said that, this is nothing more than a formality.
Had the school requested and got approval from the education division (non state sector) for his employment? This is another prerequisite, for which a drama degree is not enough.
Is this person a warranted teacher? In an age when certain professions want to enhance their image, the teaching profession continues to widen its goal-posts to include TEFL teachers, drama teachers and similar. Where is the Malta Union of Teachers in all this? Or is it solely interested, as ever, in fighting for teachers’ rights and not their duties?
This tragedy should focus some minds.
“The woman is dehumanised by obscuring her with cloth so that she has no personality and no face. She is then tied up in a contorted manner which is painful and makes it impossible for her to escape. This is a combination of torture and imprisonment. Certain men are only able to achieve sexual excitement by doing things like this to women or witnessing them third hand, via pictures or films.”
I totally agree with you here, Daphne. Unfortunately, there are people who see nothing wrong with it because they call it ‘art’, or even worse because they believe that it is exciting and different.
I am not into bondage and it is okay if one is into in it, but what you said in the above paragraph could have not been said better, even though the woman depicted was consensual.
Why is it OK to be into bondage? 50 shades of grey is not called housewives’ porn for nothing.
I see nothing particularly wrong with the photograph or the video in the other post. The video promotes an adult only play. Without watching the play, one can’t really comment about its content, and one can’t really judge it by its title either. As the old adage goes, don’t judge a book by its cover.
As for the photograph above, it’s taken by a professional photographer and model. It takes hours to set up, what with the costume, the knots, the position and so on, it requires quite a lot of work. Many are those who have described Manuel Vason’s work as ‘beautiful’.
[Daphne – That is NOT the point. Most photo shoots take hours to set up. Most use professional photographers and model. If I go to a lot of time, effort and expense to set up a photograph which purports to show a woman being tortured and murdered with perfect architectural grammar, in a harmoniously symmetrical shot that looks like a piece of art, does this make it beautiful? No, it does not. Because it is not only the composition of a subject or a photograph which defines its beauty, but the subject matter. And therefore, the portrayal of torture cannot, by definition, be beautiful even if the lines of the tortured body are.]
Adults should be free to produce or consume such images.
As Bettie Page would have said, ‘No harm is being done to anybody.’ The consumption of such images is no more responsible for the Dingli tragedy than Marilyn Manson music was responsible for the Columbine shootings, the Grand Theft Auto video-game is responsible for carjackings, pornography is responsible for rape or horror films are responsible for people’s deranged acts. People who consume such products are usually normal people with normal lives, normal jobs and normal families.
The problem here is that Erin Stewart Palmier is a teacher. If he wanted to buy a book with such photographs, fine, but he should have kept it on his bookshelf and not go boasting about it and uploading pictures of it on Facebook.
A teacher, like a judge or a policeman, has a certain image to uphold. This should be upheld at all times. Teachers should never do things in public which pupils and parents might find questionable or immoral. A teacher is not a teacher only in the classroom but everywhere he or she goes. One never knows when an impressionable teenager is watching.
Mr Stewart Tanti should have never been hired by the school because by uploading this photograph, he showed that he doesn’t know how to make a value judgement which is beneficial to his young charges. The uploading of this photograph shows that he doesn’t know the distinction between his private life and his public one. That is a very dangerous thing to have in someone whose job is to take care of and educate young people.
I fully agree with H.P.Baxxter when he says that the modern semantics are wrong. The idea that a teacher is also a friend is completely wrong. A teacher is a teacher and a pupil is a pupil.
Teachers and pupils should only meet at school and during school activities. If a teacher happens to meet a pupil while out and about, no more than a ‘hi’ is necessary. Teachers should not frequent places where their pupils hang out in their free time. Teachers should stay in the staff-room during break time and leave the playground to the pupils. Teachers should not befriend their pupils, either in the real or in the virtual world. Teachers should never hug their pupils or have any physical contact with them unless really necessary or appropriate, like a handshake on prize-day.
Teachers should simply never do anything which raises suspicion. Apart from having a negative effect on the pupils, it also puts their career at risk.
If Erin Stewart Tanti wanted to dabble in such risqué material, he should have stayed well away from schools and teenagers in general and just stuck to the theatre. Adult entertainment and teaching don’t go well together. Mr Tanti should have been made to choose one or the other.
Your last paragraph says it all, Matthew S, and contradicts the first one. As a professional of sorts in the fashion industry I happen to be something of an – ahm chrrrm – expert on the likes of Helmut Newton, many of whose photos revolve around some sort of trashiness, la femme objet and all the rest of it.
Is it art?
That’s a moot point.
What is certain is that I’d never think of setting foot inside a school, still less of working as a teacher, while I’m even remotely in contact with Helmut Newton and his ilk. There’s nothing in the law that says I can’t, but some things are just not done. Some activities are incompatible. And that’s the sort of thing that you don’t learn by reading the rule-book, but that you work out yourself.
