A teenage girl who has been missing for several weeks had told the police that her father tried to force her into an arranged marriage two years ago.
The father, a foreign national, was eventually arraigned and charged with beating his 15-year-old daughter and trying to make her marry against her will.
The court case started in July 2020 and is still pending.
The magistrate presiding over the case had ordered a ban on the father’s name to protect the identity of the daughter, a minor. It is for this reason that Times of Malta cannot publish names or personal details.
During the 2020 arraignment, police officers told the court that the teenage girl had reached out to the police via Facebook.
When they went to her house she opened the door and her first words to the police were: “Help me, please help me.”
The child’s arms were badly bruised, recalled a police inspector. She alleged she had been beaten continuously and her father had tried to make her marry a certain individual.
The father denied any wrongdoing and called on the court to factor in the girl’s state of mental health.
Since the report, the girl, now 17, has been under a temporary care order pending the court case. She was living in a residential home when she went missing a few weeks ago.
A spokesperson for the social care ministry confirmed this and said that “the Directorate for Alternative Care within the Foundation for Social Welfare Services are collaborating with the police, mainly the Vice Squad, regarding this minor”.
The ministry spokesperson noted that the residential home had an ‘open door’ policy to fully adhere with the obligations of the Convention of the Prevention of Torture.
Hidden reality
The case may open a pandora’s box.
Several people who work in the social care and education sector said that, on hearing the girl had gone missing, their initial thought was forced marriage.
“It’s not the first time that a teenager has stopped turning up at school and her peers told teachers she is on her honeymoon,” one person who works in a school said.
Such cases often go under the radar.
Former President of Malta, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, recently spoke about the need to blow the cover on this hidden reality.
Colerio Preca is the president of Eurochild, a network of organisations working for the welfare of children in Europe.
In an opinion piece published in Times of Malta, she referred to two recent instances when child marriage was raised.
Commenting on social media, Maltese author with Palestinian-Jordanian roots, Walid Nabhan, wrote: “In my street, girls aged 14 and 15 have been married! I thought of contacting the media to ask who is marrying these children?”
This cultural phenomenon was confirmed by Mary Muscat, a lawyer and former police inspector, who said she was unsurprised by the news. She encountered a case of child marriage as a child advocate.
Coleiro Preca called on the authorities to step up their investigations and leave no stone unturned to uncover the whole truth behind such crimes.
Maltese law and child marriages
A police spokesman said the police received two reports of alleged child marriages in 2020. One resulted in an attempted forced marriage of a minor, the other was investigated but allegations of a forced marriage did not result. However, court action was initiated in connection with defilement.
Both cases are still pending.
As Maltese law stands, while normally one has to be 18 years of age in order to get married, minors who have attained 16 years of age may contract marriage if the parents consent or if authorised to do so by the courts.
In 2019, the United Nations’ Committee for the Rights of the Child recommended that Malta’s marriage law should be amended to forbid people under 18 from getting married.