BishopAccountability.org
	They Want to Gag US All By Daphne Caruana Galizia Malta Independent January 10, 2011 http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=118310 The priests (former priests?) who are being tried for grave crimes against children in their care have come up with yet another bald attempt to stave off what I hope is the inevitable prison sentence that hangs over their head. Seven years into the proceedings, they have gone to the Constitutional Court, claiming that their fundamental human right to a fair trial has been breached by the media coverage of the graphic accounts of abuse, given by the men who say they were their victims. Their lawyer Giannella Caruana Curran – let's give her the benefit of the doubt; she may be doing it pro bono because she is a committed Roman Catholic and these are men of the Church – has asked the Constitutional Court to safeguard their right to a fair trial by upholding a court-decreed ban on reportage of the proceedings of the case. She might not have noticed that nobody is actually reporting on the proceedings of the case because the trial is being held behind closed doors. Instead, we are discussing what those who claim to be the victims have told us. There can be no ban on that, and if one is somehow obtained, then we can all flood the Constitutional Court ourselves with our own claims for violation of our right to freedom of expression. Within 24 hours, the priests went to the Constitutional Court once more, this time to ask for an extension of the press-coverage ban to cover the constitutional case they had just filed. Their nerve is unbelievable, but then desperate times probably mean desperate measures. When Dr Caruana Curran was contacted by reporters (or perhaps it was the other way round, because you never know), she refused to release a copy of her clients' application to the Constitutional Court, citing – oh dear, oh dear – the 'ban on media coverage'. But there isn't a ban on media coverage of the Constitutional application, is there, because her priests have only just asked for one and the Constitutional Court has not yet pronounced itself. Besides, Dr Caruana Curran probably knows, or at least I hope she does, that the Constitutional Court cannot refuse to release copies of applications brought before it, because the rules of transparency in justice apply – and also because the 2003 ban on press coverage and reportage cannot be brought into play outside the narrow and strict confines of the actual child abuse trial. It does not apply to any Constitutional Court hoops her clients might wish to jump through to gain time. Indeed, it took mere hours for information about the Constitutional case to leak from the law courts to the newsrooms. Dr Caruana Curran and her clients are really pushing their luck with this one. Bans on reportage in child abuse cases are given ordinarily to protect the victims, not the accused – but in this case, the victims are actually angry that the ban was imposed, which is partly why they chose to tell their stories to the media in Malta and internationally, and why they met the Pope and told him too. Using Dr Caruana Curran's yardstick, the Pope was in contempt of court by talking to these men about their experiences and expressing his sorrow for what happened. The Archbishop should have been brought before the Magistrates' Court and fined. And the world's media deserve a good lashing, too, because they reported on the meeting and some of them even interviewed the men about what they went through. The 2003 ban was not a general ban on discussion of the case, despite the wild attempts to portray it as such. It was a ban on the publication of the priests' names, of photographs or films in which they might be identified, and of testimony during the compilation of evidence (pre-trial). That was the extent of it. This was followed by a request, which was upheld because the prosecution did not object, for the actual trial to be held behind closed doors. A trial behind closed doors is not the same thing as a ban on media coverage. With a ban on media coverage, the information is available but cannot be published. With a trial behind closed doors, the information is not available so de facto cannot be published. But if the victims wish to speak to the press after they have testified, they are free to do so, and the rest of us are free to discuss what they say in print and elsewhere. It is sad to see that these priests and possibly also their lawyer are of the undemocratic and atavistic mindset in which justice is between the accused and the state and the rest of society has nothing to do with it. When crimes are petty and irrelevant, the rest of society doesn't give a damn but is kept informed nonetheless. When the purported crime is of such a serious and relevant nature, it is crucial that justice is seen to be done and that society is kept informed. If the priests have nothing to hide and are truly innocent, then they have nothing to fear from public scrutiny of their trial. Indeed, they should be the ones asking for that public scrutiny rather than the opposite. Hearing a case like this behind closed doors, particularly when the victims don't want to be protected against intrusions on their privacy, is really an abomination. It has led to the absurd and unsavoury situation in which we hoped, rather than knew, that the priests were being properly tried. We didn't even know exactly what the priests stood accused of, or the full extent of their alleged crimes, until those who reported them, on the verge of despair at the constant delays and lack of information, called a press conference last year. I went to that press conference, spoke to some of the men, and left feeling sick. And then I understood why Dr Caruana Curran and her clients had asked for the trial to be held behind closed doors. But I also understood that accurate reporting of the details would have been impossible, certainly not in a newspaper or on television, because those details are so revolting. They belong on child-porn sites, and are unfit for publication elsewhere. What you have read in newspaper reports of that press conference is necessarily anodyne, all the gruesome and perverted details wiped out. I'll tell you one of the lesser experiences described to me by a victim at that press conference. One of the priests had gone on a sabbatical to Canada. When he returned, he told the boy to come to his room because he had a present for him. The boy – rejected by his mother at birth and brought up in orphanages all his life – was happy and excited because nobody had ever given him a present before. He went eagerly to the priest's room and was shown not the toy he hoped against hope that he might be given, but a chocolate bar (and my first thought on hearing this was "Not just a pervert but cheap, too"). The priest told the boy that if he wanted the chocolate bar he would have to do something for it. He then fellated the boy, who was only nine years old and hadn't a clue what was happening. The priests are now asking the Constitutional Court for 'remedies' to the years of media discussion of their case, so as to ensure that they get a fair trial. What they are probably after is a suspension of these proceedings and a move for retrial. The last person who tried that sort of thing was Noel Arrigo, now serving time in Mount Carmel Open Prison. Unnamed sources (the less I say here, the better) were quoted by The Times as having told its reporters: "The ban has to be respected by everyone and not just by one of the parties involved. There cannot be a situation whereby people, both in the media and outside, divulge certain details of the proceedings without giving the whole picture. Otherwise, it will continue being an unfair process and totally one-sided." If I were a betting girl, I'm guessing that I wouldn't lose too much money working out who those sources were. It's not like anyone else has an interest in saying that. The convoluted legal reasoning, designed to impress the unthinking is a dead giveaway, too. The (stupid) argument here is that the priests are in the unfair position of being unable to give their side of the story because of the ban, while their accusers ignore the ban and talk. Well, the priests and their lawyer are the ones who asked for the ban in the first place. If they are so mad keen on giving their side of the story to us, the reading public, then all they have to do is ask the court to rescind that ban, and then hold a press conference. But they won't be doing that, will they. Instead, they have asked the Constitutional Court to gag us all. And that's quite apart from the fact that the ban applies only to the trial proceedings and does not cover my fundamental human right (or anybody else's) to say and write what I wish about what is said outside the courtroom. I'm told there's some rather nice lettuce in Marsa that needs watering, but three priests and their lawyer will have their work cut out. Well, they can always use it to make sandwiches instead for the long haul through the Constitutional Court.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.