MALTA
Malta Today
Daniel Mizzi 20 August 2014
Clarificaton: this article erroneously referred to the defendant’s previous employment as having been inside a Church school.
A young priest was yesterday allowed out on bail against a hefty personal guarantee and deposit after pleading not guilty to charges of child molestation, in what is understood to have been criminal acts taking place over several months and involving a number of minors.
Sources told MaltaToday that the accused has been a priest for around 10 to 12 years and he was recently employed as a religion teacher at a boys’ secondary state school in Hamrun.
Standing before Magistrate Paul Coppini at the Gozo courts, the priest, whose name cannot be published by court order, appeared wearing casual clothes and a pair of flip flops after he was summonsed to court by arrest.
The priest, believed to be in his early 40s, covered his face as he was taken in to court.
At the start of the sitting, the priest’s defence lawyer, Carmelo Gauci, requested that the case be heard behind closed doors, and almost immediately, Magistrate Coppini upheld the request.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.