Two months ago, it was already clear that the government must permanently silence its loudest critics. It cannot obtain a credible mandate in the next general election if there are too many loose ends.
The government is too compromised by the weight of its own scandals to ignore them. Obviously, it is in no position to clean up its own corruption, nor does it want to.
The next best thing is ensuring that anyone who gets any bright ideas knows that every skeleton in their closet will be brought out for the public to see.
Having said that, even the most cynical side of me had not anticipated the kind of character assassination we witnessed over the weekend.
It started with a five sentence story on MaltaToday accompanied by a photo of former Repubblika president Robert Aquilina heading in for police interrogation. For the sake of less cumbersome sentences, I will refer to him and Jeanette by their first name.
Robert was being questioned by the police over a report that Jeanette filed last Friday evening. Initial news reports were based on malicious leaks from the police corps.
MaltaToday initially described it as “an alleged domestic violence incident”, later adding that the newspaper “is informed that an altercation took place in Aquilina’s home that prompted the police officer on fixed point in front of his house to intervene.”
Times of Malta later chimed in with more details. Following Jeanette’s initial police report, she went through the standard procedure of a risk assessment at Aġenzija Appoġġ.
According to the Times, Jeanette’s situation was classified as high risk. As reported in this useful explainer piece, information gathered by both police officials and the agency’s assessors in such cases is passed on to whichever magistrate is on-duty at the time.
After being presented with this information, the magistrate did not order Robert’s arrest nor did he proceed with a temporary protection order in favour of the alleged victim.
Before moving on to what I really feel needs to be highlighted about this story, I want to make a few disclaimers.
I’ve known Robert personally for a few years now and we’ve always been on good terms. Through him, I also got to spend a fair bit of time with Jeanette.
I first met Robert and Jeanette through civil society activism, bonded with both of them through a shared interest in the causes we all care about, and spent time with both in a professional and social context. Fruitful collaboration has occurred as a result of this and I do not regret it.
I’ll freely admit that the process of looking into the allegations and submitting friends to the same kind of questioning I’d put any other suspect/victim through was not an enjoyable task, to put it mildly. I’ve spent the last three days doing just that.
It is quite clear that both have their own sides of the story to put forward in the hope of achieving some clarity. Both of them deserve to have that clarity free of the hostility that is being directed at them in the process.
The fact that their personal dispute is being savagely dragged out in front of the whole country obviously doesn’t help.
The details which are relevant to the allegations themselves will inevitably come to light in court. There is no public service being carried out by dishing out information that will eventually be confirmed or denied. It is simply kicking the family while it’s down in exchange for clickbait and political mileage.
I am also aware that this case goes beyond what happened between the couple in question and is being discussed in the broader context of alleged domestic violence cases and the procedure which is used to assess the relative danger of the situation at hand.
My point of view is that of a 30 year old man speaking about domestic violence, a subject in which I am usually far more comfortable with listening to women’s experiences instead of talking about them from my point of view.
Given this context, I feel it is only fair for me to reiterate that I am always open to criticism towards my reporting and am willing to acknowledge any blindspots anyone feels they should point out.
Through the conversations I had with both parties, I believe that this was a long, complex relationship that broke down under heavy external pressure.
I reached out to Jeanette to ask her about whether she wants to comment about any of this. She opted not to comment publicly, and asked me to respect her right to make her own decisions in private.
Given that she is totally within her right to keep it that way, I absolutely had no interest in pursuing her for a comment any further.
To ensure that this article is respectful of the alleged victim’s privacy, I sent her a copy of an early draft. We spoke at length after that. I made some amendments and can now present this information in a manner which respects the balance between the need to investigate wrongdoing that may have been committed by an influential public person and the kind of due process that is required in such situations.
I asked Robert about what he is being accused of and what he has to say about that.
As he indicated in his first public post about the subject, Robert has more or less adopted the same stance that Jeanette offered, with the obvious difference being that he is a public person who therefore has a bigger responsibility to explain himself.
