[WATCH] Lawyer of falsely convicted man in child molestation case decries ‘failure’ of justice system

Lawyer Tonio Azzopardi questions why the court didnt' assign a social worker to Leanne Camilleri, who had falsely accused her father of paedophilia 

Lawyer Tonio Azzopardi has questioned why social workers didn't aid Leanne Camilleri with her testimony
Lawyer Tonio Azzopardi has questioned why social workers didn't aid Leanne Camilleri with her testimony

A conference organised by the President's Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society on how to improve the access of children to justice took a turn for the awkward when lawyer Tonio Azzopardi spoke up against the justice system’s treatment of his client Emanuel Camilleri, who was falsely jailed for paedophilia.

'The justice system failed Manuel Camilleri' - lawyer Tonio Azzopardi. Video: Chris Mangion

Camilleri was jailed in 2012 after a criminal court found him guilty of defiling his daughter Leanne Camilleri, but his conviction was overturned 400 days later after she admitted to lying under oath in a video conference and after medical tests revealed that she was still a virgin.

The court last month ordered that Camilleri’s name be removed from the sex offenders’ registers.

“I had said from the start that the girl had been manipulated into committing perjury,” Camilleri told the conference at the Grandmasters’ Palace. “Why didn’t they make sure that the girl’s testimony was held in a secure location?”

In later comments to MaltaToday, the lawyer took the court-appointed psychiatrists and clinical psychologists to task for having given Leanne Camilleri a clean bill of mental health.

“Something was obviously wrong with their analysis…the girl was broken, because somebody [her mother] had manipulated her into committing perjury,” Azzopardi said. “She had nobody, not a single social worker, to protect her from manipulation and threats. This damaged both herself, as she was forced to live with a lie, as well as the administration of justice itself.”

He also confirmed that Camilleri will seek compensation for his wrongful conviction, a right laid down in the European Convention of Human Rights.

His comments were greeted with caution at the panelists at the conference, with Ruth Farrugia – director general of the President’s Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society – insisting that children should generally be believed in the justice system.

Marta Santos Pais, the special representative of the UN secretary-general on violence against children, said that children often tell very little about their experiences.

“In that case, perhaps the child had wanted to tell her story but was unable to, and it’s important that children are given the right support from the start,” she said. “However, it’s fundamental that, as a general rule, we trust what children are saying.” 

Also, Children’s Homes Commission director Andrew Azzopardi warned that it is all too common for people’s initial reaction to children’s testimonies to be to assume that they are lying.

“From experience and research, I can say that children generally always tell the truth and that it is only a very small minority that lies.”