Erin Stewart Tanti took his pupil to Dingli Cliffs at 4am last Wednesday. She had been missing with him since Tuesday afternoon.
After speaking to the police, Television Malta’s news website has some facts on the case which might focus the minds of those who are still trying to justify that teacher’s behaviour or find excuses for what he did.
I can’t copy and paste the report but I’ve clipped out the relevant bit and uploaded it here.
The police told TVM that Erin Stewart Tanti is being kept under close watch by the police round the clock. They said the same thing to Times of Malta earlier, where they added that this is being done to ensure that there are no attempts to interfere with facts.
The police told TVM that this teacher drove his 15-year-old pupil, Lisa Maria Zahra, to Dingli Cliffs at 4am on Wednesday night. They had both been reported missing together since the previous afternoon.
His car was found parked a few metres from the edge of the cliff. They were found at the bottom of the cliff 12 hours later.
The police categorically rule out that the teacher climbed down to help his pupil. They say that they are studying the case for prosecution under Article 213 of the Criminal Code, which makes it a criminal act for one person to encourage or help another person to commit suicide. The maximum term is 12 years in prison. To Times of Malta they added that helping another person commit suicide is a criminal act even if you intend to kill yourself too at the same time.
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http://www.tvm.com.mt/news/waqqfu-l-ispekulazzjoni-u-ffokaw-fuq-il-hajja-sabiha-ta-lisa-maria/
What happened to the idea of maintaining professional boundaries?
Erin Stewart Tanti should never have been engaged as a teacher because he clearly was incapable of maintaining the professional distance that keeps pupils safe.
Stewart Tanti is young and evidently in need of professional help, so why did he take on responsibility for others? If he couldn’t recognise his own weakness, it should have been picked up by whoever appointed him.
He should never have been allowed responsibility for and influence over others – as much for his sake as for theirs.
Either way, what a tragic story.
Sounds like a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley come to Gothic reality.
[Daphne – For heaven’s sake, Ken, don’t start on that. That is EXACTLY what he wanted it to be. The sordid reality is somewhat different: unhinged and not particularly gifted drama teacher who can’t have a proper relationship with women his own age or form a mature relationship drives 15-year-old pupil to Dingli Cliffs at 4am to script out his own drama and ends up killing her. Yes, killing her – because when a grown-up with such mind-control over a 15-year-old girl takes her to the cliffs at night and encourages her to jump off, he’s killed her. There’s no scope for romanticising this scum or mincing words either.]
Can it not be that she jumped and he jumped after her, in a frantic (and, of course, futile) attempt at ‘rescuing’ her? Strange things go through strange minds at such desperate times. It could well be that he had no intention of suicide.
[Daphne – Kindly stop it. The desperate, straw-clutching manner in which the indefensible is being ‘defended’ is deeply offensive to all right-thinking people. This man DROVE his pupil there at 4am, when her family were searching for her and reporting her as missing. He took her there. To Dingli Cliffs. At 4am. He parked his car a few metres from the edge. What for – to dance? For a picnic? Drop the subject. You’re completely out of order.]
How can one jump after another person to save a person in complete pitch darkness and at 4 am?
Logic and common sense are really absent in Ian’s head.
Okay, you brought up some very good points that I have to agree with, yes there was nothing romantic or heroic or Byronic worthy of a 1820’s ode or poem in this story.
But it is tragic, regardless if this Erin Tanti is a bonafide jerk and a man-slaughter or even a murder suspect.
The memory of young Lisa Marie Zahra should not be forgotten.
“unhinged and not particularly gifted drama teacher ”
Unhinged, to some extent… clearly. He (very probably) made an attempt on his own life. As for “not particularly gifted”… I don’t know why you surmised such. Did he give you or a relative of yours a bad drama lesson? Do you not like his poetry?
Either way – it is irrelevant. If you want to take a stance against him, stick to the ‘unhinged’ artillery, “for Heaven’s sake”.
“Can’t have a proper relationship with women his own age”
He was engaged in an inappropriate relationship on two levels, one legal and one ethical – the girl was legally underage (for shame!) and also his pupil (not good, at all), serious boundaries were crossed. Though you’re going to have to remind me where you got your cognitive neuroscience degree and also your Erin charts and data Daphne, cause it almost seems like you jumped to conclusions on that one.
