'Victim blaming' police commissioner lied on Ghirxi murder - PN

The police commissioner Angelo Gafà lied and blamed a murder victim when addressing the media following the murder of Nicolette Ghirxi, the Nationalist Party said on Monday.

“We are seeing a police commissioner that felt comfortable going in front of the media just a few hours later [after the murder] and making statement that are not true, whilst also putting the blame on the victim, claiming that Nicolette refused the risk assessment,” MPs Darren Carabott and Graziella Attard Previ said on Wednesday.

Their comments come after the Sunday Times of Malta revealed that in April Ghirxi had agreed to take a risk assessment for domestic violence but told a friend and her lawyer that she was “talked out of it” by professionals when she attended her evaluation.

The friend told the newspaper that she received a voice note from Ghirxi describing how the risk assessor had persisted on the ineffectiveness of the exercise considering that the messages she had received from her former boyfriend contained insults, not threats.

“The messages from the victim now prove that the police commissioner lied to the Maltese and Gozitan people. This has also been confirmed by witnesses,” Carabott said during a press conference held on Wednesday afternoon. “How can the police commissioner say the opposite of what the victim herself said.”

The MP said Gafa’s post is no longer tangible, saying he is “lying” for political reasons.

Graziella Attard Previ also stated that while government and the police boast about having the option to file domestic violence reports online, such reports could be left unaddressed for four days.

“We are seeing a failure in our system which is using tools that aren’t sensitive enough to comprehend the complexity of domestic violence or even to identify the risks that a victim is placed in,” she said.

She went on to say that her party has never remained silent on such issues, and is on the frontline in bring solutions forward to solve the problem.

Attard Previ said the party had also requested, two days after the murder, parliament’s family committee as well as the social affairs committee, to come together to do an evaluation and bring out a number of recommendations which they believe should be implemented.