Father acquitted of smashing son's skull after boy declines to testify

A construction worker has been acquitted of allegedly smashing his son’s skull for not getting out of bed, due to lack of evidence after both alleged victim and his mother refused to testify.

Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera had been told how 41-year-old Stephen Brian Calleja of Siggiewi had allegedly caused grievous head injuries to his 20 year-old son in January 2016. Calleja had also been accused of relapsing into criminality, due to previous convictions for other offences.

A number of doctors testified to the son’s injuries, which included a potentially fatal depressed and open fracture of the skull. The youth’s brain had also suffered bruising and he had needed emergency surgery to address the life-threatening injuries.

Court expert Mario Scerri had described the injuries as “compatible with violent blunt trauma,” grievous per durata but which left no permanent defect in functioning.

Police officers who had been on the scene of the incident reported seeing blood spatter on the wall and television.

The victim gave doctors two versions of what happened: the first being that his father had hit him with a glass object when he refused to wake up for work, the second that he had tripped over his father’s leg and hit his head on the television.

The accused, after consulting with lawyer Edward Gatt, had also told police that his son had tripped over his leg when he had gone to wake him up, after which the son smashed his head on either the TV or the marble platform the device was on. He had not tripped him with the intention of hurting him, he told the police.

The accused had told the police that he had gone to work as normal after the incident, having seen his son stand up after the impact and knowing that his wife was at home. He had told officers that he had no idea that the young man was seriously hurt but had later been informed by his wife that their son was going to be operated on. Hearing this he had immediately rushed home from work, he said.

In her judgment on the case, Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera noted that the prosecution led by Inspector Kylie Borg, who had proceeded to charge the man under the Domestic Violence Act, had been scuppered by refusal of the only eye witness – the accused’s son – to take the stand against his father. Under Maltese law, children cannot be compelled to testify against their parents. The man’s wife, also not a compellable witness, likewise declined to testify.

Noting that had the son’s original version been true it would have been a “classic case of domestic violence,” the court said that in view of the second version and the absence of witnesses prepared to testify as to what really occurred, it had no choice but to acquit the accused.