An elderly man was yesterday jailed for nine years for raping a seven-year-old girl whose trauma only emerged eight years later when she tried committing suicide at school.

William Gatt, a 68-year-old from St Paul’s Bay, was found guilty of luring the girl into his bedroom, under the pretext of playing with his cats, tying her to the bed and raping her.

The incident happened in 2002 when the girl was still seven but only came to light several years later, after her family had moved to the UK.

She opened up to the school counsellor, who alerted the British authorities. Mr Gatt was arrested in 2010 after the UK police filed a report via Interpol. He was facing a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The girl told the counsellor her family used to live in Malta when she had been around seven or eight years old. She would often play games in the street with her friends, and a man who lived nearby would invite her into his home to play with his cat. She said she had gone there on several occasions.

The girl claimed that the last time she had gone, the man took her to his bedroom, tied her up and raped her.

Mr Gatt was charged with raping the girl, whose name cannot be published by court order, defiling her, holding her against her will and committing violent, indecent assault.

During his interrogation, Mr Gatt admitted the girl had gone to his house to see his pets but denied sexually abusing her. He also told the police that he enjoyed performing sexual acts on and in the presence of little girls, blaming this fantasy on an alcohol problem he had some six years before.

Testifying via video conferencing, the girl told Magistrate Audrey Demicoli she had not told anyone about her abuse but often suffered depression because of the trauma.

She told the magistrate that on the day he had taken her to his bedroom and told her to wait there until he went to get the pets. But when he returned five minutes later, he removed her clothes, tied her arms and legs to the bed with a rope. At one point, he untied one leg and raped her, after first penetrating her with his finger.

While the abuse was taking place, Mr Gatt had threatened to kill members of her family if she told anyone about the abuse.

Girl ‘still traumatised by what happened’ all those years ago

The girl said she managed to escape when the man went to the bathroom.

Mr Gatt insisted in court that he had never touched the girl. He claimed she was lying, saying the allegations were instigated by her father to whom he had refused to lend €4,600.

He told the court that the girl often played with the pets in the living room but one day he caught her rummaging through his drawers in the bedroom and chucked her out of the house.

He also clarified that when he told police that he “liked girls”, he was referring to adults and not minors.

He also denied ever stating that he enjoyed performing sex acts on young girls and boys.

However, the consistency of the girl’s version and the details with which she depicted what she had gone through were given more weight by the court.

Magistrate Demicoli noted that the girl’s behaviour and body language while she was testifying showed that she was telling the truth and was evidently still traumatised by what had happened, even though so much time had passed. The magistrate said she could imagine no reason why the girl would come up with such a story unless she had really experienced it.

Moreover, the court had “no shadow of doubt” in the girl’s version and jailed Mr Gatt for nine years.

Police inspector Louise Calleja prosecuted.