Given the fact that the allegations are extremely serious, I asked pointed questions about them and spent hours asking him follow-ups.
Since it would be in very bad form of me to report sensitive details from conversations in which the topics that were discussed are subject to an ongoing domestic violence investigation, what I will do instead is share the inferences I can deduce so far with the intent of following up on whatever else comes up.
What is clear beyond any reasonable doubt is that the Aquilina family – including their three daughters – faced a tremendous amount of external pressure that came about directly as a result of Robert and Jeanette’s involvement in anti-corruption activism.
It is also evident that there was a concerted effort to assassinate Robert’s character, starting with the police, continuing with cheap reporting in the press, and culminating in a torrent of state-sanctioned slander.
Having said all that, I must also mention that, faced with all this pressure, egregious errors of judgement were made and that the accusations in Robert’s regard cannot be simply dismissed offhand because of his track record as an activist. He is free to deny the accusations as much as any other individual. But he should also be put in a position where he must answer for himself and clear his name accordingly.
Ultimately, Jeanette was entirely within her right to request the police’s support and go through the standard process for domestic violence allegations. It is dishonest and shameful to frame her decision as anything but what it is: a moment in which she felt a pressing need to ask for help.
Like in any other domestic violence case, the only authorities that can adequately establish the dynamics of any alleged abuse are the police, under what should be the strict guidance of the social workers who carry out risk assessments. It is then the court’s responsibility to ascertain the facts and pass judgement accordingly.
It must be emphasised that there is absolutely no justification in the world for such a malicious leak of unverified information, not unless your intent is to launch a perfectly timed smear campaign right before you also try to land a known anti-corruption activist in jail for blowing the whistle about Malta’s dirtiest bank.
It is the equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb on someone’s credibility.
By all means, the argument that there should be immediate, temporary arrests for alleged aggressors who are the subject of an assessment report that flags a high level of risk is a legitimate one.
The fact is that it should be justifiable to temporarily detain anyone who, based on an elevated risk assessment, seems like they may pose a threat to an alleged victim’s wellbeing.
This would, of course, be accompanied by an urgent need to ensure that the authorities swiftly investigate the claim in question to avoid arbitrary detention that is based on a malicious report. Anything more than 48 hours of detention would probably risk being struck off as unconstitutional.
By its nature, any information collected in a risk assessment of this kind is sensitive and loaded with the emotional turmoil experienced by the person who is answering questions.
It is a document that is useful to give the magistrate a snapshot of the ordeal described by the alleged victim. It is certainly not adequate enough to assess the alleged aggressor’s character or the complexity of twenty years of marriage that suffered a critical breakdown in communication.
An alleged victim’s risk assessment represents a moment of extreme vulnerability, and to selectively use a report based on that kind of experience as the basis of a smear campaign before the target even has any time to know what hit them is beyond revolting.
For the sake of anyone out there who still has some goddamned sense left in them, I must also point out another obvious fact before closing this grim column – just because Robert is a public person with a very prominent role in issues related to justice and the rule of law does not somehow mean it is justifiable to compare leaks about an alleged domestic violence case to leaks about politicians being in bed with big business.
Robert has a public-facing role, not an actual role as a public official. At best, one can say that he is a notary and that, therefore, he has some duties to uphold which reflect his status as a legal professional. The two scenarios only seem comparable if you fail to understand this basic distinction or deliberately choose to ignore it.
What is left to judge about him and the integrity of his character in this context, therefore, is whatever emerges from the court process. No more, no less.
Public officials, on the other hand, are paid by taxpayers and are duty-bound to not only uphold their specific work responsibilities but generally maintain standards of good conduct, because they are authorities whose credibility depends on how equitably they apply the law. A lawmaker cannot become a lawbreaker – not unless they wish to invite lawlessness.
It is a perilous time to resist this desperate regime.
I faintly hope that posterity will remember the sacrifices that had to be made in the fight against it. History cannot be allowed to continue repeating itself.
Considering how we’ve stooped to these kinds of lows, I’m not holding my breath.