As to whether he egged her to jump off the cliff (as you claim) or not – I’ll never know. I don’t have the sordid details. Both individuals were probably disturbed.
Maybe you should leave it at that. Claims, evidence, etc etc etc.
Why is the teacher being referred to as ‘zghazugh’ as opposed to ‘ragel’? Was he not above the age of 18? As I understand it he is five years over the age of 18.
I read the facts as: a man who was also her teacher, was with his female student, who was a minor, at Dingli Cliffs.
Correct my Maltese but in this report: ‘…li kien mat-tfajla…’ also implies that she was his girlfriend. Is that right? In Maltese the possessive adjective ‘tieghu’, as in Italian, is not required to denote the nature of the relationship. If it is omitted here it implies something very serious. Or does ‘tfajla’ here literally just mean ‘teenage girl’ as opposed to ‘tifla’ meaning ‘younger girl’?
The result of the very liberal idea of doing away with Mater Admirabilis and St. Michael’s training colleges for teachers has finally caught up with us.
No this is general decay of society I would say. This same unprofessional, in some case illegal, behaviour is a sign of our times and is ubiquitous. It has hit Malta like a tornado and is prevalent in the new government as well as it happens.
My mother was at Mater Admirabilis.
Please note that Mr. Tanti was not a qualified teacher with a permanent warrant. Mr. Tanti was employed as a supply teacher; he has never received any formal teacher training.
So he was able to stand with his legs apart and relieve himself in a public fountain, and then post the proof on Facebook, to show us that he’s a man.
But then he didn’t have the guts to jump off by himself. He had to take this poor child with him. So much for “making her happy” and being “cool”. As a mother of a 3 year old daughter, I cannot start to think what her family must be going through.
The grudge you hold against this man, just for having once targeted you in a joke, is sublime. Proset, your level of hate towards him is a thing of wonder. A pack of wolves wouldn’t have savaged him the same way as you have.
[Daphne – I do not hold a grudge against this man for having ‘once targetted me in a joke’. You do not know what he said because I haven’t reported it and will not do so. It wasn’t a joke. It was a statement of criminal defamation and not only against me but against individuals who are private citizens. If I wished to deal with it, I would have done so via the proper channels as the law entitles me to do so. I thought otherwise of it, for various reasons. If you were a regular reader of the press and followed politics closely, you would know that this man figures nowhere in my life or the scale of the tumult of insults I have to deal with on a daily basis. I had already forgotten about him when this news broke, which is why it took some time to register that he was the same person.
My anger at him is for one reason only: I am a parent and have raised teenagers. The thought that at any point some psychologically manipulative and highly disturbed teacher might have done this to one of them leaves me fearful and furious. It makes me realise just how vulnerable children how, how exposed to predatory nutjobs the system is. He is a hateful person to have done something like this, and make no mistake about it. The fact that you like him and he is your friend is neither here nor there. Even those who get children hooked on heroin are liked by some people and have friends – in my day, they had lots of friends, because that’s how they got their customers, several of whom died and many more had their lives and mental health destroyed. But they were popular, and people liked them, and their drugs supply business depended on their popularity. I do not say here that your friend sells illegal drugs to children, but he is using precisely the same methods that the dealers of my time used on my generation, and almost certainly still do today.]
Ps. Article 213, making it a criminal offence to kill yourself is such an outdated law that it should be abolished. If you are so disturbed that you want to commit suicide, you need help, not getting locked up in Kordin. You know, like what happens in the “normal” civilized societies and countries of Western Europe.
[Daphne – Helping somebody to kill themselves is not the same thing as killing yourself, and should most definitely be considered a very serious crime when the people involved are not a cancer patient at the end of life asking for help with a bottle of pills, but a teacher helping his 15-year-old pupil to jump off a cliff. You need a mental check-up yourself if you are trying to justify this just because he is your friend.]
PPS. Fun fact. There are some criminal codes in less enlightened countries who have the death penalty against suicide. At least ours has moved past that point.
[Daphne – It is a reflection of your state of mind that you can talk about ‘fun facts’ in a case as terrible as this.]
