The man who runs a Catholic youth club in Valletta has denied claims made in an e-mail that he had been beaten by a member of a family that had appeared on the popular television programme Tista’ Tkun Int.

The e-mail, sent to various people by a man from Valletta who is well-known in the media industry, claimed that a group of youths had interrupted a lesson the man was giving at the club to around 30 children, shouting obscenities and creating mayhem.

The youths allegedly terrorised the children, then pelted the leader with eggs and hit him in the chest with a stick. It was also claimed that a report was made at the Valletta police station, which was not followed because they were busy with another case in Floriana.

The e-mail says that one of the yobs was one of the children of a couple who had received a Lm53,000 donation some weeks ago from Tista’ Tkun Int, which supposedly made them all saints.

It also claimed that the leader had spoken to the author of the e-mail about the incident, saying that the youths had been terrorising the youth club for a number of weeks.

In his letter of denial, which was circulated by the Tista’ Tkun Int team, the leader of the youth club declared that he had never discussed the programme with anybody, much less that it caused harm.

He declared that nothing out of the ordinary or unusual happened in the alleged incident, and insisted that no crime had been committed inside the youth club.

The leader said it was not right to refer to people as criminals, especially members of a family who most definitely are not.

He said that a particular person wanted to take advantage of him and had blown a small incident out of all proportion for his own personal interests.

The leader said the situation has been exaggerated and insisted that there was no need for that e-mail because the incident was not as serious as alleged in it.

Contrary to what was written in the e-mail, the leader said he was not assaulted by one of the couple’s children. He said he was sure the Maltese do not want Tista’ Tkun Int to stop helping the needy and insisted that the e-mail could have harmed the programme.