Man jailed four years over rape of four-year-old granddaughter

A Marsaxlokk man has been jailed four years and inscribed in the sex offenders register after a court found him guilty of raping his four-year-old granddaughter.

The man was found guilty of violent indecent assault, participation in sex acts with a minor and corrupting the girl, who had been entrusted into his care.

The abuse took place over the span of several months in 2019 and had only surfaced much later during a family holiday in Sicily, when the girl revealed to her father what her paternal grandfather had done to her when she was between four and five years of age.

The girl said that around 10 incidents had taken place, all at her grandfather’s house. The stomach-churning encounters, which are described in detail in the judgment are not suitable for publication.

The defendant, who wasn’t named in the judgment, had denied abusing his granddaughter, but claimed that she had once walked in on him while he was having a shower and grabbed his private parts. He admitted to having touched the girl’s genitals, insisting that he had only done so “to see her laugh.”

The child’s mother told the court that she had been so disgusted when she heard her daughter’s story that she had left the room in floods of tears and had called Appogg after calming down. With hindsight, she had realised that this explained why the defendant would buy the girl so many sweets and allow her sips of wine.

As for the child, she would suffer from night terrors and had lost her interest in school overnight, and would often be found crying in the headmistress’ office.

In her extensively researched judgment, Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit observed that the defendant’s explanation had evolved across his three statements to the police and his court testimony, leading the court to discard it in its entirety. When asked about the alleged shower incident, the child said that no such incident had occurred, which corroborated the court’s impression that it had been made up by the defendant.

None of the defence’s witnesses had contradicted the girl’s account, noted the court. “Instead, we saw a gross attempt at discrediting the minor as a person, which resulted in contradictory testimony and further convinces the court that the child’s account is genuine.”

Finding the man guilty of all charges, Magistrate Stafrace Zammit sentenced him to imprisonment for four years and placed him under a one-year treatment order. She also ordered that his name be inscribed in the sex offenders register.