10 years jail for raping niece

A man was yesterday jailed for 10 years after an all-male jury found him guilty by six votes to three of raping his seven-year-old niece in 1998.

The tension was palpable in the court room as the foreman of the jury was about to read out the verdict. When family members waiting outside heard the news, they started crying.

During submissions on punishment, the accused became visibly emotional as Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono explained to defence lawyer Joe Mifsud the minimum and maximum jail terms according to law. The judge said the minimum the accused was facing was two years and four months and the maximum was 23 years.

The jurors also found him guilty by eight votes to one of defiling a minor.

Dr Mifsud asked the court to take into consideration the fact that the verdict in the case of the first charge of rape was a minimum, the incident happened many years ago and that it took a long time for the crime to be reported.

He said that his client was 17 years old at the time and that his police record was clean.

Lawyer Nadine Sant, from the Attorney General's Office, asked the court to jail the accused for the maximum term possible and also to take into consideration the suffering the girl and her family had gone through. She also asked for a protection order to be issued.

The judge said the criminal record of the accused indicated that he had been given a suspended jail term for threatening the police, refusing to give his particulars and breaching the peace. He had also been convicted three times of driving without insurance cover.

Mr Justice Galea Debono said that besides the criminal record, he also took into consideration the enormous effect the case had on the personality of the victim, as she herself had testified, and the break-up within the family as a result of what had happened.

The girl, now 18 years old, had first spoken about her ordeal when she was 13-years-old. She testified that she had first come to realise what had happened to her during her personal and social development lessons in Form 2.

The accused had had sex with the girl four times and had committed lewd acts with her on one occasion in Ħal Far, the court heard.

The court ordered a ban on publication of all names.