I am so, so beyond tired of friends of “poor Erin” crying “miskin” and calling this a witch hunt or lynch mob headed by Evil Witch Daphne.
Have you abandoned all reason? Listen to yourselves!
Ask yourselves a question and answer it honestly – had this been a stranger and someone unknown to you, instead of a friend or a popular local actor, would you still be defending him?
A fully grown man was out with an underage girl at 4am near Dingli Cliffs. He actually drove her there. The underage girl was found DEAD the next day. I repeat… DEAD. Of course people are going to be suspicious and ask questions.
Honestly… get a grip.
And of course, no way did he simulate a suicide pact.
Just because a person has a reason to talk against someone doesn’t invalidate what the person is saying.
The social acceptance in this country of the idea that you can brush away things by saying “Jghid li jaqbillu” is absolutely mental, especially when so many people stand by politicians.
If you want I’ll help you kill yourself. #modern #YOLO #funfact
In the normal world people take responsibility for their actions http://m.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26702188.
Could you please elucidate how the death penalty would be inflicted on someone who had committed suicide in less enlightened countries?
Mr Saliba. Ha nghidilek bil malti pur. Int injurant illum biss, jew dejjem hekk? Isn’t it obvious that not all suicide attempts are succesfull, and that a suicidee, if unsuccesfull( for want of a better word) needs help.
@Kissinger81.
In that case the death penalty would be inflicted not against “suicide” (as you had stated) but against a failed “attempted suicide”.
That is my easily understood answer, in Queen’s English, to your ignorant question of today.
The assumption that you have made that i am a friend of both tortured souls in this story reveals how little you know about this story. I knew neither. You knew neither. Therefore both of our assumptions have the same weight. I can discount your comments as you can mine.
[Daphne – Oh that’s right. I’d forgotten the third assumption until I saw your email name: ‘obsessive grudge against Daphne Caruana Galizia – must write in to challenge everything she says, even if it means defending the indefensible.’ You changed your nick; next time, change your email line too.]
No, to be honest, I generally agree with your line of reasoning. I have only posted here a couple of times, always with the same nick. I know that you don’t need, and don’t seek, popular support, the same way a run of mill politician does.
Just because i don’t agree with you on this tragedy, doesn’t mean that i don’ t agree with you on other things. I have the same opinion that you do on general “life” on these islands. We could have been so much better. However, to be fair, we could also have been so much worse, like most other post colonial countries, for example, in society, politics and economics.
Dan il-kaz ghandu jkun ta’ lezzjoni serja ghal kull ghalliem.
Sfortunatament ghaddejjin minn fazi serja li qisna qed nghixu fis-shab. Hadd ma jaf fejn sejjer. Sirna nidhlu l-universita naghmlu ftit ezamijiet u sirna professuri bla ma ghandna ebda kararattru.
Bla morali, bla kultura u bla ebda personalita.
L-ghalliema gejjin wkoll minn din is-socjeta. Huwa verita li hemm hafna ghalliema li huma ta’ kultura u ghandhom personalita, sfortunatament qed jigu klassifikati minn bicciet ta’ karti li jsejhulhom certifikati u jikkwalifikaw fuq hekk biss.
Hadd ma jaghti kaz ta’ x’ inhuma il gosti personali taghhom. Niftakar li fl-interviews konna nigu mistoqsija fuq l-istil tal-hajja taghna. Illum nigu mistoqsija biss fuq il-pjan tad-dipartiment u hafna theoriji skont il-moda tal-gurnata, jigifieri partia paroli fierah u bla sens li jintesa ftit minuti wara.
L-ghalliema gew kundizzjonati ghal hafna esperimentazzjoni dawn l-ahhar, u ser jergghu jkunu sottomessi ghal aktar la inbidel il-gvern. Sintendi kullhadd irid juri li qed jaghmel xi haga.
Nimmagina li xoghol il-bidwi jigi mgerfex kif jitfacca l-bidwi ta’ warajh sabiex ihalli l-marka tieghu.
Dan l-ahhar qed nifirhu bil-Facebook u bl-internet, u meta wiehed jara x inhu jigri fuq il-Facebook ghandu jinhasad meta jara l-qzizijiet ta’ injoranza grassa li hierga min imhuh medjokri biex jimpressjonaw il-haddiehor bil-hajja taghhom meta suppost din hi kompletament privata.
