The best comment so far about this situation
Posted by Veronica:
I am the parent of a twelve year old girl and I find this incident extremely frightening and a clear warning that I will have to be vigilant at all times.
Your commentary on the story is not speculation or sensationalism; it is a reasoned judgement on the incontrovertible facts known so far.
What is particularly alarming is the onslaught of comments from this man’s pupils who are all clearly in his thrall. The fact of his close ‘friendship’ with this poor girl also seems to have been common knowledge to her classmates.
This is an unhealthy situation and one which I find hard to believe can have been completely invisible to the school’s management. I think parents should ask some very hard questions at this point.
This man clearly set himself up to be his pupils’ ally and confidante. This is textbook grooming. It gives you the opportunity to identify children who are vulnerable and to position yourself as their only refuge.
Even if there was no sexual component to this situation, the best case scenario is that we have a juvenile ego in an adult’s body who clearly thinks he is beyond convention and who can see nothing wrong with directly encouraging inappropriate relationships with his pupils.
From any perspective, such an individual should never be allowed anywhere near a classroom.
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I’m assuming at the very least he won’t ever be allowed to teach again, no school would consider hiring him after this.
I hope he doesn’t offer to do any voluntary work.
Or set up a weather club, as one other ex-teacher did. http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2008/04/it-was-the-weatherman-mark-vella-gera/
It would be nice if he got to entertain fellow inmates with his acts.
Touché.
There is very interesting case law in England and the United States regarding the subject of teachers becoming paramours of their pupils . This applies to both genders of teachers, male and female. In following these criminal cases, many an interesting fact emerges as the incidents are narrated in the course of evidence in court. It is time we revisited our educational institutions and establish what really is going on before more incidents of this kind recur. From what I gather this is neither a guess nor a rough estimate. The authorities concerned should give this case all the attention, consideration and internal investigation it deserves.
Truly this is the best comment so far – I agree that there should be more back-ground checks on new teachers.
Qualifications on their own do not make a good teacher, as lifestyle is part and parcel how we behave either at work or at play.
From what I can gather from Erin’s Facebook page, he has some serious problems with mature development.
Having spent my school years at a Church school (De La Salle) and at a trade school in Bighi I can only say that the teachers in both schools had been my inspiration to what is morally right and what is wrong.
If this kind of behaviour is going to infest our schools, whether private, church or government schools then it is time for parents to keep on open eye on what’s going on and what type of contact their children are having with their teachers.
Maybe this situations has been an eye-opener to what might be lurking in other schools. But I also must add that, had a tragedy so horrific have to happen to shake the system.
Never thought that 23yr old perverts existed.
I agree he gives off groomer vibes and let’s say I had the displeasure of knowing one.
At one point this groomer had me asking myself why he called quiet shy old me to go meet him with a young girl (who was possibly 12-14).
I thought she was just a new addition to our large group.
Then one night he got shit-faced drunk. Confessed something about her to me and then he stopped asking me to hang around. At the time I didn’t know he was in his 20s and naively assumed he was my age, 16.
The selection and appointment of teachers in local schools, colleges, other educational institutions and at the University of Malta is a subject that deserves immediate and careful discussion.
Many teachers receive their training at the Faculty of Education, where many would immediately agree that there is more than ample room for a re-analysis of the way they are being taught and also a re-evaluation of their teacher training course content.
Other teachers are simply recruited from youngsters who would have completed a first degree, where only some of them would have completed a PGCE programme. There also exists a variety of recruitment processes among post-secondary institutions. But, is the emphasis on the relevant qualities of the person, or simply the academic qualifications without scrutinizing as sufficiently as expected prior to entrusting such huge responsibilities to a young person whose training and continuous professional development
programme leave much to be desired?
Discipline is a top priority when teachers are carrying their professional duties, both in kindergarten primary, seconday, post-secondary, vocational and Higher Education sectors.
While the importance of good working conditions and decent salaries for staff are recommendable, their professional duties and their monitoring system cannot be less important. I know of teachers (very few) who mix up with their students during weekends in places of entertainment. I know of teachers (a bigger number) who have absolutely many difficulties in managing their class. There is a greater number of teachers who know their subject too well but their pedagogical skills are hopeless. Unfortunately, I have also had experience with some teachers whose moral standing and beliefs are strongly questionable. If I had to refer to a general debate on teachers’ dress code and manners, I’d probably find myself in a considerably more challenging scenario.
