According to police figures released last year, at least one child per week is a victim of sexual assault in Malta.
While these reported figures are likely to reflect the tip of the iceberg, girls make up the overwhelming majority of reported victims, accounting for close to 90 per cent of the total figure. Global data indicates that 93 per cent of children know their abusers, including family members.
Unfortunately, survivors of sexual assault in Malta must struggle to ensure that their aggressors are brought to justice. This is due to time-barring procedures, which prevent the filing of a police report after a certain period has elapsed.
As the law stands, crimes are time-barred some years after the child turns 18. The period varies between two and 20 years, depending on the severity of the case and the penalty associated with it.
Children’s Commissioner Pauline Miceli recently recommended that time barring be scrapped in order to support survivors to achieve justice. It can take years for young people who know their childhood abusers to summon up the courage to speak out.
Sexual violence perpetrated against children has always been a problem. However, increasing knowledge of the prevalence of sexual assault in Malta has led more people to admit to its insidious effects in their own families and communities.
Social media has lit up throughout the Maltese islands, with harrowing reports being shared online of sexual violence and abuse.
Reacting to this deluge, Francesca Fenech Conti, founder of Women for Women, said: “I hope this response will act as a wake-up call to our authorities that we have a massive problem.
“We need to acknowledge it and dig deep and conduct research into the root causes to ensure our future generations of children do not suffer sexual abuse and trauma.”
Many women stated that their abuse took place during their childhood and teenage years, often by the people they trusted the most including relatives and teachers. Some were too young to understand what was being done to them, while others felt a deep sense of shame that has had negative effects throughout their lives.
Notwithstanding these realities, a pervasive reluctance still exists within society, and on behalf of national authorities, to admit to the prevalence of childhood sexual assault and take into consideration the full gravity of the ongoing situation.
From a therapeutic perspective, all survivors must receive the necessary aid and treatment, regardless of gender, ethnicity, class or sexual orientation.
However, alongside therapeutic support, the legitimate demands for justice being expressed by survivors, many of whom are now outside the time-limits to prosecute their aggressors, cannot be ignored.
While the presence of any form of sexual assault harms the entire community, childhood sexual assault has an impact well beyond the individual or even their close friends and family members.
In the national context, these negative impacts are being addressed by Victim Support Malta, an NGO which provides a range of support, assistance and information services to victims of crime, as well as recently set-up support groups like White Tulip Malta, which are creating a safe space for sharing and healing.
However, without a determined effort to highlight the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse, abusers will continue to perpetrate their crimes with a certain level of impunity.
The only people being protected by the time-barring of reports are the abusers. They operate within the grey areas of a legal system that still has a long way to go to ensure that children in Malta receive the full protection they so clearly deserve.