Two nuns linked to allegations of abuse at Lourdes Home orphanage in Gozo had their testimonies suspended on Monday due to technical problems.
Sr Josephine Anne Sultana and Sr Dorothy Mizzi were to testify online before Mr Justice Mark Simiana. However, the testimony had to be suspended due to technical problems.
The nuns are subjected to a constitutional case filed by two alleged victims - Carmen Muscat and Rosanne Saliba.
In their case filed against the State, the two women are claiming that the State failed to protect them. They are seeking compensation for their ordeal.
Last year, Muscat and Saliba told the court they were subjected to sexual abuse and regular beatings in the orphanage run by the Dominican Sisters during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
On Monday, Mizzi began her testimony by saying Lourdes Home was divided into different residences according to the ages of the children. She said the two victims were not residents in the section she worked in.
She said that she did hold the role of Mother Superior of the Lourdes Home, however, she did not clarify the dates when she was in that position.
The testimony was suspended shortly after her statement due to technical issues with the audio.
Judge Simiana appointed a judicial assistant to go to the elderly home where the two Sisters reside, and to take their testimony there.
The nuns' testimony was originally due for November last year, yet both failed to show up citing medical appointments.
Muscat and Saliba were assisted by lawyer Lara Dimitrijevic.
Abuse at the Għajnsielem home is alleged to have stretched for decades.
The abuse was first acknowledged by the Church in 1999 when it set up a commission which concluded that the allegations were unfounded.
Claims then came to the public’s attention in 2006, when survivors ranging in age from their 20s to 40s described horrific abuse on the TV show Bondi+.
Two years later, a second Church commission found evidence of “inadmissible behaviour involving minors” at the home.
The Gozo Bishop at the time, Mario Grech, issued a statement asking survivors for forgiveness and ordered that the commission’s recommendations be implemented.
In 2011, police launched a probe into Lourdes Home and two of its nuns -Sultana and Mizzi - in connection with an abuse claim filed by a boy dating five years prior.
Two of the alleged survivors then initiated a constitutional case against the State for failing to take action.
Last year in January, a third nun implicated in the case - Sr Carmelita Borg - died.
She was Mother Superior for the Dominican nuns and was responsible for the Lourdes Home orphanage in Għajnsielem at the time the alleged abuse took place.