Priest sex abuse victims write to Pope: 'Church defending paedophile priests'

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.