A government minister is one of the witnesses summoned by the legal
defence of the priests charged with sexually abusing children in their
care at the St Joseph’s Home, according to a letter from the alleged
victims to Pope Benedict XVI.
The letter, presented to the Vatican’s sex crimes prosecutor Mgr Charles Scicluna earlier this week, was reported by Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
“In Malta church, political power and the judiciary are all one of
the same thing… so much so that even a minister is testifying in court
in favour of the priests. Few, even in the Opposition, want to defend
us: the people are very religious and scared of priests,” the victims
are reported as saying in their letter.
On Thursday, the three MSSP priests charged with sexually abusing the children asked the Constitutional Court
to enforce a 2003 press ban on their case, claiming their trial was
being prejudiced by media coverage. The priests benefit from a ban
issued by Magistrate Saviour Demicoli on the publication of names,
photos or footage; a ban on the publication of evidence given by
witnesses; and a request for the case to be heard behind closed doors.
The prosecution had never objected to the ban.
Due to the media ban, MaltaToday cannot report the name of the
government minister and the nature of his relationship with the accused.
In a second application filed Friday, the priests also asked for the
media ban to apply to the constitutional case they had just filed. They
claim media publicity on the case violated their human right to a fair
hearing and people, both in the media and elsewhere, were not respecting
the ban. Defence lawyer Giannella Caruana Curran also refused to
divulge its contents when MaltaToday reported the case Thursday.
In their letter to the Pope, the victims of the alleged priest sex
abuse – Philip Cauchi, 40, Joseph Magro, 38, Lawrence Grech, 38, Olivier
Goodram, 39 and Joseph Mangion, 37 – claimed that the Archbishop’s
curia “is protecting paedophile priests.”
The letter, written in ‘pidgin Italian’ according to La Repubblica,
says the victims told the Pope that their abusers “are still running
around in the street vested as priests… why does the Maltese church
protect these scandals? Why had the priests admitted back in 2003 and
everything goes on as if nothing has happened?”
The victims wrote that “everything has stayed as it ever was… using
their holy cloth they hurt the human being from infancy and inflict harm
all through their life.”
The Papal visit this year speeded up momentum for the abuse victims’
case when the five victims’ allegations were confirmed by the Maltese
Church’s response team for victims of priest sex abuse.
Initially, there had been four members of the MSSP who were charged
by police: Br Joseph Bonett, Fr Charles Pulis, Fr Conrad Sciberras and
Fr Godwin Scerri. However, the letter only mentioned Pulis, Sciberras
and Bonett as the accused against whom allegations had been founded.
The three priests are currently residing at St Agatha’s Convent in
Rabat.
The scandal led to the abrupt closure of St Joseph’s Home in 2003.
Spiritual director Fr Godwin Scerri had earlier absconded to Malta from
Canada in order to avoid prosecution over an alleged child abuse
violation back in 1983. Scerri had been retained in his post even after
news of a Canadian arrest warrant reached the Archbishop’s ears. Then
the inevitable occurred: along with Fr Charles Pulis and Bro. Joseph
Bonnett, Fr Godwin Scerri was accused of having sexually molested a
number of boys at the institute – and this time, the accusations were
splashed all over the Maltese media.
SIC: MT/EU-INT'L