Nies bi stil ta’ ftahir fierah u bla sens.
Huwa tal-biki li pajjizna qed jizzerzaq f’ dan il-hmieg mentali. Ara kif jista wiehed irabbi t-tfal u jaghtijhom personalita taht dawn il-kundizzjonijiet assurdi.
Dawn it-tfal ghada ser ikunu is-socjeta ta’ ghada, ser ikunu genituri, u ser ikunu “decision makers” – ara kif tippretendi li jkollna socjeta b’ sahhitha meta lanqas ahna kapaci nivvotaw ghal mexxejja meta nikkonsidraw x’ gara.
Din hi sitwazzjoni tal-biza u jekk mhix ser tigi indirizzata immedjatament taht regolamenti horox ser nikrejaw gungla ta monstri li jibdew jeqirdu lill xulxin.
CORRECTION
“they say that they are studying the case for prosecution under Article 213 of the Criminal Code, which makes it a criminal act for one person to encourage or help another person to commit suicide. ”
So this is the only problem that the Police perceive? The fact that an adult who also happens to be the teacher of the child spends time with the child (yes, a child) alone and out of school hours is perfectly acceptable… Whether the parents were aware of this or not does not come into it. For an adult to have a relationship with a child is simply ‘child abuse’.
I admire your clear way of thinking, Daphne, in showing things as they are. Do you think what happened and the picture of the tied up woman have anything to do with each other?
[Daphne – Only insofar as the first is an indicator of a mind going wrong, while the second is confirmation of a mind completely unhinged. Men like this one are not interested in sex or love or connecting with a woman in the usual way. They’re not even really interested in sex, but they feel they have to be and use it as a device in their self-creation. They regard every pseudo-relationship they have as part of a performance in their own mind, a fantasy, the latest dramatic episode in the script they are writing for themselves. Instead of being themselves, they create themselves. They are a work of their own fiction, and everything they do, including their romantic liaisons, is the latest chapter. I know several such men (and women) who are still at it at my sort of age. And by this stage, it becomes very, very obvious to everyone else around what the real problem is, except to them. They look back, see their lives like a long path strewn with litter, and they think it’s because they were unlucky, not because they were unable to live as adults.]
Who made u a phycologist daphne have some respect for my family !!!!!
[Daphne – I’m sorry, but you’re not best placed to speak about respect. And ‘my family’ is stretching it somewhat, given that you’re a cousin who lives in Ireland. You’d be best off staying out of it.]
Jocelyn, how about telling your family to have some respect especially when they’re on Facebook.
How about you telling them that the photos and ideas which your cousin has posted are very disturbing to us, let alone to children.
I remember the case of the teenaged girl – Rachel Bowdler who was found dead in a field, body decomposed, she had been thrown there by the people who were involved with her ‘murder’ namely her boyfriend Jason Decelis who was the last person to be with her and who drugged her at his parents’ residence in Bugibba.
Thankfully he and his mother are locked up.
It is high time for the authorities to take these cases seriously. The mentality that everything is acceptable and everything goes, is plain criminal.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140323/editorial/editorial-how-free-are-we-to-speak.511746
An excellent editorial in today’s Times. The Labour Party should take note.
The reports keep referring to ‘zewg zaghzagh.’ This is misleading. Despite the relatively young age of Tanti, the relevant fact is that he was the girl’s teacher and in a position of trust and authority in her regard.
[Daphne – Just shows how ruddy mad this island society is. We literally invented Newspeak. It’s actually a reflection of the way we think.]
He was an adult. She was a child.
Yes, people who constantly refer to the law are very quick to forget that when it is no longer advantageous to them.
Here we are not even talking about a girl who was 17 and 364 days and a man who was 18 and 1 day.
What we are talking about is a man who became an adult a full five years prior to this incident. In the eyes of the law he has been an adult, a man, for 5 years – and he is also the victim’s teacher, the latter being a child, a minor, in the eyes of the law and in truth.
He was a teacher. She was his minor pupil.
For Generation Y, the classification is not as clear-cut as it is at law.
A child at 15? Laughable.
