But I ask anybody to put himself in the shoes of the mother. She was left alone to care for their children. In the meantime he was living happily with his partner and her daughter and later with their child. It is not easy.

I pity the woman who thought that under those circumstances the only way out to satisfy herself was by brainwashing her daughter. It is horrendous to make your daughter take a false oath against her father, but maybe she was under great emotional and psychological stress. I do not blame her.

One very glaring fact remains. Malta in 2014 is completely unable to protect innocent children from abuse and exploitation.

Where is the accountability in this country? Where is the Commissioner for Children?

Where are the resignations from Appogg and the Police force?

What have we learned from the grave mistakes done in this case? What should we do to prevent a recurrence?

Tomorrow, your own children or grandchildren could be abused and exploited. We need statements from these entities that such cases will never occur again and we want concrete action.

Just as a final comment, most of the situations you have described are completely foreign to me. To give you some context: with most people I have as friends or friends of friends it is the females who by far make the most money.

[Daphne – You don’t live in Malta, Albona. The context here is entirely different. Most Maltese married women stop working when they have children and either return to the workforce very late or never return at all. This puts them entirely at the mercy of their spouses financially, and permanently – because loss of NI contributions for the non-working period means they lose out completely on a pension or get just a reduced one.]

I do not know of any who depend on men for money. I am sorry but I think the misunderstandings that have arisen in our exchanges are due to the fact that we live in different worlds with different legal systems and different cultures.

I too know the Maltese context from personal experience but I suppose I barely believe it to be true. This would not be the first time we have misunderstood each other and I dare say it won’t be the last.

How do you prove heroin addiction if the courts do not request it?

[Daphne – That’s not the way it works in any jurisdiction I know of (I have no idea where you live). When a man petitions the courts of justice for the removal of his children from the care and custody of the mother, the only possible grounds are unfitness or parental neglect. The court will expect him to prove that the mother is an alcoholic who stays out all night, that she fails to feed or care for her children, that the children have been found wandering around at night alone, that he mother is a junkie & c & c. Your friend used the work of a private detective. What he should have done is engage the support of social services and taken it from there.]

How do you prove that the woman is not buying the children enough food? How do you prove that there are men coming and going at all hours if social services do not have a person stationed outside the house 24/7.

Sorry but again, I think you are referring to Malta without having experience of what happens, on a personal level, in other Western countries.

[Daphne – The parameters for removing children from the custody of their mother are the same throughout the civilised world, albona. There is no ‘in Malta it is this and in England it is that’. For the children to be removed from their primary carer, that primary carer must pose a real risk to them, and that risk must be proven. The court will not base its decision on the opinion of the other parent who wants the children, but on the opinion of social services, medical doctors and psychologists.]

He is an imbecile. He just does not have a clue because of his obvious limitations. He is a charlatan.

I have been indirectly involved in these dramatic situations for close to half a century.

I am greatly impressed by the large number of valid contributions to a highly sensitive topic.

Daphne’s retorts are of the first order although I would beg to differ on a few points.

I am, nonetheless, encouraged that that there are still many upright Maltese around.

It will be an uphill battle. It will be worthwhile and ,one day, it will bear fruit. That day I will not see.

This is the blog of hope and so it should remain.

Excuse me Daphne when I said “women were given too much rights” I wasn’t saying that that was wrong. Women are humans like men are and everyone should have the same respect and rights as everyone else.

Saying that my ex wife did this because she didn’t have any respect or rights you are far from truth. The truth is that today there isn’t any respect for the family and it could be both the father and the mother who leave or even disrespect their children.

So Daphne, as a man in a relationship with a woman making all sorts of open threats to press false charges, for example of abuse or violence, what choice does he have but to leave the home and then file for custody later on?

