Back before the all-pervading Mistra/Pullicino Orlando/Cachia Caruana issue hijacked the national news forums, the country would go through a phase of obsessing about an issue or other.
Most abuse cases are committed within families, whether biological or blended- Claire Bonello
The talking heads which are a permanent fixture on the discussion-show circuit would trot out their views on divorce/the Eurovision song contest/feasts, the audience would clap in approval or boo, Peppi would devote a Xarabank programme to the issue, and then it would be shifted to the backburner for a respectable period of time until we could rehash the topic for another hackneyed programme.
One issue which used to get regular billing on these ignorancanzas was that of sexual abuse. Practically every time a case of sexual abuse surfaces, the media would run with it and we’d have panels of hysterical citizens and wannabe vigilantes crowding our screens and imparting their words of wisdom as to how the possibility of recurrence or future abuse could be prevented.
Many of the ‘solutions’ proposed included castration or lopping off other bits and bobs of the offenders’ bodies.
I don’t want to make light of what is a terrible offence and the traumatic effect it has on its victims, but I can’t help noting what facile solutions people thought would do away with some very complicated problems.
For example, one cure-all that was favoured by so many of the Xarabank audiences baying for blood was the sex offenders register.
Whenever the topic was being discussed, the inevitable lament would be that we did not have such a register and that we were therefore not in a position to know which pervert was lurking about in the vicinity for us to take the appropriate safeguards.
Never mind the fact that only convicted molesters would be noted in such a register, and that those who were still to offend would not show up in it, the register was considered crucial for our safety.
Another fact that was brushed away was that access to such a register would not be available to everyone but mainly to employers, in which case, the simple expedient of their asking for a police conduct certificate would reveal the commission of a sexual offence by the prospective employee.
In any case, the public was baying for a sex offenders register, and what the public wants, the public gets (as long as it does not involve too high an expense or annoying some other sector).
The Protection of Minors (Registration) Act made it to the statute books earlier this year. The Act provides for the listing of the names and particulars of people found guilty of certain offences – mainly those of a sexual nature.
Judges and magistrates may choose to include or omit offenders from the register. This is a sensible option, so that those convicted of a minor or ‘technical’ offence – say, a 17-year-old having sex with a 16-year-old – can avoid being tagged with the ‘molester’ label which would be applicable to much graver offences.
To date only one person has been included in the register. So far, so good and so uneventful.
However, the law is having another unintended and undesirable consequence. That’s because it requires any organisation which provides or organises any service or activity which involves the education, care, custody, welfare or upbringing of minors to file an application in court to ensure that any person who it intends to employ or entrust with the care of minors is not included in the register.
In effect, what this means is that any NGO which has any contact with children under 18 has to file an application for every one of its employees, volunteers or helpers to see if they are convicted paedophiles.
What’s wrong with that I hear you ask? Well quite a lot. Many summer schools, clubs and organisations that hold activities for children are run on a purely voluntary basis, with unpaid helpers chipping in with their time and energy to keep the show on the road.
Crippling them with the expense and bureaucratic hassle of filing multiple applications for each of their volunteers is going to be a major dampener for these organisations, especially when the whole application process could be substituted with a simple request of a clean police conduct certificate.
Remember also that quite a lot of volunteering takes place on a spontaneous or intermittent basis when students have more time to help others out. So if a teenager wants to lend a hand at a creche or help out at a summer club, there’s going to be the expensive and cumbersome process of filing the relative application and waiting for the hearing, simply to learn the obvious – that he or she is not a convicted paedo. This heavy-handedness is going to make it that much more difficult for NGOs to survive and it’s not going to help child protection one jot.
That’s because the production of a clean conduct certificate would be a cheaper and easily-available substitute and have much the same effect as this ridiculous application process (especially when there’s only one person listed in the register).
There’s another thing too. Most abuse cases are committed within families, whether biological or blended. If we had to apply the logic used when the sex offenders register legislation was enacted, an application should be filed to ensure that anybody coming into contact with children who are not his/her own is not a sexual offender. So the vetting process should be extended to step-parents or step-siblings, partners, relatives and babysitters.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but if you had to follow the rationale of the law, this is what you would end up with. Unless we want to continue putting up more hurdles for NGOs and voluntary organisations, some rethinking is in order.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt