Let us hope justice is now served
Published:
April 4, 2014 at 2:12pm
That’s the title of my column in The Malta Independent, published today instead of the usual Thursday.
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I hope that his teaching warrant is withdrawn.
[Daphne – You need to keep up. He never had one.]
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-04-04/opinions/let-us-hope-justice-is-now-served-4498784257/
I hope that this ‘teacher’ is now taught a lesson.
First those who gave him his job.
Here is a link to a poem Erin Tanti wrote about his sister in 2007 (when he was 15/16 and she was 12): http://erinstewarttanti.deviantart.com/art/enya-65416742.
I find it strangely disturbing. His whole deviantART profile is a bit weird.
I am absolutely horrified and bewildered at how so many of those commenting on Times of Malta’s Facebook page are talking about giving this cruel and evil man the benefit of the doubt.
Some are stating it as fact that Lisa Marie was a tormented child and are even going as far as to attack the family of the poor girl for not noticing the state they have assumed she was in.
It is Erin Tanti who is the accused here – not Lisa Marie or her family.
To turn guns on them and somehow blame them for what happened adds salt to the wound in no small measure. Shame on every single one of those persons.
A young girl is dead. She did not die by accident. It seems clear that Erin Tanti contributed in no small way to her death.
What happened exactly – whether he talked her into jumping, whether he pushed her, or whether she fell in a struggle – may not yet be clear but the fact that he, an adult, who had access to her as her teacher, took her to Dingli Cliffs at 4am is enough to make him guilty on a few counts. There are certain incontrovertible facts which cannot be denied.
Erin Tanti is every parent’s nightmare. We send our children to school assuming that they are in a safe environment. He has destroyed that.
By ‘befriending’ Lisa Marie he broke every rule in the book and by the looks of it he totally took advantage of her.
By taking her to Dingli Cliffs at night he put her in harm’s way. And if he gave her alcohol and/or pills he might as well have pulled a gun out and shot her.
There are many ways to kill a person but each method has the same result – the death of a human being. It doesn’t make him any less of a murderer. That she was a child and his pupil just adds to the horror of it.
Erin Tanti stands accused of a number of crimes. Each one of them is very serious – cumulatively they make him a monster. If he were a friend of mine, I would shut up and feel shame and horror at what he has done.
Yet, not a whimper from the school. And what about his other pupils, has anyone talked to them?
I very much agree with your take on this case and with your general commentary on the way the press and public have reacted to it. But aren’t you afraid you might be handing Erin Tanti’s lawyers the ‘couldn’t get a fair trial’ card by having this discussion right now?
[Daphne – No. This matter was settled in the 1970s by a European Court of Human Rights judgement. It was The Sunday Times/Thalidomide case. You can look it up, but here is the essence: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/allanmassie/100072944/the-european-court-of-human-rights-thalidomide-and-the-freedom-of-the-press/ ]
One more thought to those attacking the Zahras, even if Lisa Marie was a troubled child, even if somehow her father did not know what was going on in her life (and I can think of many her age who exclude their parents from their life) how does that justify Erin Tanti in any way for what he did?
Does it give him the right to defile her? To give her alcohol and pills on the edge of a cliff at night?
Nothing, but absolutely nothing, can justify what he did.
Six accusations are no joke.
It really is incredible that there are some who take you to task in their comments below your article. Sick is the only word that comes to mind and anger the only emotion.
He was actually arrested at the ITU at Mater Dei Hospital on the 21st of March, two days after having been found in Dingli – http://www.tvm.com.mt/news/aggornat-2-se-jkun-akkuzat-li-gieghla-toqtol-ruhha-bidejha/
According to the same news report, the man showed no emotion in court.
Comments like the one by “matthew tanti” under the article in The Malta Independent is pathetic.
“is there something more to these incessant attacks than meets the eye? daphne usually only comments on political matters….so either she will try to somehow link this man to the labour party, or else she must have some other motivation.”
Who the hell is “matthew tanti”? He seems to come out of the woodwork every now and then to politicise issues.
Is he a relative of Erin Tanti?
‘Who the hell is matthew tanti’?
Another warped one.
There was a murder case in around the year 1900 in Malta that involved two men hired by the husband of a woman who pushed her off a cliff at Golf it-Tafal in Xghajra. One of the convicted murderers had the surname Brunell.
I think you mean ‘Burnell’.
Yes, It could very well have been, as I am going by oral lore spoken by oldtimers in the late 1950s.
It is hard to remember full exact details after over a half a century although my recollection is said by others to be sharper than most.
Further details to the case was that the naive woman was lured to that location by her husband telling her a lie, that she was to pick-up a shipment of gold coming in by boat and he was too busy elsewhere but two other men will be there to help her.
The other men turned out to be her killers.
[Daphne – There was a much more recent case, only a few years ago, in which a man in Gozo asked his wife to go for a clifftop walk with him to discuss their marital problems, and as soon as they got there, he tossed her off the edge. Her body was never found, but he confessed and was convicted of her murder. He said that he did it because it was less complicated than leaving her.]