It’s completely detectable from his behaviour and what he said in court.

Do you require a statement from a psychiatrist to tell you when somebody is having a schizophrenic episode, for example?

I hope not. That, too, is perfectly obvious.

Was he declared as a sociopath by any psychiatrist?

Erin Tanti is a sociopath. He is going to stay that way for the rest of his life. He may be more dangerous or less dangerous at intervals, but nobody who enters into any kind of relationship with him – from friendship to intimacy – will ever be safe.

This is not a curable condition, like depression. It is a permanent fact.

Even Tanti’s reference to her father as a “powerful man” gives away his (Tanti’s) thinking of the poor girl as some kind of trophy/conquest. Love indeed.

He wanted to push that girl off a cliff while convincing himself that he had talked her into jumping.

Why do people in Malta persist in failing to acknowledge serious personality disorders?

That’s how people like Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando end up in government positions – because people refuse to acknowledge that they are seriously disordered.

I just love the way people on this island think you are either insane or you are normal. There are also personality disorders and psychiatric conditions that are not ‘insanity’.

Yes, incredible isn’t it – they operate in an environment where girls of 15 are trained to hook men, and they think it’s normal and that everybody else is as primitive as they are.

‘Men of 23 do not have any interest at all in girls of 15 unless they are perverted’

I agree with you a hundred per cent. I think your last paragraph sums it all up.

Yes, sadly Maltese society is still very primitive indeed particularly where women are concerned.

One horrible comment I had heard was ‘”Forsi waqqghathu’! This from another woman, believe it or not.

And yes, he should have been held on remand.

If your mission is really to start a discussion about fundamental rights, focus on the fundamental rights of the victims and third parties and not the criminals.

I’m sorry, but even you have missed an essential truth: men of 23 do not have any interest at all in girls of 15 unless they are perverted.

And they most certainly do not fall in love with them.

The reason that many Maltese people spoke of this as some story of star-crossed lovers is because in Maltese culture girls were routinely farmed out for sex as young as 12 and, until a generation ago, married at 15.

You forget how primitive Maltese society still is beneath its veneer of ‘civilisation’.

In more advanced societies, people would instantly see a 23-year-old teacher having sex with one of his pupils, and playing with her mind, exactly for what it is – even without the catastrophic finale.