I’m not in any way trying to say that what Mr Stewart Tanti did is right. As a teacher, he should never have uploaded this photograph on his Facebook page and he is fully responsible for the whole tragedy and should be held accountable.
All I’m saying is that liking this picture or ones like it does not show a predilection to rape, torture, murder or anything like that. In any case, the photograph neither shows torture (although it can be a prelude to it) nor murder.
It shows bondage, which is a sex game of domination, submission, trust, materials (latex or plastic?) and maybe pain. People who play this game usually put some research into it, buy the right equipment, discuss what exactly it is they want to do with their other half and how far they want to go and decide on a safe word which immediately stops the game.
It sounds too much like hard work for me to be fun and I’m not into pain anyway but ‘different strokes for different folks’ and all that. I don’t think people who are interested in this sort of thing have a predisposition to carrying out deranged acts with teenagers at 4 o’clock in the morning.
And BDSM has gone mainstream now, following the publication of 50 Shades of Grey. Rumour has it that bedrooms across the western world have been stocking up on rope, handcuffs, chains, clamps, plugs and other paraphernalia. Maybe even you have noticed your Ritienne playing rougher in the last year Baxxter.
As a matter of fact, Ritienne was seeing someone else in the last year, and has now left me. I’m now single again.
Suicide has never been far from my mind for the last fifteen years or so, ever since things started going downhill, women- a and career-wise. The only thing that’s keeping me from throwing myself off Dingli cliffs is the thought that my enemies would derive pleasure from my death, and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. Besides, I’d like to take a few of them down before I die. But to kill yourself with your girlfriend? It’s totally stupid. As far as I’m concerned, once you’re in a relationship you’re pretty much sorted, so why kill yourself? And if you’ve a permanent job, like teaching, you’re even more sorted.
Agreed Daphne, everyone seems to forget that staging twisted behaviour or ideas in the name of artistic expression, read, freedom of speech, is not just portraying but actually promoting the content.
Calling it art to get the alibi is the exact opposite of what artistic expression is.
A bit like what Baxxter is saying but on a visual level, if the image isn’t a seedy photograph it’s acceptable, put in a couple of contrast enhancements or go for the Kodak filter and it’s 70’s Sunsilk shampoo moody. Something to consume and digest without any reservation.
The word beautiful in his mind is simply that which makes everything watchable.
I make it look ‘beautiful’ as in execution, therefore it must belong to beauty. Not really, some subject matter exists solely through restriction. And in the days of digital cameras, smart phones and computer programs, any image can have a semblance of artistic endeavour. So it’s not just done by default by everyone but even ‘quality’ becomes popular.
You can see where reality and expression will definitely blur. Why not do the same thing with war? I’m sure people like Erin will be surprised at the spectacular mix of videos of people blowing themselves up which can be edited.
Call it art. Which, I’m afraid, a society which has the time for everything but won’t spend anytime on anything, it is.
As for this material or subject matter being freely available to anyone, I don’t think so, age restrictions should apply, especially in a place where the observer doesn’t have the tools. Believe me, the Maltese don’t.
What actions have been taken by the Ministry’s monitoring body? MInister Bartolo, we expect a reply.
I highly doubt this guy is even qualified as a teacher as his FB profile mentions a B.A in drama but no PGCE.
Hey Daphne, fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you. Are u going to go to the police now? Will they send me to prison? Lol, those guys who punched a guy got charged 60 euro, and u expected to send Erin to prison for saying fuck you! What a retarded piece of shit you are. I hope your children will find themselves in a similar situation one day, then we’ll see what you’d say. Don’t you have any feelings for the parents who’s son is in itu you scumbag? What a stupid nation we are, assuming things about someone you never met, you and your loyal fans, what pieces of shit you all are!
[Daphne – Stop defending him. He is responsible for the death of a 15-year-old girl who also happened to be one of his pupils. It is absolutely shocking that, instead of her death giving you pause for reflection, you instead seek to create sympathy for the agent of her destruction. Don’t drag his parents into it. They have a lot to be thinking about.]
Using the word ‘fuck’ in sentences to try and ‘intimidate’ or make a ‘cool’ point just shows how intellectually weak you are.
The teacher you are so ‘proud’ of, has made a mistake. The mistake started when he befriended her as her teacher when she was his pupil.
If the child was feeling down, this isn’t new, we all do sometimes, some of us recover after a week, some of us take months, you shouldn’t have been impressed by the facts of life which neither you or Erin seem competent enough to handle.
Yes indeed we do care for his parents but we can never put aside or into oblivion the girl herself and her broken-hearted father.
Yet you seem content with with a previous article to drag the parents of the girl in to this. Yes they have a right to blame Erin but if you are going to say Don’t drag his parents in to this, then don’t drag Lisa’s parents in to this either.
