Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1315450
9 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 DECEMBER 2020 INTERVIEW to any evidence in the posses- sion of the police. But while this is all well and good, for most criminal offenc- es… with domestic violence, it often hits a stumbling block. If the evidence itself is so difficult to collect, the system – although designed to deliver justice – will end up hindering, not helping, the victim. Coming back to environmen- tal law, however: the third pillar is the participation of people in the decision-making process. This part, on the other hand, is completely absent. Now: the analogy might not hold 100%: the environment is a different issue, and the procedures are bound to be slightly different, too. But justice is justice: regard- less whether it is applied to the environment, or any other sphere. So if we were to adopt at least the same model – creative- ly applying it to the context of domestic violence – there will surely be an improvement… I don't want to sidetrack into environmental issues: but the example you're giving may not be very encouraging. The prop- er systems and structures may all be in place: but we still see outrageous (often obscene) en- vironmental decisions, being taken on an almost daily basis. So how can adopting the same structures improve justice in domestic violence cases? But that's precisely the point I was coming to. The systems ex- ist, but they don't work because they're not sensitive enough. And in the case of domestic vi- olence: not all the structures are even in place. We have imple- mented the first of those three pillars… but not the other two. So where we have taken strides forward in environmental law; we haven't really done the same with domestic violence. We are still two whole steps behind… Turning to the GREVIO report itself: it seems to identify pre- cisely the same gaps you just mentioned. Yet in its official reaction, the Justice Ministry has denied the charge that – for instance – the justice sys- tem is 'insensitive' to domestic violence victims. How do you respond to that, yourself? GREVIO may not use the same terminology; but they still identified the same shortcom- ings, because…they're there. And it was important that final- ly, someone said this, in black on white. Because… how long have been talking about these issues? Even as an academic: nobody listens. You'd have bet- ter luck talking to the walls, to be honest. And it gets frustrat- ing: after a while, you stop even talking about it at all… And this, too, is part of the gas- lighting process. It's the same thing that makes victims of do- mestic violence gaslight them- selves: because they feel that nobody listens, nobody cares… Which brings me back to the sensitivity issue. I used to give in-service training to the po- lice: coaching police officers on issues such as cohabitation… LGBTi rights… basically, to ex- plain how the recent legislative changes to family law would af- fect the job of policing. Because what was often hap- pening was that – for the simple reason that many officers sim- ply didn't know the law – they were turning cases away: telling them, for instance, that: 'It's a civil matter, not a criminal one.' And again, it's a case of having the structures in place, without the basic training. In many cas- es, there wasn't even awareness of what the law actually says: for instance, that there is no longer a distinction, in criminal jus- tice terms, between married or cohabiting partners… still less, same-sex unions, and so on. But doesn't the fact that you were giving this course also mean that the training was, in fact, being provided? At the beginning, maybe… even if the course itself only amounted to an hour and a half a week. But now that the in-ser- vice courses have resumed: it was removed. Because they didn't see it as 'valid'. Today, there isn't any training at all. And I voiced my opinion about this: I asked, 'how can we progress towards sensitivity in domestic violence, if we don't even know the legal definitions of, for instance, status… or gen- der… or that there is a legal transitional period, when gen- der is changed…?' This is all very basic informa- tion, by the way. It's not ex- actly rocket science. Yet, they removed that course, specifical- ly… because they didn't see the point. They saw it as an unnec- essary 'extra'. And to me, that's a symptom of just how insensi- tive the system has become… Earlier, you mentioned that a 'cultural' – more than structural – change was needed. This al- so seems to reflect of GREVO's other finding… i.e., that the law- courts themselves seem to show insensitivity towards victims of domestic violence. Are you sug- gesting that (notwithstanding recent legal changes) the justice system still retains an archaic approach to the issue? Let me put it this way: I have a background in Canon Law – which provides the basis for contemporary family law – and up until 1983, Canon Law was still governed by the archaic Ro- man principle of 'ius in corpus': in a nutshell, that the 'pater fa- milias' held legal power over the life and death of his family members. That was removed from Can- on Law in 1983; and – subse- quently – it was removed from Malta's civil law around 10 years later. And I must add that the Church was not just 'quick- er' to make that change: it was also arguably more successful in at eradicating the mentality it- self. The Ecclesiastical Tribunal often shows more sensitivity, in domestic violence cases, than the criminal justice system. It's only fair to point that out. I am sorry to say, however, that the same archaic concept of 'ius in corpus' has never re- ally gone away. The old-school mentality still there. Until not that long ago, for instance, we even had a University lecturer (no names mentioned) teaching first-year students that 'marital rape' did not even exist… on the basis that the woman 'went in for it', by choosing to get mar- ried in the first place… So unfortunately, there's a whole legal anthropology be- hind it. It's not just about the law itself, as such; but also about our own attitudes towards the law. The police has its own attitudes; the law-courts have theirs… and so does everyone else, at some level or other. And at the basis of it all, there is an old system that – despite having been abol- ished nearly 30 years ago – still exerts its influence today. And it is that old system… and the cultural mentality that it perpetuates… that we really need to challenge. domestic violence victims