Wednesday, 23rd April 2008 - 21:49CET
Cyberspace rules
The court may have banned publication of the name of a former religion teacher found guilty of sending lewd SMS messages to his students but people are taking the law in their own hands through a chain e-mail that names and shames him.
The message doing the rounds even includes a few pictures of the man and gives details of a website he owns and profiles he has in different social network sites on the web.In a Facebook profile in his name, the only three listed friends are children. The e-mail says the police found over 1,200 children on his Myspace and Hi5 accounts (both online social network sites).
The 37-year-old man pleaded guilty to defiling minors on Tuesday and admitted to sending SMS messages with sexual connotations to former students aged between 13 and 14 years over the past weeks.He was given a two-year jail term suspended for four years and was effectively banned from having his teachers’ warrant ever renewed, besides being ordered to keep away from institutions attended by children.
Magistrate Anthony Vella heard that the man had started internet chatting sessions with his former students and then proceeded to send the messages. Both the messages and chatroom conversations contained sexual connotations.
The court banned publication of the man’s name not to compromise an ongoing police investigation and to protect the victims’ identity and the name of the school he worked for.The anonymous e-mail challenges the ban: “I will now name and shame this individual and ask that you pass this e-mail onto everyone that you know so that we can name and shame these perverts... We know who you are and, through this e-mail, so will the rest of Malta”.
The e-mail refers to recent similar cases related to sex offenders. “Are you sick and tired of reading about people who abuse children, who get let off with a sentence that is nothing but laughable? A two-year prison sentence suspended for four years, not being named to ‘protect the child’s identity’,” the message continues, before calling for stricter penalties.
“How can you be sure that you don’t have a sick pervert teaching your kids, taking them on outings, or giving them private lessons... We have all heard of many stories where a teacher has abused a child at school, is then fired – without any given reason and then moves to another school where he will continue his sick fetishes with other innocent children.”Legal sources who spoke to The Times said it is debatable whether such chain-mails would actually be in contempt of court as the ban was addressed to the traditional the media. “Ultimately,” one lawyer explained, “e-mail is a form of correspondence, I don’t think the courts ban extends to this.”
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Comments
"The law is an ass; the people who continue to protect such perverts are not much better."
The man in question is still freely advertising his "weather club for boys and girls aged 11 to 15 years old" on the internet. (Run a Google search with those exact words, and there you have it.)
The law is an ass; the people who continue such perverts are not much better.
If your lawyers have told you that they think the ban only applies to traditional media and not to the Internet, then it follows that you can put the name up on this website, even if you are going to uphold the ban where your newspaper is concerned. The man's name and photograph, with plenty of other information, have been up on my website for most of the day already.
Yes, the privacy of his victims should be respected. But guess what? They don't want his privacy respected. The silence surrounding his name offends them and belittles their courage in sticking their necks out and testifying - just two among 15 boys who were harassed by this pervert. What did the parents of the other 13 boys tell their sons? 'Oh better keep quiet, dear - let those other boys stick their necks out if they want to'? Disgraceful. They're really teaching their kids a lot about trust, and justice.