Michelle Muscat has been complaining that the school her two children go to was of no help during the entirety of the Egrant crisis.

Now we all know the name of the school the two girls go to and it is reputed to be among the best in Malta.

Still, one has to see things from the point of view of the victims. It could have been any other school and the result would probably be the same. Past pupils at many schools have their own horror stories to tell. This goes, one would venture to say, more in schools with girls than in schools with boys, although cases of bullying are not infrequent there, either.

Over the past days, the Muscat family has been complaining that no help was received from the institutions that should protect children. It does not seem the complaints were referring to the children’s school only. Indeed, one does not remember any intervention to protect children so young from being caught up in the political maelstrom. Maybe it would not have done to point out at the two children especially when the case was so hot, but surely the institutions we have put together should provide themselves with means to carry out their mission.

Such institutions seek to not become embroiled in political or partisan issues, and that is well. But their silence at the time of the scandal seems to carry on even after the conclusion of Magistrate Bugeja’s inquiry.

We point out here at what Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando has been saying every day this past week. We strongly disagree with the tone he uses, but he has a point that the archbishop was prompt to express solidarity with the children of Daphne Caruana Galizia and has yet to say one word regarding the children of Joseph and Michelle Muscat.

To each his trauma, one may say, but such traumas carry an infinite consequence on the lives of those impacted.

In short, this mature country once again has proved to be incapable of protecting its children from trauma, despite its claim to be mature and civilized.

We have all sorts of institutions which absorb money and effort and yet at the moment of crisis they emerge as insufficient as seen from the point of view of the innocent and the victims.