Discredited Defence, by Kurt Sansone, Times of Malta, August 7, 2011

Discredited Defence

By Kurt Sansone
Times of Malta
August 7, 2011

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110807/local/Discredited-defence.379058

Godwin Scerri. Right: Carmelo Pulis.

The court found the evidence of 11 victims of priestly sex abuse credible. Kurt Sansone leafs through the judgment to find out why the testimony of disgraced priests Carmelo Pulis and Godwin Scerri was not believed.

Carmelo Pulis is 66 today and would usually be at Marfa organising a fancy dress party to celebrate his birthday with boys from the St Joseph Home and helpers.

The boys would probably be dressed up as girls, parading in what appears to be an innocuous talent show where the person who receives the loudest applause wins.

These parties at the Marfa summer home of the Missionary Society of St Paul organised by Mr Pulis, a former priest who is now defrocked, were an annual occurrence. They were part of the various activities he organised to keep the St Joseph Home residents occupied and give them a sense of belonging.

As housefather and head house keeper at the Sta Venera institute between 1974 and 2003, Fr Pulis would watch over the upbringing and education of boys entrusted to his care.

He would provide for their daily needs, listen to their problems and joke around with them. He would organise fund-raising activities in support of the home.

But behind the facade, which many came to admire, lingered a sinister priest. He preyed on vulnerable boys with difficult backgrounds who regarded him as their father.

Having a self-confessed "allergy for homosexuals", Mr Pulis once even warned the boys about the gay son of a volunteer who offered to help out during one of the parties at Marfa.

It is this aversion to homosexuality that Mr Pulis used in his defence when testifying in court to deny multiple charges of sexual abuse on the boys entrusted to his care.

The court dismissed this reasoning and said Mr Pulis contradicted himself when he was caught by a care worker with his private parts exposed while a 15-year-old boy was lying on him.

Mr Pulis had admitted his private parts were exposed but claimed he did not notice and this could have happened because he was wrestling with the boy while wearing boxing shorts.

The court did not believe his version of events and commented sternly on the fact that Mr Pulis was in his underwear, alone with the boy at 11.45 p.m.

"I never sexually abused a boy. I never touched the genitals of any boy... Throughout my life I never sexually abused anyone... Lawrence Grech is lying about me out of revenge and because he is angry," Mr Pulis told the court at various times throughout the eight years the case has been going on.

He insisted that never in 32 years had he been accused of sexual abuse by the 400 or so children who came in contact with him except the time in 2003 when Mr Grech and 10 other former residents decided to speak out.

Reading through the magistrate's judgment shows the defence team's attempts to discredit the men who made the accusations, especially Mr Grech who was the public face for the victims.

Mr Pulis tried to discredit the 15-year-old boy's testimony by saying that at the time he worked with Mr Grech in a cleaning company.

He also claimed to know Mr Grech's father as a troublemaker even though Mr Grech does not know who his father is.

"I also know (Mr Grech's) half brother. I had met him in prison... this half-brother had told me Lawrence Grech was a vicious person and once he had opened the gas knob so that when his father lights up a match he would be blown up," Mr Pulis recounted in court.

But in a direct confrontation with Mr Grech, the former priest admitted he did not know the name of Mr Grech's father. He also admitted that he only came to know who Mr Grech's father was through his superiors.

Mr Pulis also insisted that Mr Grech had told him he knew who his father was, something that the victim flatly denied.

In his defence Mr Pulis also produced a social worker, Joseph Calleja, who described himself as "supersensitive" to cases of child abuse having been through a similar experience.

Mr Calleja, who provided social work services to St Joseph Home, testified that he never suspected any wrongdoing by Fr Pulis despite spending long hours talking to him.

However, the court held that after evaluating the evidence and also observing the victims' behaviour in court while giving testimony, their evidence was "credible".

"The acts performed by Carmelo Pulis included fondling of the children's private parts... biting of the minors' lips, kissing on the lips and forcing the victim to (perform acts on) him. This was debauchery and disgusting behaviour that damaged the moral integrity of the minors," Magistrate Saviour Demicoli said in a 117-page judgment.

The same harsh words were used by the court against Fr Francesco, known as Godwin, Scerri.

Now 75, Fr Scerri vehemently denied ever sexually abusing or raping boys at St Joseph Home or anywhere else.

The priest, who is being dismissed from the clerical state, was the only one charged with raping a boy. The court acknowledged that the rape did occur but dismissed the case because the police charge sheet identified the scene of the crime as Marfa rather than St Joseph Home where it actually occurred.

Fr Scerri described the testimony given by two former St Joseph Home children, now adults, as "vile, cunning and malicious".

"Because of these false allegations I am suffering a lot of prejudice... I lost a lot of religious work. One of these was that I could not assist sick people at the Hospice Movement," Fr Scerri said.

He even produced his passport as proof that he was not in Malta when the alleged crimes occurred in the early 1990s. But this line of defence was discredited by the court after it examined the arrival and departure stamps on the passport and cross-referenced these with the timings provided by the accusers. It transpired Fr Scerri was in Malta when the sexual abuse and rape took place.

Magistrate Demicoli described Fr Scerri's behaviour as "debauchery and highly disgusting that clearly damaged the moral integrity of the minors".

The defence had initially tried to argue most of the cases against the two priests were time-barred because they occurred more than 10 years before 2003 when they were charged in court with the crimes.

This would have disarmed the prosecution of all the accusations of sexual abuse, including the instance of rape, except those related to three of the 11 victims.

However, the court turned down this objection insisting that the crimes were continuous and could not be separated from each other despite having been committed against different people.

Mr Pulis was jailed for six years and Fr Scerri for five. Both have appealed and are currently on bail pending the outcome of the appeal.