Child molester acquitted after judge rules charges time-barred

A man who had been sentenced to two years in prison for engaging in sexual acts with a minor has avoided prison time after an appeals court found the charges to be time-barred.

The man had been charged in 2015, over five years from when the last instance of sexual activity with the young girl had allegedly taken place, as the victim had kept her story to herself until finally opening up to her boyfriend.

The victim, a child taken in by foster parents since the age of four, had revealed how a family friend, who lived near her foster grandmother’s home at Cospicua, would force her to engage in oral sex in an upstairs bedroom at her grandmother’s home.

The man would sometimes touch the girl’s private parts, although he never had penetrative sex with her, the victim had said.

The courts had heard how the girl’s ordeal had started when she was around 12 years of age and had carried on until she was 16, when the teenage girl started to avoid being alone with the man.

After being told about this, the girl’s boyfriend had informed her foster father, who then filed a police report in December 2014. 

Police investigations resulted in the prosecution of the now 60-year-old man for sexual activity with and defilement of the minor. He denied the accusations and had claimed, in his statement to the police, that he had caved in to the girl’s “provocation.”

The accused was convicted of sexual activity with a minor and condemned to two years imprisonment in January.

He appealed, arguing that the acts had taken place in 2009, which meant that the charges had been time-barred by a five-year prescriptive period when they were made in 2015.

Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera, presiding the Court of Appeal, said that whilst there was no reason for the court not to believe that the acts had taken place, as no proof to the contrary was submitted by the accused, the criminal action had been instituted after the lapse of five years since the date of the last sexual encounter. This meant that the charges were time-barred.

She noted that the victim’s birth certificate had not been exhibited and therefore there was no confirmation of the girl’s age. Not only had the prosecution failed to prove the exact age of the victim, but the girl herself had testified “very vaguely without supplying details of the time when these unpleasant episodes had taken place.”

In view of these factors, the court upheld the appeal and overturned the appellant’s conviction.

The court omitted the names of all parties involved from the judgment.