There are VERY GOOD TEACHERS, as well. But these are on the decrease. The expansion of programmes, of post-secondary education, and of further and higher education are simply adding to those areas that all educators and the local public, especially parents, should leave no stone unturned to discuss and share their opinion with all concerned.
It’s about time that we start getting things in place, especially in the field of education.
A society that tolerates stage pornography as some sort of desirable art form would be asking for trouble from this sort of seduction of young pupils by their more “experienced” tutors.
Indeed, he is a shameless person. He broke all ethical boundaries and should be held responsible, completely responsible, for what happened to this poor young girl.
No story, which he will eventually make up to save his skin, should be accepted by the authorities without thorough investigation.
This person’s “weird world” was all over the internet, for crying out loud, and the school should not have engaged him.
Well said!
Veronica makes a very valid point indeed.
My children are all older than this weirdo so, unlike Veronica, I am not frightened.
I am deeply shocked though.
I hereby urge all parents with a modicum of intelligence to start asking questions and to expect genuine answers.
From the school in question, from any other school and from the Education Department.
Who is responsible for this tragic mess?
Who is responsible for taking measures to try and ensure, as best they can, that whatever happened in Dingli does not happen again?
I expect the Education Ministry and Department to come down like a ton of bricks on the likes of this miserable freak who are in any way involved with children in education.
I, for one, expect no more and no less.
Evarist Bartolo, you have no part in this tragedy, but I expect that you do your duty in the appalling circumstances.
Weed all the perverts out of the country’s education system.
Whether they are taghna lkoll or not. Whether they are priests, monks or nuns. Whether they are actors, cool or simply liberal. LGBT or straight.
You have the ways and means to do it.
Please rid our children and grandchildren of this filth.
Aren’t teachers CRB (don’t know what that is in Maltese) checked? This applies to mainstream schools, after-school clubs, drama companies, arts school, band clubs and so forth.
This was another case that happened as a result of the low standards in child protection.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120802/local/music-teacher-accused-of-having-sex-with-student-13.431241
If it is a fact that ” … this man’s pupils … are all clearly in his thrall” should be a frightening eye-opener for the parents of young children who evidently would be in similar moral and physical danger at the mercy of other dishonourable “educators” who shockingly and unbelievably still find some odd crank to put up some defense for their evil deeds.
As myself a parent I agree with Veronica’s comments but it is not correct stating that her classmates knew what was happening. As a matter of fact very few knew about this ‘close friendship’ with most of the children getting to know about it after the tragic event.
I’m not a parent, but all those implying that everything’s fine between a 23-year-old and a 15-year-old are lying to themselves, and they know it.
When I was in the fourth year at university, I remember looking back at being 17 and thinking what a fragile thing I was – let alone 15.
That’s the age of discovery, the only way it can be healthy, dramatic, distressing sometimes but true, is with actual contemporaries. Which is why this man had no place in her life. Indeed he was definitely aware it wasn’t right.
At 23, I had no interest in any girl younger than 20.
If they think they’ve seen it all simply because they’ve been saturated with the internet, they still haven’t got the mental instruments to cope, and perhaps never will. The fact they defend him betrays their wish to filter reality and its horrors.
It’s not right, even if they say so.
Il-kummiedji fl-iskejjel Maltin ilhom ghaddejin!
Way back in the 90s I went to a girls’ secondary school and I still remember those teachers who lacked dignity.
A girl who was crazy about the guidance teacher fixed two appointments weekly with him or even more. Being a guidance teacher himself couldn’t he notice that this girl was simply mad about him and all she wanted was to be alone with him?
Our handsome art teacher dancing to slow music with one of the pupils during the farewell party – again, this girl had been aching for this moment the whole year.
Another teacher who was not young at all spent all the break hours chatting with the same girl.
Things keep repeating because there is no one shaking these irresponsible teachers.
I know another case which happened in another state school where a pupil and her teacher started seeing each other secretly. Once she left school the relationship continued in the open till they got married. The teacher involved is now a headmaster.