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Matthew Vella
Commissioner for Children Sonia Camilleri has called for speeding up the justice process against paedophiles as the number of people accused with child abuse has doubled over the past four years.
The figures show a doubling of arraigned individuals, increasing from 11 in 2001 to 30 individuals by November 2005 brought in front of the court on suspicion of child abuse.
“Arraignment and prosecution of perpetrators of abuse are not enough,” Camilleri told MaltaToday. “We have to speed up the process of bringing them to justice. Court delays cannot be accepted. A register of paedophiles, in the case of sexual abuse, is also something that some countries have opted for.”
The Commissioner for Children, a staunch pro-lifer, said her office has also proposed to the Minister for Family and Social Solidarity, shadow ministers and the Attorney General, that a clause be introduced into the Domestic Violence Act so as to include mention of “possible violence even against the unborn child.”
Camilleri said it was thanks to the police and the national support agency Appogg that “we are slowly getting a picture of how things stand at present. There is no guarantee that things were any better in the past. Children are now being rightly empowered to speak out against abuse, but this was not so in the past when children carried the trauma for years and never spoke up. This does not diminish the fact that there is a great deal of concern about the large number of abuse cases being reported.”
Individuals arraigned were 11 in 2001, increasing to 17 the year after, 26 in 2003 and a record 30 by Novemeber 2005. The figure decreased slightly in 2004 with 22 people arraigned.
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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