Pathological nation

I have often suspected that there is something deeply pathological about these islands of ours: a sort of mysterious disease, infecting the very roots that anchor them deep, deep into the seabed; and whose external symptoms account for so much of everyday life in Malta that most people would instantly recognise as... um... WRONG.

And oh look: just last week something happened that graphically confirmed my otherwise inexpert medical diagnosis - in a way that took even a hardnosed cynic like myself by complete surprise.

You may have read the news reports, which ran under headlines such as: 'Three men acquitted of gang-raping an 18-year-old girl' (or variations of the same). And if you bothered clicking on the relevant online links, you will surely also have seen - possibly even contributed to - the astonishing chorus of gleeful congratulatory messages, as well as loud hoots of triumph and jubilation, that accompanied the announcement of this same verdict.

That's right, people. It seems that in Oh-so-virtuous, oh-so-Catholic 21st century Malta - where abortion remains a big no-no, and introducing divorce last year turned out to be about as painless as chainsawing your own leg off without anaesthetic - the act of sexually dominating an 18-year-old girl is now considered the very epitome of human kindness and integrity.

More so if this act is performed by no fewer than THREE (3) men, all in their mid-20s; and the victim... oh, sorry, I meant to say the shameless little slut who provoked those poor innocent 'pillars of virtue' and 'upstanding citizens' (puns very much intended) with her feminine guile - also turns out to be mentally disturbed to the bargain.

And before I forget: special bonus points are also awarded if at least one of the three heroes who so bravely rogered that girl senseless (after locking her in a Bormla apartment, please note: and even warning her not to tell anyone else of her ordeal...) also turns out to be a close relative of hers. For instance, her first cousin: who would presumably have known all along that the girl in question was being treated for depression, when he indulged in such a spectacular display of traditional Maltese virtue and manhood.

Depression, by the way, is generally classed as a serious life-threatening medical condition, which (among many other deeply unpleasant side effects) automatically robs the patient of certain crucial cognitive faculties... faculties which are widely regarded, not least by nearly every judicial system in the world (except Malta's), as essential components of any mature adult's ability to accurately assess situations and events before taking decisions.

For much the same reason, patients diagnosed with this pathology are routinely advised not to take any life-changing decisions while still in the throes of the condition... precisely because sufferers from depression are, by virtue of their illness, unable to assume responsibility for their actions.

So much for that unnecessary (and, I admit, patronising) medical detour. Quite frankly, I would have assumed that a girl aged 18 is not exactly in a position to assume full responsibility for her decisions and/or actions in the first place... regardless of whether she suffers from depression or not. And before I am accused of unbridled sexism, please note that the same would be true of 18-year-old boys, too. For despite the entirely arbitrary fact that the legal line of adulthood is drawn right through that age-group (in Malta, at any rate - in other countries it varies, sometimes extending to 21) I think most rational people would agree that an ordinary human being- any human being - is not exactly at his or her most mature and responsible at 18 years of age.

How much less responsible, then, would we consider an 18-year-old who just so happened to also have been diagnosed with the abovementioned condition? And which, as it seems, was not the only mental affliction at work behind the scenes in this particular case?

So to recap - and to throw political correctness into the dustbin where it so emphatically belongs - it now seems that the act of sexually abusing a younger, mentally deficient family member is enough to elevate a trio of young Maltese men to the status of 'national hero'. And not only did an astonishing variety of people loudly voice their undisguised jubilation at their acquittal, but - in an unexpected twist that had me actually doubting my own sanity for a second - one of the 'heroes' involved was also interviewed by The Times the following week... for all the world as if he had just saved a child from drowning.

I mean, seriously, people. What the heck is wrong with this country? No matter what you make of the verdict itself - even if you ignore the fact that the magistrate unaccountably glossed over every single argument raised by the prosecution (to which I shall return in a second) - since when is the behaviour of the three men in question something to be proud of? Are these the 'values' about whose demise so many people out there moan endlessly... blaming their loss on 'liberalism', of all things? Is this what their sense of moral superiority is based upon? Three older men getting their rocks off by taking full advantage of the mental illness of one of their own younger cousins? Jesus, that it would come to this...

But anyway. I will leave the moral supremacists to wallow in their own boundless satisfaction at the way their three heroes enacted their own secret sexual fantasies for them... no doubt to their own personal gratification. And of course, I'll be reminding them of their comments, the next time one or two (or three or four) of them dares presume to try and force their fake Christian values down our collective throats.

Now for the verdict, and why I personally think this was a miscarriage of justice that requires urgent attention. In passing judgment, Magistrate Scerri Herrera made three fundamental mistakes:

1) She assumed (wrongly) that there has to be evidence of physical violence to support a rape claim. This may well have been true prior to around the 1970s... but since then, two things have changed in internationally recognised legal definitions of that word, which have significantly altered the entire legal landscape. One, lack of consent is now considered enough to define rape, even if no violence was involved; two, contrary to previous misconceptions (which in turn were based on a singular ignorance of the dynamics of sexual domination as a psychological concept) a rape victim is no longer expected to put up physical resistance 'to the utmost of her abilities'... as was so unfairly the case in the past.

2) The ruling makes the following, very distressing observation: "the girl was not as innocent as she pretended to be" - in particular, because she had had a sexual encounter with another man that same morning. This is fallacious reasoning (had to be careful with my spelling there). The fallacy works like this. 'Not being innocent in matters of sex' is not quite the same thing as 'not being innocent in a court of law'. The two types of 'innocence' are light years removed from one another. Who cares if the 18-year-old in question was not a virgin at the time of the incident? It has no bearing on whether her treatment at the hands of three men constituted 'rape' or otherwise. It is, in fact, utterly irrelevant.

3) Having read the ruling (pausing only briefly to resist an impulse to vomit) I can't for the life of me understand how no importance whatsoever was attached to a couple of fundamental observations, delivered under oath in the same case. The first, already mentioned above, concerns the fact that the girl had been verbally threatened; the other, that one of the three men accused of rape had earlier admitted to the police that she did NOT, in fact, give her consent to the sexual encounter. He even specified that, having 'challenged' them to sex, when push came to shove (ahem) it seems she experienced a change of heart... and actually told them so. But (he added) once they started, she 'at no point told them to stop'.

Curiously, that last detail was omitted by The Times, which went on to not only interview one of the men and present him as the victim of an injustice (!)... but also dedicate part of last Sunday's editorial to the same bullshit 'sob story' about how these 'fabricated accusations' had 'ruined his life'. (This, by the way, was when I felt the urge to vomit).

But l-orizzont did pick up on it; even though it still somehow chose to present the story from the uniquely misogynistic perspective shared by all the chorus of male gloaters.

It is a mentality that would hold an 18-year-old, mentally disturbed girl responsible for the actions of three older men in their mid-20s - who, by the way, afterwards celebrated their heroic deed over a pitcher at a nearby bar.

To this day I still don't know what shocks me more: the warped reasoning behind their acquittal, as outlined above; or the national reversal of values that would turn aggressors into victims, and victim into aggressor.