A judge ruled that the guilty plea to perjury, filed by a young woman who had admitted on national TV to making up sex abuse allegations against her father, was "free and unconditional".

Mr Justice Antonio Mizzi dismissed the appeal filed by the Attorney General  - who argued that the first court should not have accepted the guilty plea filed by 21-year-old Leanne Camilleri.

Leanne Camilleri

Last September, Ms Camilleri was placed on probation for three years and ordered to do 100 hours of community service after she admitted - before Magistrate Doreen Clarke -  to repeatedly lying about being sexually abused by her father from 2004, when she was eight years old, up until recently, when she retracted the allegation.

She claimed she was forced to make the allegations by her mother, Lisa May Camilleri, who is pleading not guilty to perjury. Ms Camilleri had first retracted her abuse allegations against her father on the popular talk show Xarabank.

Ms Camilleri’s father, Emanuel, spent nearly 400 days in jail after he was found guilty of defiling her. The 43-year-old was serving a two-year term but was provisionally released by order of the Constitutional Court pending the outcome of the criminal case against his former wife.

The Attorney General appealed the judgement handed down by Magistrate Clarke arguing that the magistrate should not have accepted Ms Camilleri's guilty plea. The law allowed magistrates not to accept admissions if they felt that the guilty plea was "unsafe and unsatisfactory" - and this was a textbook case, the AG claimed.

The AG pointed out that, over the years, Ms Camilleri's version had been consistent when she claimed to have been abused by her father. Evidence heard during the inquiry showed she was a vulnerable young woman who was susceptible to psychological pressure. Her brother had testified how her paternal grandparents had promised her a mobile phone if she testified in her father's favour while her mother's sister offered to give her money if she testified against him.

At the time when she admitted to perjury she was under a lot of pressure by her family and the media, her brother was dying and investigators had placed her in a cell until she said the truth.

The first court should have therefore never accepted her admission and heard the evidence to get a clearer picture of the events, the AG said.

But Ms Camilleri insisted that she stuck to her guilty plea. Today she was an adult and had matured and was aware of the circumstances she was in. She said that the AG's appeal was an attempt to manipulate the truth.

She noted that the first court had given her various occasions to reconsider her guilty plea, during some three sittings. The magistrate had even  requested a pre-sentencing report after the admission and based her decision on the conclusions.

In light of this the judge ruled that the first court was very cautious in its approach and in accepting the guilty plea. It was satisfied that her admission was free and unconditioned.

"Frankly, this court cannot understand the arguments brought forward by the Attorney General. Any other comments would be extra," Mr Justice Mizzi said as he dismissed the appeal.

Lawyer Maxilene Pace appeared for Ms Camilleri.