MALTA
Times of Malta
Thursday, September 11, 2014, 00:01 by Ramona Depares
Malta has recently been hit by a spate of court cases involving abuse of minors. I am not going to write about the merits of the individual cases.
Since I was not there to witness any alleged incidents, it would be presumptuous to attempt an opinion about what did, or did not, happen. Not that this is stopping the world and his wife from doing precisely that. Few people realise that spouting uninformed opinions on social media pending judgment can only damage both sides of any case.
Apart from the public’s seeming omniscience, two other issues immediately – and worryingly – leap to the eye.
The first is the apparent inconsistency on the part of the courts when it comes to publishing the names of defendants. The identity of a defendant is made public as a matter of course.
The duty of the press to keep the people aware of court proceedings is actually a corollary to articles six and 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights: the right to a fair and public hearing and the right to receive and impart information respectively.
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