An adult at 23? Possibly, but not necessarily.
Zewg zaghzagh = for the simple reason to diminish the responsibility from his status of a teacher. Can not stand the local press any longer, can we not for the sake of our children’s good at least report the truthful facts?
The ‘miskin’ syndrome is what I call it. It blurs the vision. Good examples of this exist in the law court’s sentencing. Hence enforcement as per law is always clouded with this ‘miskin’ story. Jahasra!
No one says: hey buddy, you weren’t meant to be there in the first place!
Teachers should not even have a Facebook account. Or if unmarried and young, they should keep it discreet.
I disagree. A Facebook account is a reflection of what you are, or of what you want to be seen as. What you post on your Facebook page and what you like or dislike is a reflection of who you are.
Teachers not having Facebook pages will change nothing. On the contrary, teachers’ Facebook pages should become one of the tools school administrators and parents should use to see who is taking care of their sons and daughters.
I am not aux fait with the details of the law but this incident involved a child and an adult.
The child in effect went missing one afternoon. I presume the adult, her teacher, did not have permission to be in charge of her out side school hours. Is this not abduction?
There are usually rules or laws that protect vulnerable people from being exploited by those who are in a position of authority over them: for example, pupils by teachers, people with learning disabilities by their carers, detained mentally ill patients by those who have detained them and care for them.
Has this teacher also not violated these laws or codes of practice?
Again in a lot of countries, most employers and professional organisations have developed a code of practice in relation to use of internet and social websites including not jeapordizing the reputation of their profession or organisation.
This is not about curbing the individual’s freedom of so each or expression. I am presuming that nothing like this exists in Malta, judging by what government employees, employees of national bodies, politicians and now teachers post on the internet.
Agree with you 100% , a minor missing and in the company of an adult without parental approval or qualification to be with the minor would be so.
Apparently she often got a lift home after school with him. It seems to have been common knowledge and was accepted. No one saw anything wrong with that, sadly.
Getting a lift home from a popular teacher is seen as a huge privilege among pupils and raises their status among peers.
Having to grow up without her mother leaves any child at risk of being preyed on, no matter how much is done to compensate for the loss, because no-one can replace that void. That made her more vulnerable and she fell for the attention she got. So sad.
She DIDN’T get a lift home. That is why she was reported missing. And now she’s dead.
“Getting a lift home from a popular teacher is seen as a huge privilege among pupils and raises their status among peers.”
Jaysus. Huge privilege? Raising their status?
In my day it would have been seen as massive arse-licking, lack of team spirit, and conspiring against your peers. The others would have the pupil down as the Teacher’s Pet, public enemy number one, and the target for wedgies, drawing-pin traps, spiders in the lunchbox and duckings in the lavatory.
Truly, the Age of Men is over. All hail the metrosexual.
Surely it can’t have been that different among girls? Daphne, enlighten us, please.
@ H.P. Baxxter
At the schools I was at, there have always been girls who developed a massive crush on a male teacher/ male teachers.
Generally this was not the cooler set who would have had real life socialising experience and healthier targets for their attentions. Whether this was premature is a different consideration.
This didn’t detract from war-paint application by others.
Attractiveness, reality and appropriateness of such male targets were furthest from the equation. Even there, and especially amongst the ones from different backgrounds to the “cooler” set, the spirit was competitive but never based on any real expectation or a lowering of the distance barrier between teacher and child: it was a game amongst girls. The subject of chat during breaks, between and during lessons, mingled with subjects of best friends, hated teachers and made for voluminous diary content which was shared within certain groups.
(Definitely not the subjects for those sneaking off to remote areas for a smoke. These would be dealing with real life scenarios of rejection, projection, elations and jealousies. Rejection had side-effects that were acted out at school – I won’t go into that here.
Then there was the sports crowd that didn’t waste time on petty stuff.)
Teachers never reacted to this attention except to, from time to time, ask the classes in question along the form to get real and call off the war-paint (which wasn’t allowed anyway). In one school the psychology of the matter was properly explained by one such target.
Teenage fantasy properly recognised as such and properly dealt with, not teenage tragedy.
With school rules brought to the attention of classes and parents time and time again.
A distance between teacher and child is not only healthy but necessary for authority and discipline to have effect. I would say the same would hold between Minister for Education and teacher.
