Rape victim: ‘I can’t say his name in public, but I can portray him as a black horse’

When Emma was raped last April, she quickly called a local helpline and explained what happened. The call operator managed to convince her to call the police, after which an ambulance came to take her to hospital, accompanied by a police officer who was with her throughout the hospital experience.

“It’s a terrible experience,” Emma told MaltaToday. “You leave pieces of yourself throughout the hospital. There’s no one place that you go to and get sorted. You have to go around the hospital leaving pieces of evidence from the case. You go to the gynaecologist, then you visit a psychiatrist... there were lot of places I had to go through.”

Emma filed a report on 8 April 2022. A year later, police investigations are still ongoing, as is a magisterial inquiry. MaltaToday contacted the police to try and understand what has come of the police report, but their response was the standard reply that it’s “not prudent to divulge further information at this stage”.

Emma was living alone when a Mount Carmel carer allegedly visited her at home and raped her. “I used to live alone, but I don’t anymore. It was very early in the morning, so I didn’t call anyone at first.”

She said the first person she called after the crime was the HR manager of her workplace to inform her that she will be in hospital that day. She slowly told her loved ones what happened as the day progressed, starting from her fiancé and then messaging her friends on Messenger. Her family did not know about the incident until three months later.

The perpetrator, according to Emma, was working at Mount Carmel and was assigned to care for her. When Emma was admitted into Mount Carmel for a second time, he sent her a friend request.

He started to message her everyday asking how she was doing. “No red flags,” Emma said. She eventually opened up to him about some wounds in her leg. He insisted on checking up on them out of concern and to make sure they weren’t serious. 

“I didn’t think they were serious, but he suggested that he comes over to check on them. I initially said no. When I did this, he said I was rejecting his help, insisting that he helps people for a living.”

A day later, he asked again whether he can come over to tend to her wounds. “I felt like I had to say yes, he made me feel guilty for not accepting help.”

When he went to her house, they started to chat, and she made him a cup of coffee. As she sat on the sofa, he grabbed a chair and sat next to her. He began cleaning her wounds, as is procedure. 

“At that moment I broke down and started crying,” she said. “He came onto the sofa next to me and started to console me. He put my head on his chest, put his hand around me, but I pushed him back.”

As she started to fall asleep, the carer put her to bed. She thought he was going to leave, but instead turned the lights off and got into bed with her. She says she woke up at 2am to him raping her.

At one point, he got out of bed and went to smoke a cigarette on the balcony and started to eat some food that he had brought with him. 

“I was so scared. He had already pushed a lot of boundaries, so I was scared that he can do whatever he wants. I just froze.”

Eventually, she got out of bed and asked him to get out of her house. “I begged him. I didn’t want him to be angry because I was still very scared of what he might do.” After insisting that she go back to sleep, he left the house and Emma called the helpline.

As she approaches a year since the crime, Emma says she is very angry with the slow pace of the judicial system.

“I think there’s enough evidence for a court case. My wish is to go to court and fight for my justice. I know that I will have to go to court and reopen the wound. I know there won’t be closure, and I can’t get it right now because I need to fight for it.”

The slow justice for sexual assault is a familiar story, and Emma knows it. “There have been lots of cases lately that are being decided to the detriment of the victim. There is this myth that people, especially women, just report these things for fun. They don’t understand the guts it takes to say something like this.”

She said there are a small number of people who will report false allegations, but this is only a small portion from those who do come forward with accusations of rape. 

“It’s not fair that in most cases, you don’t get justice for the victim. It just shows how fake our justice system is in Malta. And then coming from a woman magistrate?” she says, remarking on a recent court sentence in which a policeman was acquitted of raping his colleague. 

“They can’t understand that no one has the guts to just invent something like that, go to court, destroy a person’s reputation, just for fun. It simply does not happen.”

It’s been a bumpy road for Emma since filing the report. “I’ve been back to Mount Carmel four more times since the rape, so that’s how I’ve been coping. Many panic attacks, depression, anxiety, PTSD...”

“[But] If I have a healthy coping mechanism, it’s my art. It helps me put my words and dark thoughts onto paper.” In her art, which she uploads on Instagram, she personifies the perpetrator as a black horse.

“For me, it symbolises the monster. The fact that I can’t say his name in public, but I can portray him as a black horse, gives me a bit of control over the situation.”

In the meantime, she is hoping to hold an exhibition of her art soon and is preparing to get married in two months.

“If you asked me how I was a month ago, I’d tell you I’d rather be dead than alive. I overdosed, tried to kill myself. But now I’m much better.”

Reach out to Victim Support Malta on 2122 8333 or [email protected]