Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/702141
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 10 JULY 2016 9 MAT THEW VELLA CHEF David Darmanin was stabbed four times by his aggres- sor, James Aquilina, in October 2009, as he closed his tapas bar on Sliema's High Street on 13 October, 2009. Almost seven years later, Aquilina can walk free with a three-year probation order after a psychologist plead- ed with the presiding magistrate not to send the accused to prison. Darmanin, 36, a former Malta- Today journalist now pursuing a career in London's eclectic East End, appears anything but bitter about the punishment meted out. "I don't know him," he says about his aggressor, whose girl- friend had broken up with him and was dating Darmanin at the time. "It was a completely unpro- voked incident, but people don't do this kind of thing unless they have problems. So I would tend to agree with the psychologist: imprisonment wouldn't be pro- ductive. Why turn him into a worse criminal?" A clinical psychologist testi- fied that he came to know Aqui- lina in 2005 after he had sought treatment for anxiety and anger management: a history of trauma stemmed from an abusive past, a traumatic childhood in which he suffered emotional and verbal abuse, as well as bullying and ex- treme neglect when he was sent to boarding school in the UK at the age of seven. This detail alone has Darmanin thinking. "This is where I have mixed feelings. Would justice have been served the same way had this neglect not been that of being sent to some boarding school, but because the person was a migrant from Syria, or of a less privileged social back- ground?" How did Aquilina get proba- tion, having originally been charged with attempted homi- cide, a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison? On 19 December, 2013, the At- torney General invoked the ex- tended jurisdiction of the Magis- trates' Court to dispense with a bill of indictment, and remit the case to the Magistrates' Court: it meant Aquilina would not face a trial by jury. This happened in April 2014, and over a year later in May 2015 the court, different- ly presided, upheld a request for a pre-sentencing report. Clinical psychologist Dr Paul Daniel Micallef told the court that Aquilina's seven years at a UK boarding school led to him having exaggerated reactions in intimate and personal situations. He said the guilt and remorse that the accused was already dealing with were already a con- siderable punishment. He also asked that the probation order run concurrently with 100 hours of community service. "My only hope is that he's learnt from his mistakes and that he receives all the support he's learnt from the mistakes, so that nobody gets harmed in the future – because I know how it feels to get harmed like that. And I wouldn't want it to happen to anyone," Darmanin says, who admits having been frustrated by the undue length of criminal proceedings. "It's a disgrace that all this time had to pass. From [Aquilina's] end, he could have faced 15 years in jail. How can you spend all this time seeking care for what you've done, building yourself a new life, making up for your mis- takes, knowing where you might end up. "It would be pointless venge- ance to have him in prison. How would it be in my interest to get him locked up, knowing that he would be worse off than when he went in. I sure wouldn't want to be in his parent's shoes… I met them once in court, and they were broken by what happened." In his judgement deciding the case, Magistrate Neville Camill- eri noted that "the aim of the court is, apart from seeing that the accused is condemned for what he did during the night be- tween the 12th and 13th Octo- ber, 2009, to see that the accused recognises that he is not to do so again." A three-year protection order was issued in favour of Darma- nin. The charge of attempted homi- cide seems to have been dropped at some point during proceed- ings, as wilful homicide is not mentioned in the AG's note, ask- ing for the court to dispense with the indictment. Failure to comply with a proba- tion order and the commission of another offence, leaves the offender liable to be sentenced for the original offence together with a fine of up to €233. News Stabbing victim stoic about aggressor's light sentence David Darmanin