One was “sucking-up” or “a sucker” and just ignored and not spoken to for whatever “valid” reason. Or teased in a different plot.
Perhaps such reference points were discarded when the anti-bullying crowd came along. Now one doesn’t dare say such things even if the formative effect held positives and didn’t actually boil down to bullying.
There’s a difference between being nice, remaining silent and being accepting of anything under the sun as long as the package seems trendy and friendly enough.
Perhaps it was part of the quality charter that came with the schools I attended, but as a teenager none of my male teachers were under 40. There was only one exception, who was in his early 30s.
Thank goodness we’re finally saying it out loud now.
I shudder to think that the teacher sat huddled with his pupil in his car in the dark on the cliffs talking to her about committing suicide with her. I am horrified and terrified; I have children of primary school age with many teachers yet to cross their path. How could no one know? The school has some serious explaining to do.
I would say that school’s entire culture needs examining.
It is not that school only that needs to do so.
I do not know what is more appalling, the tragic loss of this girl due to a very sick “relationship” with this man or the skewed logic underlying en masse the teacher’s defence.
I wonder, though, whether there are any teens who do not defend their teacher (‘Erin’) but did indeed suspect abnormal behaviour.
It is good that a number of sane people are commenting and well done to Daphne for flagging the only angle this story should take.
This story has disturbed me deeply. The fact that he was with her at those hours is already wrong, and as a supposedly responsible adult he should not have kept a 15 year old out knowing that her family would be sick with worry not knowing where she was.
Yes, we are all speculating at this point, but what he did is just plain wrong from start to finish and I don’t see how he is going to get out of this mess. RIP to a girl I didn’t know but who has touched my heart!
Is it possible that anyone who is condoning this ‘teacher’s’ behaviour has children of his own?
There have been many instances where children/wards were made to feel special by a person in power.
Have we not learned anything? When are we going to realize that no profession/calling automatically endows responsible behaviour but some do hide behind the power which a profession affords to cross the line.
Euphemisms.
The true words in Maltese are “ragel u tifla”.
No mincing of words is going to help this guy.
The only mitigation of his guilt will arise if he is declared by experts to be completely insane.
Employers have a lot to answer for. Scrutiny of academic qualifications, work experience and submission to written tests and interviews is fine. But those who know the game will be aware that this is not enough, even for the person who comes out tops from this screening. That’s why they will ask for references from current and previous employers. This is not easy when the job calls for relatively young candidates. That’s why the diligent employers will insert a probationary period in the work contract.
There are means of assessing personalities BEFORE a probationary period of employment.
This story is very straightforward.
Two young people Jumped off of a cliff. They both try to take their lives for some reason we do not know.
[Daphne – Stop it. Just stop this rubbish. A teacher drove his pupil to Dingli Cliffs at 4am and they both ended up at the bottom of those cliffs, she dead. Two young people did not jump off a cliff. A teacher and his pupil did. His duty, as a teacher and an adult, was to prevent that happening, not to make it possible and encourage it and do the same. The man is unhinged and criminally irresponsible.]
There is a whole story about what drove them to this point which we are still to hear.
[Daphne – Grow up. I mean, really, grow up. Do you even know what it means to be an adult? At 23 it would never have occurred to me to develop any sort of friendship with a 15-year-old, still less take a 15-year-old to Dingli Cliffs in dead of night and say, come on, let’s go over together. And I had a damn sight more to deal with than this unbalanced, immature, emotionally arrested loser and prat. If he wanted to kill himself he should have gone to Dingli Cliffs alone and flung himself over – alone – not take a 15-year-old girl with him, the bloody, miserable coward.]
What ever the issue was she and he felt it easier to end it all, then to face the consequence.
Was he wrong for being there with her? Yes. But he seemed just as desperate if he too took a fateful leap to the rocks 80 feet below.
