The Gozitan learning support assistant who was last week cleared of sexual abuse charges – after a five-year court case – has filed a claim for the income she lost while she was suspended from her job.

Sources said the claim was made on her behalf by the Malta Union of Teachers, which stood by Karen Mercieca’s side from the outset.

MUT president Kevin Bonello said when contacted that the union had written to the Education Ministry asking for Ms Mercieca to be given whatever she was due while she was suspended from duty, as well as her job back.

“Yes of course we filed a claim for compensation. We want her to be given all the salaries, allowances and bonuses she lost while she was suspended. But most of all we asked for her immediate reinstatement now that she was acquitted from the charges, which was confirmed on appeal,” he told The Sunday Times of Malta.

This newspaper reported last week how the learning support assistant from Qala had lived through a “living nightmare” during the five years she was fending off sexual abuse allegations.

Ms Mercieca, 38, was cleared of having defiled an 11-year-old girl with a learning disability at the Għajnsielem Primary School in November 2011. Her acquittal in 2015 was confirmed on appeal last week.

We want her to be given all the salaries, allowances and bonuses she lost while she was suspended

Ms Mercieca said in an emotional interview that she had spent five years “existing rather than living”. “It has been a living nightmare, having to wake up every morning with such an accusation. I have tried not to let it affect me, but the burden was too heavy to carry year after year. During these five years, I stopped living and was just existing. The life I had enjoyed so much made no sense anymore. Having to prove my innocence for such an accusation took away my life,” she said.

Mr Bonello said the education authorities took the case up with urgency following the union’s request and started the ball rolling for Ms Mercieca’s reinstatement.

The Education Ministry has made a formal request to the Public Service Commission, which will now decide whether to give the go-ahead for Ms Mercieca to be re-employed as an LSA.

Meanwhile, the police have not replied to questions sent by this newspaper on whether they have launched an internal investigation into the way the case was handled.

The court had questioned why the police failed to investigate a report, filed by Ms Mercieca to her superiors in November 2011, that the girl in question had what looked like a cigarette burn on her arm.

That was when Ms Mercieca’s life turned upside down.

“On November 14, my hell began when I received a telephone call from the police station asking me to go there as they wanted to speak to me. Between the 8th and the 14th, when I was eventually interrogated and arrested, the student was still assigned to me like the previous two years, and her behaviour was normal,” she said.

matthew.xuereb@timesofmalta.com