Mother of beaten child handed suspended sentence

A 35 year-old woman has been handed a suspended sentence for perjury after falsely testifying that her son’s grandfather had struck the boy’s exposed genitals with an iron bar.

Rita Grech was sentenced to a year in prison, suspended for two years after she was found guilty of judicial perjury, having lied under oath in proceedings before judge David Scicluna in 2013.

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech heard how the woman had told the court of Criminal Appeal in a case against the grandfather that she had been visiting the child, under the supervision of child protection agency Appogg, when her son claimed that his grandfather had hit him with an iron bar. The mother claimed that the boy had pulled down his trousers whilst making the allegation.

In her sentence, Frendo Dimech was careful to reproduce verbatim the mother’s lie. “He said ‘he beat me up,’ took his clothes off, in my private parts. He said, ‘look mummy, look what nannu did to me’ ...he had a mark on his private parts and I told him ‘how can this be’ and he took off his clothes. Yes I saw the bruise. No he took off his trousers.”

However two social workers who had been present at the time gave a different account, denying that the child had taken off his clothes, as his mother had claimed and had only raised his shirt and exposed his abdomen.

The police had subsequently charged Grech with perjury.

Magistrate Frendo Dimech, after carefully examining the social workers’ testimony, concluded that the boy had only exposed his side.

“That which the accused insist occurred during the visit of 24 August 2011 and which she had previously told the Court of Criminal Appeal, is contradicted by two eyewitnesses that she herself makes reference to," said the court. "The accused cannot be believed, as she should not have been believed on the 8th of May 2013 [when she testified]. Without a doubt, her testimony is untrue.”

The court, finding Grech guilty of perjury, noted that the mother was not a first time offender and imposed a prison sentence on one year suspended for two years, and ordered the woman’s general interdiction for 10 years.
Inspector Priscilla Caruana Lee prosecuted.