A man was today acquitted of corrupting a girl after a court found that a false report had been made to the authorities because the girl's mother and her partner did not approve of her boyfriend.

"The court is convinced that the real motivation behind the report against the accused was the fact that he, along with the girl's mother, disapproved of the girl going out with her boyfriend" the court said.

Names are not being disclosed because minors were involved.

This was the second such case in a week. On Monday, a court issued an interim order releasing a man from prison after finding that his conviction of having sexually abused his daughter may have stemmed from false testimony from the girl.

In today's case, the accused was charged with having corrupted the girl, slightly injured her, and offended public morals on and before January 2006.

Initially, the girl's boyfriend told Appogg agency that the accused, 47, had been beating his girlfriend. The report was retracted the following day.

But the agency went ahead with its investigations anyway. Officials spoke to the girl who claimed that the accused had sexually abused her when she was between nine and 16 years old. The girl then filed a police report, alleging sexual abuse.

On the same day that the girl filed her police report, her mother filed a police report against the daughter's boyfriend, claiming he had had sex with a minor.

The court found that the allegations were first made after the girl started dating her boyfriend and her mother and her partner did not approve.

Magistrate Audrey Demicoli noted that the boyfriend in his original report to Appogg never mentioned sexual abuse, but when he testified, he said that the accused had exposed himself to the girl in his presence.

The magistrate said the court was faced by two conflicting versions - that of the girl and her boyfriend and that of the accused and the other members of the alleged victim's family. The family members had testified that the accused was a father figure and they never witnessed any violence. Problems started when their sister started dating her boyfriend and later moved out of the house. 

The accused was then acquitted.

Lawyers Veronique Dalli and Dean Hili were defence counsel.