MALTA
Malta Independent
Wednesday, 17 April 2013, 13:10, by Martin Scicluna
In August 2011, two defrocked priests were sentenced to jail for sexually abusing eleven boys placed in their care at St Joseph’s Home in Santa Venera. The former Father Charles Pulis and Father Godwin Scerri, both members of the Missionary Society of St Paul, had sexually molested the victims, in ways too disgusting to describe here, over a long period until 2003, when the abuse allegations at the St Joseph Home were first brought to public attention.
When Charles Pulis was reported by a social worker, who had caught him at the Home lying on the bed in his vest and boxer shorts with a full erection with a young boy on top of him, the Missionary Society of St Paul chose to believe the priest, who denied the accusation, and not the care worker. The report was dismissed when the victim, not unexpectedly given his vulnerable position as someone who had nowhere else to call home, failed to support the accusation.
When Godwin Scerri escaped from Canada in 1993 to evade police arrest on charges that he had abused a twelve year-old boy for four years, he was welcomed back to the local Missionary Society of St Paul without demur. The Society totally disregarded the Canadian arrest warrant and the serious charges against him. Instead, he was given a job at St Joseph’s Home, including unlimited and unsupervised access to young boys like the one he was accused of abusing in Canada.
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