Man cleared of corrupting daughter after court finds allegations could have been fabricated

A man has been emphatically cleared of showing pornographic videos to his four-year-old daughter in 2009, with a court ruling that the girl’s story was maliciously created by her mother – a police officer.

The 36-year-old man from Rabat, who cannot be named by order of the court, was falsely accused by his estranged partner, a police officer who works at the corp’s Floriana headquarters, of sexually corrupting his daughter on two occasions.

The WPC is not being named to protect the identity of the couple’s daughter.

The criminal complaint against the father – filed in 2006 – had alleged that he had defiled the girl on two occasions, once in 2009 when he allegedly showed the four-year-old a pornographic video and lewd pictures, and again in 2015 when he left the same material on a device which he passed on to his daughter.

The minor had testified via videoconferencing, telling the court she had been at her father’s house and had seen him perusing indecent images on his mobile phone, telling him to stop and covering her eyes. A short while later, the girl claimed the accused had continued to watch adult material on his mobile “but this time the pictures became a video that her father had received through Bluetooth, involving two girls and one boy.”

The girl told the court that she had not told anyone about this incident until she was 10, when she revealed the story to her cousin, who informed the girl’s aunt, who then informed the mother.

But Magistrate Audrey Demicoli noted that the girl gave no explanation as to why she had let so much time pass before speaking out. The girl had only reluctantly told the court that the daughter of the accused’s girlfriend had also seen it when she had been clearing her phone.

The girl also took a long time to identify her father in court and started to claim that she didn’t know him, blurting out that her mother would make her recount everything that happened whenever she returned from meeting her father.

The accused had denied the charges, saying however that he had on one occasion viewed adult material himself but that he had reformatted the device before giving it to his daughter.

Magistrate Demicoli decreed that she was morally convinced that the girl was not telling the truth, but was in fact, repeating a story that she had been told to tell by third parties, deduced both from her demeanour and the fact that “the Court finds it very hard to believe how a 10-year-old girl could have understood and remembered all that detail about a video she had seen six years before.”

The magistrate said the fact that she had claimed to have closed her eyes, but had then proceeded to give a detailed account of what was going on in the video and was reluctant to identify her father, were indications that the girl did not wish to say those words because the events they describe had not actually taken place, the court said.

Evidence also pointed to the mother doing “all she could to indicate the animosity she held towards the father of the child,” the magistrate said.

The magistrate also said that it was evident that the mother had heard about the girl and her cousin having seen the adult film, and “seized the opportunity to fabricate the story about when the girl was four years old.”

In fact both girls gave wildly varying descriptions of it: one said it involved two women and a man engaged in sexual activity, another saying it was a naked woman swimming. One girl said that the other showed the film to her, whilst the other said it was found by accident when she had been deleting items at the first girl’s request.

The court said it did not doubt that the girls saw something, but there was no link to the accused. “It is the belief of the court that it is true that two children saw a video which they should not have seen but nowhere from the evidence does it emerge that the accused had been aware of the existence of this video in 2015 or that he had showed it to his daughter in 2009.”

A witness for the prosecution also claimed that the accused bought the mobile phone in question in 2009, but the phone model in question had not even been in production at the time.

In view of all this, the court said the prosecution had “in no way” proven its case and declared the man innocent.

The accused, who spoke to this newspaper, claimed his estranged partner had made numerous reports about him to the police, all of which turned out to be false, and he accused her of infidelity. He said she filed a total of 17 reports against him, for each of which the man was arrested, mostly for not paying maintenance – a criminal offence in Malta – but also for neglecting and harming the girl. The man says he was clear of 16 charges and is appealing one decision.

Lawyer Alfred Abela appeared for the man, while lawyer Albert Zerafa appeared parte civile for the woman. Inspector Joseph Busuttil prosecuted.