Malta a society of bullies and keyboard cowboys: mentally ill man smeared over ‘paedo panic’

The photo of an intellectually disabled man went viral on social media on Sunday afternoon, after he was accused of harassing a three-year-old girl by her mother, while at the Birzebbugia playground. 

The photo of the man was shared in over 600 posts on Facebook by 5pm before the mother who filed the police report removed it, after the man’s family members and numerous well-wishers called for the post to be removed. 

The man is seen averting his look from the person who photographed him, his hand meekly raised in an attempt to cover his face. 

The mother said in her original post that the man had taken her daughter’s pacifier and placed it down his trousers. “I was at the swings today in Birżebbuġa and this guy grabbed my daughter from her scooter, took her dummy and put it in his private parts. When I approached him, he immediately took it off. I have reported the incident to the police but he is nowhere to be found.” 

Police are investigating the incident. 

But the hysteria that the post provoked revealed yet once again the dark underbelly of Malta’s social media universe, where moral panics go down the slope into manic indecency at breakneck speed. 

Facebook commenters called for the man to be “hanged”, “run over by a van”, and “sectioned” - despite clear protestations from a family member and other people who knew the man’s actions were not those of a paedophile but of a mentally ill person. 

Equally, no mercy was shown for those who requested compassion for the ill-thought out action of the man. Those who called attention to the man’s condition were verbally abused. 

It was evident that the post was widely shared for its harrowing statement, with no attention given to the hundreds of comments which hid the implorations of family members to have it removed. 

The head of Malta’s commission for the disabled, Oliver Scicluna, condemned the lynching of the man by social media. 

“I fully condemn the manner in which this person photographed someone intellectually disabled to identify him by an alleged action of his. I am not defending what he did, but a police report sufficed. The fact that his face was spread all over social media created a lot of damage at the hands of ‘keyboard cowboys’ who insulted this man without mercy and without knowing his condition. We sometimes live in a society of bullies.”