An educational officer said in court yesterday that when he told a judge he would sleep outside her house if she ordered him to leave his matrimonial home he never meant it to be a threat but “just an expression”.

Vincent Martin Carabott, 57, of Birkirkara, yesterday insisted with Magistrate Josette Demicoli no threat had been intended.

But lawyer Joe Giglio, appearing parte civile for Madam Justice Abigail Lofaro and her family, said Mr Carabott had chosen his words and now had to bear the consequences.

“You are free to make insults and innuendoes but you must then shoulder responsibility for them,” he said, adding that by simply saying this was how he expressed himself was no defence.

Mr Carabott yesterday refused the magistrate’s offer to appoint a lawyer to assist him. He insisted on defending himself even though he was not conversant with the law or court procedures. In fact, he was stopped and corrected by the magistrate on several occasions.

Before he took the witness stand, Magistrate Demicoli warned him that he had the right to remain silent and he shrugged and replied: “If you want me to testify, I will”.

On the witness stand, Mr Carabott said the prosecution had done a “copy and paste” exercise with his statement, only using parts that suited it best.

He said he had told Madam Justice Lofaro he was “a social case” who would have nowhere to sleep if he were to be evicted from the matrimonial home. “I said I could sleep outside the court or the judge’s home but it was just an expression, a colloquial way of putting it that I had nowhere to stay,” he added.

Magistrate Demicoli asked whether he had been allowed to consult a lawyer before his interrogation but he would not reply. He said he had not seen the charges in writing before speaking to a lawyer.

“I never had any intention of harming the judge or her family. I simply told her: ‘If I am thrown out onto the street, wouldn’t I come and sleep on your doorstep?’ It wasn’t a statement of intent but I ended up deprived of my liberty and was locked up in the maximum security division in prison. I cannot understand,” Mr Carabott said.

In his final submissions, Dr Giglio asked the court to impose a severe punishment, saying the accused wanted “to use the law as a doormat” and that this was “dangerous and unacceptable”.

Mr Carabott sarcastically congratulated Dr Giglio on his “academic exercise” and for painting him out to be a monster.

“If I don’t have anywhere to sleep, do I disappear? What I meant was that I had no other place where to stay,” he said.

The case was put off to October for judgment.