Keep judging people … Keep your witch hunt going… you need a villian and he is the easiest to blame…
He is at fault…
as are the reasons that drove him there,
as are the schools that hired him,
as is the family that didn’t pay attention to her,
as is the media who sensationalises these stories…
just wait and see… this monster you all are trying to make out of this young man, is nothing compared to the secrets which are lurking in the shadows which will shame all involved
[Daphne – I think you will find that all families have problems, that practically all teenagers go through a couple of years of hating their parents and resenting their families, and that most 15-year-olds say things about their parents and family that make them cringe and blush when they remember years later. It’s normal; it’s the process of detachment. It’s when people that age turn their backs on their parents and guardians (because they are horrible, hateful and know nothing) and turn absolutely to their friends (who are wonderful and perfect and really cool and who really love and understand them). So anything you might have been told, just take with a pinch of salt. God knows what I said at that age about my parents, what my children said about me – and who gives a damn. You see things from the perspective of somebody with short experience. One day, with luck and some intelligence, you might understand how foolish you are.]
One day….if some teacher does not drive you to the edge of a cliff at 4am…
This story only proves how important the roles of teachers are. How essential it is that schools only employ those who have been properly trained as teachers and that they carry out serious background checks on them.
By the looks of it there is a lot more that this man should be charged with than assisting one to commit suicide. She was a minor. Of course we will have to wait for the report of the autopsy to know more.
This is every parent’s nightmare. That it has happened to someone who is part of our community, someone who is known to many of us, makes it all that more real. Erin’s family and friends need to stop defending the indefensible. Otherwise they are adding insult to so much injury.
“Two young people jumped off of a cliff.”
I observed that you did not add “together”.
Could it be that one was encouraged to jump and the other pretended to jump and jumped from a ‘safer’ height?
Having read some of the abusive language directed at you by some contributors here I felt I had to speak up.
Fact: I don’t always agree with what you say but I admire some of the attributes you possess, including:
1. your guts (in the face of serious adversity, threats etc)
2. your command of English
3. your analytical skills
4. your widespread network of sources
In my books you are what every journalist should be and I would – if I were active in the field – nominate you for an award.
Yes, it is true that I rarely if ever catch the slightest whiff of humour in anything you write and equally true that sometimes you are perhaps a little too intense about a topic.
Still on the whole, I would rather have you out there looking out for our interests than – with very very few exceptions – our current pack of useless MPs (and local councillors) and pseudo-journalists.
So a heartfelt thanks for that, no matter what your detractors say.
Every society needs a system of checks and balances and you are an integral part of such a system.
Keep up the good work for the sake of us all.
Very true. Daphne has been holding up the fourth estate in this country were most newspapers have failed.
I agree with everything you said, however I can’t see how you can say that there’s not ‘a whiff of humour’. After all, I’m addicted to this blog so much because of the humour.
Well said!
I’ve worked for a world auto maker, back in 2002, came across people whose job it was to plan future generations’ needs and transform them into wants from their childhood.
When a multinational spends over half a billion euros in development costs, with the risk of failure against a competitor having gone one better still present, the above becomes economic sense. It closes the cycle. Long term brand building it was called then.
The philosopher’s stone at the time was the need for an instrument to create people communities to enhance and agglomerate models of behaviour, thought and subsequent enforcement of values exalting these. The product would exist in that ambit, no longer the prime material expression.
If these can be force-fed gently, gradually and subliminally, client loyalty is turned into instinctive followers, whatever one does. Who needs a brand and its upkeep, when all one has to do is to create values then leave one’s offer as a testimony to same on the appropriate medium platform. Consumption becomes unquestioning, familiar, natural.
In vulgar terms, no different to a football club.
Facebook hadn’t yet caught on, and generalistic ads still carried a minimum of information.
We’re still nowhere near understanding what our young ones may be going through. Whether it’s insidious or not, is up to us.
What shocked me most as the news broke out was that many teenagers were missing the most obvious points: what was a man of 23 doing with a girl of 15 in the first place?
What did he have in mind, taking her to Dingli Cliffs at 4 in the morning?
What was a teacher doing with his pupil?
Are teenagers so oblivious to the obvious?
When I pointed this out to a few teenagers I was derided and told off for not showing empathy with the loss of a life.
The problem in reality is that as a parent I was showing too much empathy and as a parent was so concerned about the (lack of) analytical skills of these youngsters who could not see that something was seriously wrong with the situation, and do not understand that this 15-year-old was being corrupted (and this doesn’t necessarily mean sexually) by an adult man.