[Daphne – Many women live with men who press false charges or threaten to do so, albona, and many women (most, in fact) also live in situations where men control most or all of the money. This is, as you will (I hope) immediately understand, a major power imbalance that is ripe for abuse and control. And abused to control it very often is. Many women live as beggars in their own homes, though you will not notice this because their husband will maintain a false front for the sake of his pride and ego (buying her a smart dress to wear when they go out together, for instance, but then leaving her without money for food and forced to plead and rage for money for basic necessities for the children). But do these women leave? No. Do they walk out without their children? NO. Do they tell themselves ‘what choice do I have but to leave and file for custody later on’? NO. On the contrary, what they say is this: what choice do I have but to stay? That’s the difference between a mother and a father – though I hasten to add that there are exceptions to both.]

All you need to do is watch one single ‘cop show’ to realise that in domestic cases one call from the female suffices to have the man arrested. I am not talking about some village in Gozo either – think USA, UK, Sweden, Norway, NZ.

[Daphne – Cop shows! This is life, not television. But yes, it is entirely correct that one phone call from a woman being attacked by a man should lead to his immediate arrest. How else is she supposed to defend herself against somebody stronger than she is? When was the last time you heard in the news that a man had been stabbed 50 times by the mother of his children? That a man had been shot by his wife? Thrown off a cliff by his wife? When a man was thrown off a cliff by his wife in the United States, it made the world news. When a woman was thrown off a cliff by her husband in Gozo, it was just another report in Times of Malta. ]

To prove my point about how useless and biased social services often are I even know of a girl, who is now around 40, who was abused by several family members and was never removed from her home as it would have conjured up memories of a not so distant past when children of indigenous families were adopted out to White families.

I am not a liar.

[Daphne – No, you are not a liar. You are just scrabbling around for cases to bolster an indefensible argument that the system is prejudiced against men. In fact, it is prejudiced against women and has been so since time immemorial. You also seem to believe that the right of women to keep their children is sacrosanct and inviolable and that the prejudice in our favour is historical. It is most definitely not. The rights of women over their children are extremely recent: in Malta, 1993. Well into the 20th century, women automatically lost their children with divorce. They literally lost them – no rights of access at all. All the rights were vested in the husband. Women got the vote before they got rights over their own children when married to the father. Until 1993 in Malta, married men were empowered at law to take all decisions pertaining to their children, solely and without approval from their wife, with their wife not even having the right of veto.]

If you don’t believe me Daphne, there is nothing more I can add. I never doubted what you said in terms of the facts you quoted about cases you personally know of, so I do not expect you to do that to me. That’s mutual respect. I am not some loon commenter who just makes things up to make a point.

[Daphne – That is not actually what I meant. I should have phrased it differently. I have no doubt you think the story correct, but perhaps you don’t have all the information. There is no way children are left in the hands of heroin-addicted mothers unless the case is unreported. Had your friend brought proof of her heroin-addiction to the court, she would have lost custody of the children immediately. So he either did not do that, or she is not actually ‘a notorious heroin addict’.]

The person I refer to even tried employing a private detective but the evidence was not permitted in court as it contravened privacy laws. The government did nothing, or near nothing to investigate. But like I said you say I am a liar so there is nothing more to add.

[Daphne – There you are. You see? There was no evidence in court that the mother is a heroin addict. So the court did not know her to be a heroin addict, and it follows from this that the court did not grant custody to a heroin addict (even if she is one). Also, if a private detective was actually needed, then she is not a notorious heroin addict at all. Notorious heroin addicts tend to be known to the police or other local (health) authorities, as is generally the case wherever one lives. I did not say you are a liar. I said I did not believe your story, which is different. And I turned out to be correct not to do so, and correct also in saying that it sounds wrong because custody is never granted to heroin addicts but rather the opposite, with heroin addicts routinely losing care of their children even if there is no separation case.]

[Daphne – You can do so here, marking your comment ‘not for publication’, or you can send an email to dcgalizia@gmail.com]

Men walk out and move on, make new kids, leave the ‘old’ ones behind or see them every other weekend. Sure there are exceptions but this is and has been the norm for years. I would go as far as saying it’s genetic.

[Daphne – It is indeed biology. It is also the reason Maltese has an ancient word for mother – the Arabic ‘omm’ – but no word for father, except for a corruption of the French ‘monsieur’. Mother was the local girl who stayed. Daddy was some guy who came and left – and probably never came again.]