I have always had the creepy feeling, sensation if you like, that in Malta, the perpetrators of wrong-doing are seen by many as the imsieken who are to be pitied/supported. Somehow, the victims and the voiceless get forgotten, or sidelined, very quickly and conveniently.
You’re not mistaken. Anything civil in this place is considered a betrayal of the approximate but incontrovertible links between closely knit extended families or followers of the same creed.
Call it peacetime Omerta’. Daphne gets bashed around the head when she dares call it Southern Meditteranean or non-European.
I’m afraid I have to introduce politics into the argument, but the result last year depended upon a party which believed principle and straight talk were enough against one which built its unprecedented majority on a whispering campaign four years in the making.
From clear cut regulations to outright patronage. Organised crime exists solely when there’s consent, the romanticisation dwells on glorifying the fatalism induced.
A senior civil servant friend of mine jokes about the corruption campaign, he insists of course people weren’t happy about that, there simply wasn’t enough.
I’m sorry but it seems that Daphne you also need to seek for mental help……….you don’t want us to save you the hassle and drive you off a cliff by any chance? As the Maltese proverb says ukoll min jolli jdejh kulhadd ghandu xi jxomm. Nahseb ahjar ixxom it rieha tieghek l-ewwel.
I must say that I agree, even though something in the education system must be a bit off, However, with all due respect, I don’t really think that the right thing to do is here is continuously slander a person on your blog and exploit a kid’s death in doing so, especially since there is no clear indication as to what the circumstances were.
[Daphne – There is no exploitation. This is an absolutely essential discussion on a matter of public interest, which is not the same thing as public curiosity. Were he not a teacher, there would be no such public interest.
There is more than an indication of what the circumstances were. There is information from the police. He drove her to Dingli Cliffs and jumped off with her. That much emerges from the information the police have given already about the charges they intend to press, even if it were not blindingly obvious to any clear-thinking person at the outset. So here you have a teacher acting out some lovers’ leap fantasy with a 15-year-old pupil, she dies, and a whole crowd of people clamour in support of him.]
And you must be yet another of the man’s pupils, springing up in his defence. Charming.
It just confirms what I mentioned in a comment earlier on, how truly depraved Maltese society is rapidly becoming.
One must be greatly disturbed to come here and make it sound as if it’s perfectly all right for a grown man, a teacher, to drive to Dingli cliffs together with a child who was also one of his pupils and throw himself off a cliff with her.
It is extremely shocking and very, very sad.
If only..if only..you see what our teenagers are posting…..much more shocking images than this…kids nowadays are not as naive as we would love them to be…let’s not be hasty in passing judgement and let the professional people who have the competence to pass judgement do so themselves.
Minka, this society is warped up. I heard so many comments like the one you posted and it’s really more of the usual same: ‘eh ta’ ghax it-tfal tal-lum kapaci daqs wiehed ta’ 23.
Kapaci f’hiex? To have sex, more than anyone else did when we were 15? Does sex define a person’s abilities and maturity. Have parents become so proud that their children are doing it?
What crap!
A 15 year old remains a 15 year old, remains a 15 year old, and remains a 15 year old, just like a baby remains a baby and remains a baby till it’s time for the baby to walk, crawl and run.
Who said we want the 15 year-olds to be naïve? the problems surrounding today’s world is that today’s 15 year-olds are very very naïve. I can’t understand how people have become fast to assume that 15 year olds are no longer naïve. It’s pretty much the opposite.
What constitutes a young lady to not be naïve? Reach your own conclusions.
Minka you are absolutely wrong.
I find it very surprising that not only the children in her class are adoring this teacher, but the parents are as well – how very shocking. Didn’t it ever dawn on a parent that something must be very incorrect, so incorrect that one of them could have complained?
This is the reason why it all surrounds the punto di partenza, whichever way you look at it and no matter how much you try to avoid commenting about the 23 year old, the subject takes you back to him to decipher why an incompetent teacher was with a child on Dingli Cliffs at night.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140323/local/-I-had-sex-with-I-don-t-know-.511727
THE MIND BOGGLES.
His Facebook profile has been deleted.
Chicken.
Hahah sorry Daphne, this isn’t that shocking a picture “Madonna jaqq!”. I myself know a couple of people into the fetish and I can assure you that none of them has ever acted out any acts of bestiality or anything illegal, and certainly not beyond the limits of their abode. It is only ignorance and assumption to think that. Stop discriminating against what you think is filth. You like to think of yourself as high and mighty above everyone else. To each his own. By the way, bondage is also used on men and made to empower women in sex role play. There are perfectly decent people out there into different fetishes you wouldn’t even know. The stupid thing is mr Palmier was dumb enough to post it on Facebook. He was the kind of guy that liked to shock I am told. You can only blame the guy for being a narcissistic jackass who has no perspective on personal privacy and how published data can be used against you.