The Malta Football Association has left it up to the public to conclude whether, "in a long life, if someone is found guilty only once of corrupting a minor, one should be labelled a paedophile".

This was its reaction to the decision by the CEO of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services, Joe Gerada, to go public on the fact that a convicted paedophile had retained his employment as a groundsman at Pace Grasso Ground, in Paola, even after the MFA was informed of the matter.

The groundsman's contract was only terminated three days ago, at the end of the football season, four months after he pleaded guilty to defiling a 13-year-old boy in December 2003 and in the previous weeks. The 79-year-old man was last January jailed for two years with the sentence being suspended for four years.

Mr Gerada described the MFA's response and the fact that it had done nothing about the matter as "shocking".

The MFA said it has been offering the sports facilities of Pace Grasso Ground to the Guzé D'Amato School, Paola, free of charge, while funding the services of a groundsman, so that the schoolchildren would have "a decent recreation place".

Not only did the MFA stick to its guns about keeping the groundsman employed until the end of the season, but it also said it would be withdrawing the school's permit to use the ground facilities for recreation purposes.

So that the MFA would no longer be "unjustly accused" by Mr Gerada and those who supported him, and so that it would not enter into a controversy with those who "choose to put the carriage before the horse", the MFA's executive committee said it had decided to terminate the groundsman's employment at the end of the season - May 7 - in the case of Pace Grasso Ground.

The MFA has withdrawn the permit for the school to use the ground, saying it had to do so "against its wishes".

"It would have been wiser and more useful had Mr Gerada - instead of contacting the MFA to, without any right, order it what to do, and attacking it - contacted the school head to decide whether the children were in any danger if they used the ground facilities."

After all, it was the Paola school that had asked the MFA if it could use the ground and not the other way around, the football association said.

The association accused Mr Gerada of having raised the matter on Xarabank, which, it said, was, after all, a programme on drugs, only to gain "cheap propaganda at the cost of the MFA and its managers".

It said the case that was referred to on Xarabank and on a section of the print media occurred in December 2003 and, since then, the association had received no reports of similar incidents.

It was only informed of the case by Mr Gerada over two years later, in February, it said.

Highly irked by the "huge insensitivity towards the seriousness of these situations," before even seeing this latest reaction by the MFA, Mr Gerada recounted how, last February, he was approached by a mother who informed him that a paedophile was working at the sports facilities in Paola, which were also frequented by children.

Mr Gerada sought to confirm the facts through the law courts, and found that the information from the woman was correct.

He therefore immediately proceeded to get in touch with MFA president Joe Mifsud and agreed to send him the court decree, "so he would have something solid in his hands on which to take what I thought would have been the obvious decision".

However, what was so obvious to Mr Gerada was not to the MFA, and the subsequent correspondence exchanges led nowhere close to ensuring that the potential risk would be removed, he said.

In fact, on April 6, Mr Gerada received what he considered to be a "shocking" letter, informing him that the convicted paedophile would retain his job at the ground until the end of the football season, which has just come to a close. At no point was Mr Gerada told that the end of the season was on Sunday, he said.

He had replied that this was unacceptable, that the MFA was playing with fire, and that unless adequate corrective measures were taken, he would have no option but to go public on the matter.

He said the football association had pointed out that the young people who attended the ground did so free of charge. They came from Guzé D'Amato School and were allowed to use its facilities at the discretion of the MFA. In other words, they implied that if they had a problem, they could just not turn up, Mr Gerada said.

But what guarantee was there that if these schoolchildren did not use the facilities, others would not either, Mr Gerada questioned. With a paedophile running the ground, there was no guarantee he would not let any other youths enter for any reason, he pointed out.

"I cannot in any way compromise the moral and personal integrity of young people," Mr Gerada said when contacted.

"Legally, I cannot do anything, but we were not going to be party to this secret. Had the MFA decided to take action to safeguard the children, we would have kept a low profile on the matter.

"We are not pointing fingers at the man in question; he needs help and we hope he gets it. But anyone in authority is responsible to take the reasonable steps to make sure that the young are protected. We owe it to them - not only Appogg, but both the public and the private sector and anyone in authority," he insisted.

Mr Gerada saw no reason why the employee should have been kept until the end of the season.

"If I had not spoken to the MFA, they would have done nothing about it. They should not need to have someone like me drawing their attention to this situation. It should be second nature for them to protect youths," he said, insisting that every person in some kind of position of authority has the responsibility to take preventive action.