A grandfather has been spared any punishment after his granddaughter, who he is alleged to have defiled over a number of years, insisted on dropping the charges she had filed.

The man, whose details have been banned from publication, stood charged with defiling his granddaughter when she was young, continuing through her teenage years until she informed her guidance teacher about the abuse at school.

The guidance teacher testified that the girl had told her that the abuse had happened for seven years. She spoke about how her grandfather would ask her to look up women on porn sites and would compare them to her. He had also been charged with performing sexual acts with his granddaughter, but the attorney general had dropped this charge.

The alleged crime took place before November 2020.

Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit was given no option but to declare the case closed after the youngster declared in court on three separate occasions that she did not want to testify against her grandfather. She told the court she was having nightmares at the prospect of detailing the case in court and that she felt it would be better for her if she withdrew the charges and got on with her life.

It would be much more painful for me to go ahead with court proceeding

Even her parents refused to testify, including the girl’s father against his own dad.

A court-appointed psychologist told the court the girl did not appear she was forced to drop the case.

Handing down judgment, magistrate Stafrace Zammit said that upon the girl’s insistence, the court believes it be far more beneficial if the case were to be dropped once none of the prosecution’s witnesses wanted to testify.

She took note of what the victim, who is now 16, had said in court that she was having trouble sleeping at night because of the court case and that she felt much better now that she had decided to drop the case.

She told the court that although what her grandfather had done was all true, she felt “it would be much more painful for me to go ahead with court proceedings”.

Police inspector John Spiteri prosecuted.