Woman sued for false child abuse claim

A man is demanding a woman should pay him €60,000 damages for falsely accusing him of defiling her two young children in retaliation for spurning her sexual advances about five years ago.

Martin Vassallo, 35, of Senglea, was at the time employed as a farmhand with the woman’s husband.

Magistrate Jacqueline Padovani last week acquitted him of defilement charges. The court described the woman as having been “sexually obsessed” with the man. She ruled that the woman was, in fact, the cause of all the trouble after he rejected her numerous sexual ad­vances and decided to leave the job when her behaviour got too much for him to bear.

Fearing he would tell her husband the true reasons for quitting the job, she told the police her children had come forward to say he had abused them. In court, she also claimed he had tried to get intimate with her on numerous occasions.

In a judicial letter filed yesterday, Mr Vassallo’s defence lawyer, Roberto Montalto, gave her one week to pay €60,000 damages. He argued his client had lost work because of the proceedings against him and suffered a substantial reduction in his quality of life due to the false allegations.

The woman is not being named to protect the identity of her children.