About a boy

If I was ever interviewed in a 60- second type interview and asked about my favourite film or book, I'd panic. I know for sure that it would take me much longer than 60 seconds to figure out my favourite movie to date, but I'd certainly be able to come up with the one which had impressed me the most when I was growing up.

It would have to be Sophie's Choice, released more than 25 years ago. The plot is a little hazy all these years later, but I still remember 'the choice' scene pretty well, when Sophie, played flawlessly by Meryl Streep, arrives in Auschwitz with her two children and is forced to give one of them up. Essentially what the choice meant was life for one child and death for the other. I can still see the expression on her face when she begs the Nazi officer not to make her choose and then her desperation when she finally acquiesces and allows them to take her daughter. Her daughter is carried away screaming and crying.

Nothing can be more frightening to a child than being separated from a parent. The film represents every child's, and certainly every mother's, nightmare. I am very tempted to watch it again, because I know that seeing it today, as a mother, would be a different experience. An infinitely worse one. I can't think of anything more terrifying than watching your son or daughter being carried away to die.

I am not sure if I would be able to watch the film today because I have become one of those people who is unable to sit through one of those UK Living adverts that ask you to sponsor a child for 'only two pounds a month'. I'm sure you know the ones. 'This child has learned that when he cries, nobody hears him.' I literally can't stand or sit through any sort of violence which is levelled at children.

Which is why I always skim through news items which tell of their pain and suffering. Like the Jersey child abuse scandal, for instance, where I sort of half watched and half didn't, suddenly remembering I had to water the mint on the roof. But when it's as close to home as Gozo, there's a limit to how much sustenance your plants need.

So I braved Bondiplus the other day and ever since I have not stopped thinking about that boy. I keep getting these flashes of him being cornered into a tight spot in some dormitory no doubt with a big crucifix overhead and being repeatedly smashed into by an iron bed. If it's not that, it's the other picture that flashes before me - the one which features vomit and force-feeding. Every now and then, when I bump into a police inspector, I ask about the case and whether there is going to be any just dessert for the two or three women who were implicated. But no one seems to know what's going on.

I wonder, perhaps we'll have our own miracle of Lourdes here locally and everything will be forgotten, never to have happened.

We know the Bishop of Gozo was very apologetic. We heard the alleged victims being asked whether thus wanted an apology from the nuns concerned. So what? And more importantly what next?

Do we get to see the names of these women splashed all over the papers in the same way that we read about the cocaine kings and brown sugar barons? Because to my mind, what they did is far more reprehensible than drug trafficking.

"What does that have to do with the price of eggs?" I hear you ask. Well, you see, children are always used as pawns in the war on drugs. Those who demonise and wage war against drug traffickers, do so in the name of the innocent.

Whether it's a talk show or a trial by jury, at some point you are going to read or hear that your son or your daughter could be next; that drug traffickers are evil and cruel because they prey on innocent children and destroy lives. So where are all these people when it comes to child abuse? Why is the ill-treatment and neglect of children only punishable by a maximum of two years' imprisonment? (s.247a of the Criminal Code). And why does this section only afford protection to children below the age of 12? To my mind, it is lackadaisical at best.

People who are processed in court for trafficking never get off with it lightly. No one really cares whether they are sorry or not. They are branded harshly and then they are usually thrown in jail (trafficking any sort of drug can mean life imprisonment). Their cases are made everybody's business and they are the ones who receive the heftiest sentences.

I'm not going to enter into a drug debate here and now, but I'll leave you with this thought: If you were ever coerced into giving your child up and had the misfortune of having to choose one of two people - a person who habitually ill-treats children or a drug trafficker - who would you choose? It may sound ridiculous and inane but I know what my answer is, though it's a choice I hope I will never have to make.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com