Prosecution wants maximum sentence in ‘satanic’ sex abuse trial

The prosecution has requested a judge hand down the maximum sentence to a man on trial accused of exploiting the credulous nature of a dysfunctional family and coercing them into performing humiliating sex acts by pretending to be a demon.

Beginning the prosecution’s reply to submissions made by the defence earlier today, lawyer Angele Vella from the Office of the Attorney General objected to the opposing counsel’s description of the events as a “tall tale”.

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Day 1 of the trial

• Man who claimed hearing demonic voice on trial for raping woman and abusing her daughter
• Woman describes being beaten, ordered to perform sex acts by ‘demon’ who turned out to be her sister's boyfriend

Day 2 of the trial

• Daughter, 14, when accused moved into victims’ home
• Manipulator who used ‘demon voice’ wreaked havoc over mentally ill woman’s life

“The truth is sacrosanct and absolute. The truth is that it is absolutely not a story. It is the truth which the three victims lived in their bodies and in their minds, in the most degrading way,” Vella said.

The mother, who had to be admitted to Mount Carmel Hospital six times before the incident, was described by her own children as “broken and depressed,” she said. “She was easily manipulated. She had resorted to the occult, years before and was more prone to believe that the devil was speaking to her.”

Vella said the fact that the woman was graded as assistant principal within the public service, did not mean she was not susceptible to depression. “She was the most vulnerable of them all.”

Vella said the accused “cleared his territory of the potential threats, so that he could play his game of chess without anyone stopping him.”

She stressed on the innocence and credulity of the family, in particular the 15-year-old girlfriend of the accused – the younger of two daughters – who having met him for the first time at a cinema, immediately brought him to her house for dinner with her family. “Her mother immediately brought out her pendulum. It doesn’t take much to figure out what she’s like.”

The incidents in which the accused is believed to have used an ‘occult’ ruse to overpower the family, appear to have begun after the family watched the horror film ‘The Nun’ on August 15, 2018

The accused used the credulousness of the family to effect a ‘demonic voice’ to order, in one instance, that several hundreds of euros be left on a shelf at the house, which he later used to buy a Doberman dog, or in other instances, order the mother to buy a hamburger from a popular fast food outlet.

“Greed, take as much as you can from the mother, destroy her psychologically...” the prosecutor said. “The voice, which the prosecution insists is the accused, first ordered the husband not to sleep near his wife, then for him to move out of the house completely, clearing the area so he could make his move, succeeeding in coercing the family into acting out his sexual fantasies. He felt like a lion, omnipotent.”

She accused him of controlling his victims, threatening to punish them for the slightest disobedience. “He beat the mother purple, as well as the daughters. But the accused’s plan to act out his sexual fantasies were still to come. We have the videos. He would make the mother and her daughters strip off... strip naked and suck each other’s nipples. Nobody except the accused told them these words – it is corroborated by three witnesses.”

Vella said the accused used the ‘demonic voice’ ruse to rape the mother with a broomstick, ordering the elder daughter to carry out the assault, before emerging himself personally to carry out the act savagely. “His sexual fantasies were violent. He was the one who liked rough sex, not the younger daughter,” the prosecutor said.

Describing the abuse as an unending nightmare, the prosecutor said the accused then ordered the woman to turn over and be sodomised with the broomstick. “How can they ever recover from such trauma?” she asked.

The prosecutor said the mother, severely depressed, used an overdose of her medication in a bid to be committed to Mount Carmel mental health hospital so that she could leave the house. It was this event that triggered the elder daughter for an urgent appointment with her pscyhologist, which led to an intervention from social workers.

The accused’s face betrayed absolutely no emotion during the sitting, or the previous ones.

The prosecutor said the daughters had been faced with threats that their grandparents would be killed, “that the soles of their feet would be sliced off, that their eyeballs would be crushed.”

When the social workers intervened, the accused attempted to get the mother’s lover to erase the mobile phone recording of the mysterious voice – his own – tormenting him until he smashed the phone in rage. He also got his girlfriend, the younger daughter, to threaten she would commit suicide in a bid to get her mother not to give evidence against him,

The prosecutor also pointed out that in his audiovisual statement to the police, the accused had said let slip that “I used to tell [eldest daughter] not to go out with her boyfriend,” before realising his mistake and correcting himself to say that the demon would tell him to stop her.

The prosecution requested the maximum punishment in view of the obscenity, the degradation and the satisfaction showed by the accused.

Lawyer Mario Mifsud is defence counsel. Lawyers Angele Vella and Francesco Refalo from the Office of the Attorney General are prosecuting.