I’m following this case from abroad. If the girl was found dead and the guy badly injured, how do we know that at 4.00 am they were at Dingli cliffs?

I have the impression that the media is protecting the teacher involved. The name of the school where he is employed has never been mentioned. Am I wrong?

[Daphne – Yes, you are wrong. The school is St Michael’s Foundation, it has been mentioned, and its statement published. It was the police who said that Tanti drove to the cliffs at 4am. They don’t say how they know. He either told them, or they calculated it from the length of time the girl had been dead, which can be worked out from the autopsy.]

” As for that Mario Vella he seems to think there should be no limits to artistic expression”

Some would be of the opinion that snuff movies are a form of no-limits artistic expression .

Well said, Daphne.

Hardly an artistic revolutionary from the ground up. This guy went straight to the top. Fake through and through.

Nicola Abela Garrett got a scholarship (from ‘Jo’?) and is studying theatre or similar in England.

The only thing Alex Vella Gera cares about is his books – he writes since he’s got available time on his hands, you know a desk clerk is a desk clerk, whether he works in Malta or translates for a living abroad.

For all his public protestations about misogyny (cf ‘Li tkisser sewwi’), Alex Vella Gera doesn’t much care privately.

Charlie Grima, one of the commentators on that ‘bad trip’ post, is a well-known abuser of vulnerable girls. Some time ago, when he was 30, Charlie Grima aggressively (really – aggressively) pursued at least two young girls. Alex is well aware of Charlie Grima’s preferences, as are many other liberal luminaries. This did not bother Alex much; the two spent plenty of time together in Prague and appear to be good friends still.

Nor does Alex seem too fussed that Erin was a teacher and behaved inappropriately with a 15-year old girl. They were friends and are friends still.

Clearly, liberalism in Malta is just a pretty dress for the same old Siculo-Arab misogyny and omerta.

Imma dik Daphne (mara) wisq qahba, sahhara ecc.; ja hasra Erin (ragel) qieghed l-ITU.

[Daphne – Almenu qieghed fis-sodda l-isptar, Lawrence, u mhux mejjet bhal dik it-tifla tal-iskola. Ghandek il-hsieb tieghek ta’ taht fuq. Minflok titkaza li ghalliem zamm tifla tal-iskola barra tul il-lejl u hada sa l-irdum fl-erba ta’ filghodu, fejn instabet mejta, titkaza b’dawk li jghidu fuqu u jiddiskutu l-agir tieghu. Yours is what is called perverse reasoning, Lawrence.]

Maybe so Ms. Daphne but in the end, with any criminal offence, the why and how are part of what gives the person a motive to do something. Without that why and how, they would have no case, only the fact that they were found in Dingli Cliffs while other reasons come up. It’s looks bad now but until the why and how are discovered, a case cannot be built.

[Daphne – ‘Without the why and how, they would have no case’: you are completely wrong.]

My point to this is that jumping to conclusions without the full facts is not what is needed right now for both families, a father lost a daughter and a family had a traumatic experience of almost losing a son or a brother, now people can say what they want about this matter but in the end he is someone’s son and someone’s brother. Waiting and seeing what will happen is better than the assumptions made on a few pieces of a puzzle that have not yet made a whole picture.

[Daphne – Again, you are completely wrong. You miss the essential point that this is not a private matter, but a very public one. This is not a husband who killed his wife in a row over adultery, where public discussion of the details would be questionable unless there was some public interest matter (inadequacy of the law, attitudes towards women…) but a teacher who took a pupil to cliffs at 4am, after keeping her out all night, where she was found dead and he alive. No, in situations like this the role of the media is most definitely NOT to wait and see what happens. It is to make things happen and to raise public awareness of the fact that teacher-pupil friendships are unacceptable, dangerous to the pupil and indicative of severe psycho-sexual shortcomings on the teacher’s part.]

The suicide pact is his greatest fib. With an infinite ego, why would he?