Rambo said that the mind is the best weapon. And the best safeguard against anything – be it corruption, charlatanism, exploitation, despotism, or indoctrination – is mature and informed scepticism.

This one’s pushing for international legislation to stop that kind of thing.

http://www.barbarabenedettelli.com/

Amanda Knox made millions.

It would be scary for an adult to try and counter in this context.

So much scarier for a child who was cornered in this way.

People are so used to taking short cuts, so used to corrupted practice, to turning a blind eye in the face of psychological suffering and actions, that I wonder what makes sense to them.

The thing is that while it may exist in random incidents “barra minn Malta” those incidents would generally not count upon the silenced and muted general public of the total population that makes up that community. In Malta the community IS the whole population of the country and everyone is implicated when they don’t stand up and act against such practice.

This poor girl’s death is also the result of an inward looking cosa nostra mentality.

The ministry, the school, the people who know him: Pushing forward an absolute loser and enabling the context of illusion that he operated in also a part of it.

How could the Times of Malta even promote the comedy club interview as news? Even that just doesn’t stand. That is junk content, and people taking decisions need to realise that responsibility in actions and intentions starts with employing appropriately responsible staff, not friends of same, or more of same.

The mother. I can’t get over how she said nothing and took no action in warning the girl’s father. There’s a callousness in there. What’s her justification for this part in the tragedy? How could she have let this happen under her nose? How could she not have noticed that her son had few threads linking him to normal? None that have come to light in these past three weeks. Who were the other two people he communicated his crime of dating his minor student to?

The presepju mentality. I’ve had it up to here with people who like to think of Malta as a perfect mise-en-scene, populated by a set of asexual pasturi who never do anything beyond their benign roles, and who believe depravity exists barra minn Malta biss.

One of the most shocking aspects of this case is how easily it all happened. There were no safeguards against it. The scary thing is, there still aren’t and no one’s talking about it.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, including the charge of assisted suicide, even though he has already admitted to buying pills, feeding them to her, driving her to Dingli cliffs and accompanying her to the edge and watching her jump off.

It wasn’t a secret. Several of his victim’s contemporaries knew about his relationship. They thought of him as one of them and saw nothing wrong. Some are still defending him even now, clinging to the false hope that he isn’t guilty. The extent of the damage this man caused extends far beyond the girl who died.

He said he loved her but wanted to end their relationship – it seems this latter phrase is the only time he is saying the truth. For end their relationship he surely did.

As for the other article in The Malta Independent which speaks about the apparently contradictory charges of murder and assisting with suicide. I believe the charge sheet is correct to list them both. If it didn’t and he was found not guilty of murder, I do not think the police would be able to charge him again for the same crime.

Effectively the principle known as double jeopardy. Therefore, the police had to charge him with both in case some ill-directed jury had to let him off the hook on the murder charge.

All in all what is emerging here is an ugly sordid picture of a man who seemed to have planned this a while ago – from his Cliff Dingli moniker, to the life is not worth living statements, that Valentine Day gift, his passport, the stolen money.

I believe he really thought he planned the perfect murder with him as the star.

His abuse and manipulation of the poor girl was not just sexual but went way beyond. What sick/evil individual gives a book on suicide as a gift, more so on Valentine’s Day.

He adds insult to injury, if that was even possible, by trying to shed bad light on Tony Zahra and his relationship with his daughter. What a poor excuse for a man.

The case affects not just the poor Zahra family, but the whole country. It has exposed an evil, sick part of our community. This safe haven, this perfect place to have a family, is not quite what it seems.

It has also exposed serious deficiencies in our schools and their failure to carry out proper due diligence of the persons in whose care they entrust our children. As parents we send our children to school on the fair assumption that they will be cared for.

Little did any of us expect that the schools would provide such easy access to our little ones to predators such as this. I hope that at the very least, this is a wake-up call to all schools that they need to be more vigilant and that certain procedures such as the profiling by professionals need to become obligatory.

Not that that will be of any comfort to Tony Zahra or his family now. Only justice can provide a little bit of that.

“Now that more information and confirmations are out I can say that Erin was not a professional teacher and that may explain why he behaved unprofessionally. ”

I am not a teacher and most of us are not but we do know the basics that it is wrong to date your pupils. Erin Tanti seemed to know this too and that is why he tried to keep it a secret.

Guilty of having given a 15-year-old whiskey and pills, which he bought. Guilty of driving a vulnerable 15-year-old to a place where she could have easily (which in fact she did) have harmed herself.

Guilty of not having realised that though he was ‘bluffing’, she was immature enough to go ahead with it. Guilty of making her believe he loved her.

Guilty, because he was much older, and also her teacher, and obliged to tell her father if something was wrong and to protect her, guide her and not abuse her and push her to kill herself.

No wonder she “looked back to look him in his eyes as she jumped” in pitch darkness. It probably hit her that he was screwed up and was never going to kill himself.