A man managed to escape serving time behind bars for engaging in sexual acts with a minor since his crime was time-barred in terms of law.

The man had been targeted by criminal prosecution in 2015, more than five years after the last sexual activity with the girl had taken place.

The victim, a child taken in by foster parents at the age of four, had kept her ordeal to herself for fear that her story might not be believed, only breaking her silence when she eventually opened up to her boyfriend.

The girl had confessed how a family friend, living two doors away from her foster grandmother’s home at Cospicua, used to force her to engage in oral sex, in an upstairs bedroom.

He sometimes touched the girl intimately, but never had sex with her, the victim said, recalling how the ordeal had started when she was around 12 years of age and continued for some four years, until she reached the age of 16.

Following the revelation, her boyfriend had spoken to the girl’s foster father who had, in turn, filed a police report around Christmas time in 2014.

Investigations ultimately led to the prosecution of the offender, today 60-years of age, for sexual activity with and defilement of the minor, charges which he denied, insisting in his statement to the police that he had given in to provocation by the girl.

In January, the accused was found guilty of the first charge and condemned to two years imprisonment, besides being placed under a two-year Protection Order.

However, in the course of appeal proceedings, it was argued that the charges had been time-barred by a five-year prescriptive period, since the accusations made in 2015 acts purported to acts which had last occurred in 2009.

While declaring that there was no reason for the court not to believe that the alleged acts had indeed taken place - no proof to the contrary having been presented by the accused - the court of appeal, presided over by Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera, observed that “unfortunately, the prosecution had exhibited no birth certificate of the victim” thereby depriving the court of confirmation of the girl’s age. Indeed, all dates in these proceedings were “approximate”, the court observed.

Not only had the prosecution failed to prove the exact age of the victim, but the girl herself had testified “very vaguely without supplying details of the time when these unpleasant episodes had taken place”.

On the basis of the ground of prescription, the court upheld the appeal and cleared the appellant of all criminal liability.