And might I point out something else?

Sociopaths are incapable of remorse. So they are incapable of being ‘down’ in the way that you imagine.

Private citizens – that’s Daphne and us – discover and object to a decision taken by our public institutions which flies in the face of the common good. The republic is about the common good. So we reacted, like good citizens of the republic.

Incredible. A cold chill went right through me when I read that.

Let me spell it out to you, shall I, Daniel? (And please also see my other comment to you on the same subject.)

This made the news not because of ‘whose daughter she was’, but because a girl of 15 was thrown off a cliff by one of her school-teachers, who had also seduced her and taken naked pictures of her.

Shall I repeat that again, so that the full impact may finally sink in through your thick skin of jaundiced class hatred?

A GIRL OF 15 WAS THROWN OFF A CLIFF TO HER DEATH BY ONE OF HER SCHOOL-TEACHERS, WHO HAD SPENT THE PREVIOUS FEW MONTHS HAVING SEX WITH HER WHILE SHE WAS HIS PUPIL, AND WHO ALSO TOOK COMPROMISING PICTURES OF HER AND ENTERED HER FATHER’S HOME WHEN HE WAS NOT THERE.

A SCHOOL-TEACHER FLUNG ONE OF HIS PUPILS OFF DINGLI CLIFFS.

SHE DIED. HE KILLED HER. A TEACHER MURDERED HIS PUPIL, AGED 15.

It makes no difference to anyone whether she was Kimberley a dock worker’s daughter or Lisa Marie, the daughter of a hotelier. It is the crime that shocks people and not the identity of the victim.

The only person to whom Lisa Marie Zahra’s identity and father mattered is Erin Tanti himself, who would never have targeted Kimberley the dock worker’s daughter.

He got off on seducing and killing Tony Zahra’s daughter. He would not have got off on seducing and killing a dock worker’s daughter.

If you haven’t understood this, you have understood nothing, and you are very poor at understanding the complexities of human nature.

Lisa Marie Zahra is, so far in Maltese history, the only schoolgirl ever to have been thrown off a cliff by one of her teachers.

The only way in which her father is a factor is because her father is the reason Erin Tanti targeted her in the first place.

With a mentality that rather shockingly reflects your own, he went after her precisely because he bears a grudge against those he considers to be far more privileged than he is.

In his mind, Erin Tanti did not go after, possess and destroy Lisa Marie Zahra, but what she stood for.

I understood this instantly when the news broke that she had been found dead at the bottom of the cliff, and he alive some distance off. That is exactly how and why I had no doubt, right from the start, that he murdered her, that he held her in contempt, and that he enjoyed seducing and then destroying not her, but what she symbolised to him.

This is not about vengefully stopping him from studying.

This is about consideration for those who will have to share a lecture room with him, those who will have to teach him, and also, their safety.

It is also about sending a message to society in general: that a teacher can’t murder one of his pupils after having sex with her and then expect life to carry on as normal barring the minor inconvenience of a trial.

Why do we always have to re-invent the wheel?

In the normal world, convicted criminals, and those awaiting trial, whether on remand or not, can and do enrol for university degrees. But they do it by correspondence. Helps to pass the time in jail.

Mr Farrugia’s answer to that would, I hope, be a clear and unequivocal “No”.

The reason for his different view in Lisa Marie’s case, I suspect, has lots to do with the commonly held view that she was somehow in part responsible for what happened to her – because Maltese society, which until three decades ago married off girls at 15, does not consider her to have been a child.