Laws protecting children and vulnerable adults from sex offenders have long needed upgrading, stakeholders have said.

The Times of Malta on Tuesday reported that Cabinet was set to discuss an overhaul of the way sexual offenders are prevented from working with children.

The proposed reform is based on the system used in the UK, which offers more information and is administered by trained professionals.

Marco Bonnici, president of the Malta Union of Teachers, said the existing law was far too complicated. “Private schools, who are employers, at the end of the day, have to go to the courts and wait, and the information they get is often inadequate. The current system is not good enough.”

Mr Bonnici was quick to add that, in the past, teachers were employed only for institutions to find out later about past convictions or inappropriate incidents, then being forced to fire them.

Ensuring all staff in contact with children are not predators is nearly impossible

The calls for a legislative reform were backed by lawyers who told Times of Malta about the cumbersome process that the educators, employers and organisations responsible for the well-being of children and vulnerable adults had to endure.

Ensuring that every member of staff that came into contact with children was not a predator was nearly impossible, they said.

A spokesman for the Lisa Maria Foundation, which is focused on protecting the young, also felt the current system was too cumbersome. The foundation has called for change consistently. Last year, it went so far as to say that it seemed society was more interested in protecting the rights of those who had committed serious crimes than safeguarding innocent people, especially children, from potential harm.

Police sources involved in such cases spoke about a drawn-out process, which they themselves had flagged to the government in recent years.

They said that for an employer or organisation to check whether a name featured on the list of sex offenders they had first go to a lawyer, who filed an application before the First Hall of the Civil Court, since it was the Registrar of the Civil Court that managed the list.

The application is also sent to the Attorney General, who has seven days to reply. The application and reply are then seen by a judge, who schedules a hearing, when the parties make submissions detailing the names of the person/s they wish to check.

If permission is granted, the judge orders the Court Registrar to search the register for the names and informs the applicants of the outcome.

The upcoming reform of the system of registering sex offenders is expected to be preceeded by a lengthy public consultation.

The law in place

It is the courts that decide whether or not to divulge the information in the register to people responsible for children. However, employers and those responsible for any organisation dealing with minors are required to be proactive in their approach to the register.

They are legally obliged to request the register be checked to ascertain if a person they wish to employ appears on it.

If an organisation involved in the care of children or vulnerable adults employs a listed individual without first having checked the register, that individual’s employment must be terminated immediately and the person responsible for the hiring faces a jail term from three months to four years and/or a fine of €2,500 to €50,000.

The law places the onus on a person convicted of a crime to inform the Court Registrar within three days of their name appearing on the register. Otherwise, they face imprisonment of between three months and four years and/or a fine of between €100 and €1,000.