The law courts should give more weight to children’s voices, according to President George Abela who said the decision to grant a Presidential pardon to a jailed woman was guided by her son.

He helped me reach my decision, which I believe to be the correct one

“Hopefully, I’ve set an example… It was important for the young man (who is almost 18) to help the President so, together, we could tackle the situation. That’s how we worked,” Dr Abela told The Times yesterday.

“There is no guilty conscience. He helped me reach my decision which I believe to be the correct one.”

On Monday the President signed a writ endorsing a Cabinet decision to pardon the 57-year-old woman, who was jailed for three months for failing to give her ex-husband access to their son, then 16, on 13 occasions.

After the jail term was confirmed by the appeal court, her son told The Times that his mother never told him not to spend time with his father and she did not deserve the punishment.

He too said the law courts should listen to children before deciding – something that the Children’s Commissioner has been insisting on for years.

A spokesman for the Justice Minister said he believes that “unless contrary to the minor’s best interests, in such cases the minor should be heard, particularly in the case of minors over the age of 14,” who could bear criminal responsibility in come cases.

During the days leading up to the decision the public signed a petition calling for the pardon to be issued and a vigil was held outside prison last Wednesday.

The woman also filed a request asking for the pardon, through her lawyer Ludvic Caruana.

However, on hearing about the pardon the woman’s ex-husband said he was “disgusted” and “deeply hurt”. He was never spoken to by the President or Cabinet and the public campaign to free his wife had completely ignored his side of the story, he complained.

Asked whether public pressure should lead to the overturning of a court judgment, Dr Abela replied: “I was very careful… It’s important to take note of public sentiment – all in authority should, including the courts.

“But this does not mean they get influenced… I called for the boy and gave him a lot of weight.”

When he worked as a lawyer, he said, he saw how children were caught in the middle of separation proceedings.

“Hopefully we’ll learn from this – the judiciary and couples going through this will learn to be careful not to hurt their most precious ones, the children.”

Asked whether it was time to change the law, so this would not happen again, he said that perhaps it was time to “look into intervening legislatively”.

The need for legal changes was recently raised by Labour Party spokeswoman on gender equality, Helena Dalli, who said the law currently put all minors, whether they were five or 17, in the same basket.

She said MPs were to carry responsibility for changing the law that the courts then applied.

She believed that, given the courts could exercise their discretion on punishment, there should be some form of deterrent, possibly a jail term, to ensure that the parent who had custody did not abuse the system.

The woman was given the maximum jail term allowed for the repeated offence.

Ms Dalli and PL Justice spokesman José Herrera agreed that this case deserved a Presidential pardon – an important safeguard in cases of miscarriage of justice.

Dr Herrera said the age of consent should be reduced from 18 to 16 and that, as a general rule, a jail term should not be handed down in family cases.

He too, however, had his reservations as to whether a jail term should be abolished completely, adding that this deserved to be debated.

Nationalist MP Michael Gonzi agreed this was an issue that ought to be debated within the Social Affairs Committee.

He said it was important to keep in mind that there were two sides to a story and this particular case was not enough to base a decision on it.

He was concerned that there may be other people suffering in similar situations whose case was not picked up by the press.

The Justice Ministry spokesman said the ministry was always “prepared to consider and discuss changes to our laws”.