I'm not sure how I can say this without sounding like some deranged pervert who gets off on other people's misfortunes, but I recall watching the events of 9/11 unfold on TV, day after day for months afterwards, with the same voraciousness I often experience when I'm in the middle of an unputdownable book or, better still, one of those never-ending TV dramas like Grey's Anatomy or Six Feet Under, which I could watch forever and never tire of.

I found 9/11 compelling. I could not take my eyes of it. Where others refused to watch it, or simply tired of the tragedy, I'd rush home from wherever I was and picnic in front of the box, alternating between Sky, CNN, BBC, willing Hard Talk or Larry King to regale us with some two-hour special into the alarming world of terror.

But then, I couldn't bear to watch the Beslan school massacre for more than 30 seconds. And more recently, when I came across the court report about the three children who suffered repeated abuse at the hands of their mother and her partner, I felt physically ill. And so very angry, I surprised myself.

You see, for a people who are so vociferous about the rights of the unborn child, who were prepared to camp outside Castille and organise candlelit vigils to make sure Rebecca Gomperts knew she and her message were not wanted, who wrote copiously about the sin of abortion, we apparently don't display the same level of anger and commitment about what happens to children after they are born. Or if we do, we're pretty reticent about it.

So when I read all about the 5cm diameter cigarette burns, the persistent beatings, buckle marks, haematoma bruising, the testimony of social workers who called it the clearest-cut case of child abuse they had ever witnessed, the state of filth that these children were made to live in, the numerous times their lives were threatened and put in jeopardy, left alone with no milk in their bottle, or worse still, with crushed valium mixed into their milk, the traumatic effect that all of this has invariably had on three poor children who will never recover from this ordeal, I found it odd that no one was really paying attention.

Instead, the whole of Malta seemed to be in stitches over the whole censorship issue, so I chose to momentarily dispel real life and sat down to some fantasy instead. I tuned into the tail end of Xarabank to see what all the fuss was about and I got it at the bit where Jon Lukas, who was sort of posing as the prodigal son on the panel, tells all of us at home that the Soho sex, drugs and rock n roll life that he went in search of in the 60s wasn't all that it was cut out to be. And that no matter how hip and cool you are, or think you are, a moral alphabet is a good thing. Values are valuable. Things that are intrinsically wrong don't make you happy and are ultimately bad for you. He didn't say all this. I'm just filling in the blanks because I have lived long enough to know this to be true. And I didn't need to leave Malta or pursue a life of Riley to come to this realisation.

Teresa Friggieri described the script as 'decadent'. She took umbrage to the obscene language, the perverted content of sexual masochism, the references to Auschwitz. Others on the programme pointedly refused to read out excerpts of the script arguing that they did not feel morally comfortable doing so. And all along I kept drawing parallels with the three little children whose lives were not so very different - who lived a painfully sad life, at the mercy of a couple who might as well have been Stu and Abby, the dysfunctional duo at the centre of the play Stitching, which has had Malta up in arms.

I would choose not to watch Stitching because that sort of thing doesn't ring any of my chimes. I walked out of the Pillow-man. I can't read books with titles like We need to talk about Kevin or A child called It, The lost boy any more than I can bear to listen to stories about children who wait to be picked up from the orphanages and institutions like the Young Peoples Unit on weekends or at Christmas time, who spend hours looking out of glass window panes, buttoned up to the top, willing and waiting for those familiar faces to appear and each time having to unbutton their jackets and take off their hats and somehow find a way to live with the disappointment. It makes me cry. It gives me a terrible lump in my throat. It depresses me. I don't go to the theatre to come away feeling like that.

But one man's meat is another man's poison and at the end of the day censorship comes down to taste. I know that for many, my disproportionate morbid fascination with 9,11, was worrying. And let's call a dog a dog - 9/11 was no picnic. It was harrowing. It was murder in the first. It was all these things and more. But the Malta censorship board don't call the shots when it comes to world news, otherwise we may have never seen it.

Censorship perplexes me because real life is always more poignant than fiction. And wherever you look, it's there. You don't need to go and watch a play to know that there are people who are sick and twisted. And that level of intensity somehow seems contrived and insincere. That there are people out there who can summon that sort of reaction, who can lay down the law about a play which is ultimately a work of fiction, which you can take or leave. At the end of the play you know that however horrible it may have been, no one got hurt. No one was burned or bruised. It was make up and make believe. You see I can live with that sort of information. It's the other kind I can't stomach.