As a parent it worries me considerably.
The same applies to teenagers being obsessed with YouTubers who are adults and are relating directly and deliberately to underage teenagers.
‘What shocked me most as the news broke out was that many teenagers were missing the most obvious points: what was a man of 23 doing with a girl of 15 in the first place?’
Most probably because these 15 year olds are as vulnerable as the girl who died tragically and operate in a culture where everything is accepted and everything goes and the teacher in question is considered ‘a cult’ and that is accepted.
As yet I have not seen any comments on your blog from parents whose children were Stewart Tanti’s pupils.
I would love to read an appraisal of this pseudo teacher.
I think the facts should be found out first with out guessing what happened ! Think on both families at this time ! Its a tragic accident not something you should all be pawing over for new info and a kick … you can’t help who u fall in love with this may not even be the case? Stop speculating and wait for facts !
Im disgusted at all you judging bas***ds ! Truth is not known yet think of the poor families wat if it was your brother , sister son or daughter! !!! I find people who are quick to judge are the biggest hypocrites you should be ashamed especially you daphne just cause you have a privious disliking to erin you shouldn’t even be allowed to speculate on the matter cas u already have it in for him !
[Daphne – I don’t, actually, though you’re clearly more comfortable convincing yourself of that. The reality is that I’d completely forgotten his name and face and neither rang any bells when I saw the missing person report. I used my own experience of him for one reason alone: to illustrate that yes, he is sick and I know that because I had direct experience of it.
It’s amazing that you should say ‘think of the families’ and ‘what if it was your own daughter’. That is exactly how I am feeling. I don’t have a daughter, but foremost in my mind now is something I never thought of then, because something so horrible never occurred to me. I trusted their teachers.]
I don’t think he is sick as in mentally ill. I think he is a megalomaniac who is criminal.
I would like to give my condolences to the family of Lisa Marie, as no matter the outcome of the investigation, they have lost her.
We shall probably never find out the actual truth as Lisa Marie is not alive to back up her teacher’s story or deny it. Only she and he were on the scene and there were no witnesses.
But that does not change the following.
A girl of 15 was with her teacher, who had kept her out all afternoon and all night, at 4am at Dingli Cliffs. They got there in his car. In other words, an adult, teacher or not (but being a teacher makes it worse), kept a minor out all night against her parents’ wishes. This is against the law. In any situation involving an adult and a minor, the exercise of the minor’s free will cannot be used as justification and the adult always carries full responsibility.
The claim that he was “helping” Lisa Marie, besides being dismissed as a lie by her family, doesn’t make sense. Any adult, still more a teacher, knows that this is not the way to ‘help’ a 15-year-old. There are suitable channels for ‘help’ in the schools anyway.
He took her to Dingli Cliffs at 4am. Because this is an adult-child situation, and not two adults or two children, it is neither legally nor factually correct to say that ‘they went there together’. He took her, in his car. There can be no possible good motive for doing something like that.
From what her friends are writing here, this teacher had been ‘close’ to his pupil for some time and his interest in her was known to her peers.
Regardless of how and why Lisa Marie ended up dead, the fact that a teacher took her to the cliffs at 4am after keeping her away from her family who were looking for her is not a normal and standard situation.
I, for one, do not believe all this talk of suicide. I don’t think she wanted to die and I don’t think she killed herself. At her age, teenagers are afraid to die. They say a lot of things they do not mean, to get attention from the person who admiration they want, and in this case, a bad person took advantage of that.
Let us be more sensitive and think about this tragic loss and hopefully when the right time comes, the teacher will tell the real truth of the story, even if it means that it will condemn him.
I don’t believe Lisa Marie killed herself.
I don’t either.
Neither do I.
A girl of 15 has died in a tragedy with all signs that her teacher is responsible. The pain her family are going through is unimaginable.
As a father of schoolchildren who attend both St Michael’s School and Masquerade, where this man has been teaching, I have grave concerns.
What are St Michael’s School and Masquerade waiting for to issue a statement?
Did they even bother to screen this person prior to engaging him? They should have the basic decency and good sense to say something at this stage.
Is nobody in this country ever accountable for anything or to anyone? Time passes by and all is forgotten; that’s the way things work here in Malta.