A court is to decide whether Andrea Prudente is to testify via video conference or in writing, and whether that testimony is to take place behind closed doors.
The decision stems from concerns by the State Advocate that Prudente was present off-camera when her partner Jay Weeldreyer testified in the case via video link last month.
Having initially accepted to hear Prudente’s testimony via video link, the State Advocate is now insisting on the woman testifying in writing, through a legal procedure known as letters rogatory.
Prudente and Weeldreyer have filed a case claiming that their fundamental rights were breached by Maltese medical professionals when the then-expectant mother experienced symptoms of miscarriage.
In his testimony from the couple’s home in the US, Weeldreyer recalled last summer’s events which had transformed their planned babymoon in Malta to a “scary” ordeal after they were told that the “baby was lost.”
After experiencing rupture of membranes at almost 16 weeks and symptoms of miscarriage, including heavy bleeding, doctors refused to terminate the pregnancy, saying there was still a foetal heartbeat.
Abortion is banned under Maltese law and doctors could only intervene if the mother’s life was at risk.
Caught in a situation where the expectant mother was kept under observation at Mater Dei Hospital but the couple’s medical questions were not sufficiently answered, Weeldreyer described how his partner had ended up feeling “like a trapped wild animal.”
Their “ordeal” was finally over when they were transferred by air ambulance to a Spanish hospital, where the pregnancy was terminated.
Prudente has since been diagnosed as suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, the court heard during the hearing when her partner testified. The court was told that Prudente was unable to testify at the time due to that condition.
It later emerged that Prudente was present in the background while her partner testified via video link.
The State Advocate subsequently filed an application requesting the court to cancel Weeldreyer’s testimony, and to order the couple to testify either in court or via the conventional procedure of letters rogatory.
When the case continued on Wednesday afternoon, lawyer Fiorella Fenech Vella from the State Advocate’s office explained that given the circumstances of the case, they had not objected to the couple testifying remotely so as not to make things difficult for them.
But when it later turned out that “things were not being done as they should”, the State Advocate decided to change tact.
Weeldreyer should have immediately informed the court of Prudente’s presence and he was also apparently communicating with their lawyer during the court hearing because of “technical problems,” added Fenech Vella.
In such a case, the State Advocate was now insisting for “things to be done properly.”
Those arguments were met with objection by the applicants’ lawyer, Lara Dimitrijevic, who pointed out that such claims ought to have been flagged earlier and that Prudente was today waiting to testify via video link.
The proceedings were not to be dragged out unnecessarily and besides, the State Advocate had even started cross-examining Weeldreyer in the previous sitting.
Faced with those arguments Madam Justice Miriam Hayman intervened, directing the parties to present written submissions in respect of this issue and also in respect of Prudente’s wish to testify behind closed doors.
The State Advocate was basing its arguments on a provision under the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure (COCP) that was introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to permit testimony by remote means.
That provision was still in force, but the State Advocate was arguing that persons outside Malta and the EU could only testify by letters rogatory not by video link.
Article 199A(1) of the COPCP states that a court “may on application of one of the parties or of its own motion, after hearing representations from the parties, direct that any party or witness in a location other than the court itself (….a remote location) shall be treated as being present in court …..”
The court is expected to decree on the State Advocate’s request and the manner whereby Prudente was to testify and if in person, whether that was to happen in open court.