As a football fan and mother I couldn't help but feel baffled, shocked, and now disgusted at the decision of the Malta Football Association to keep a convicted paedophile on its books, continuing to work at a football ground with children, even though it knew of the conviction against this man for paedophilia, an 80-year-old man, no less!

The reaction from the MFA simply beggars belief. Instead of hanging their collective male heads down in shame, they attacked Joe Gerada (who is the CEO for the Foundation for Welfare Services) for exposing all this, and wrote that they would leave it up to the public to decide whether “in a long life, if someone is found guilty only once of corrupting a minor, one should be labelled a paedophile.”

Are they just naive, unable to think clearly or do they simply not care?

How many paedophiles offend only once anyway? They might only get caught once, but the bleak truth is that most paedophiles are never caught or convicted of anything, so the fact that some brave child, and his or her parents, went to the police, went through the trauma of reporting this paedophile, went through the additional trauma of going through the courts, and then saw this man return to his normal place of work as if nothing has happened tells us parents one thing.

In Malta the paedophile gets away with it.

Do not put your child through the trauma of the courts because, at the end of the day, the paedophile will either be freed because it is their first offence, or given a derisory sentence, or – even worse in this case – will return to his place of work and continue to work with children!

This upside down attitude was further confirmed by two court judgements this week. A minibus driver, who was found guilty of violent sexual assault, had his sentence reduced because the 12-year-old child had forgiven him. This was child he was meant to take to school, but because the man had, we learn, a “a rather clean criminal record”, and because the girl had “forgiven him”, the sentence was reduced to a derisory seven months (from a not exactly massive 12 months.)

Another 27-year-old man was not so lucky, however. He was found guilty of stealing again, and although he is a drug addict, the judge felt this was only an excuse, and sentenced him to three years in prison for stealing tools from a store and relapsing.

Now I know judges and magistrates have to work within the constraints of the law. I know they cannot, and do not, compare notes every day. And I also know that the ones who work very hard are very hard-pressed, compared to those who don’t. I also appreciate that all the facts cannot come out in a report in a newspaper, but still, seven months for violent indecent assault against a young girl, and three years for a drug addict who steals tools does not exactly fit most normal people’s concept of the punishment fitting the crime, does it?

And what difference does it or should it make that the child forgives the paedophile? Of course children forgive, for a variety of reasons. They forgive their own parents who beat them up, and sexually abuse them. But does that in any sense make the crime any less evil? Children are intrinsically made to forgive and forget, but should the courts seriously use that as a reason for reducing the sentence? Besides anything else, it encourages offenders (not that I am implying this happened in this case) to approach the victim or the family, and offer them money if the child forgives the evil doer.

Forgiveness should have nothing to do with it. You abuse a child, you get punished as severely as possible, and receive medical cum psychological treatment as well of course, because we want these monsters to emerge from jail not offending again but locked away certainly, and never allowed to work with children again.

Is there a law about this? If you are convicted of abusing children can you go on being a teacher, being a nurse or a doctor working with children, working at a football ground, driving minibuses with children as clients?

Because we can have all the Children’s Commissioners protesting about two fused cells in IVF, (while two million newborn babies a year die worldwide in the first weeks of life from starvation and worse), we can sign all the international treaties, we can have foundation upon foundation.

Paedophiles are clever criminals. They must know that they will be publicly humiliated. Why are their names withheld so often? They must know they will be punished with a very severe sentence of nothing less than five years. And they must know they will have to undergo treatment and not be allowed to leave prison ever, if it is felt that they are still a risk, or if they refuse treatment, be it counselling, therapy or whatever is required.

I'm not sure why I am so surprised at the Church's very casual attitude to paedophilia now – either hiding it or transferring the offender elsewhere instead of handing them over right away to the police for questioning and charging if necessary. This is just part of our “don’t upset the applecart” culture. It is bad enough that women who are attacked here are presumed to have asked for it. Do we have no respect for children and childhood either? Will we continue to pay lip service to children’s absolute and inalienable right not to be touched or abused by any adult, however important, however old and however male?

And this demon of forgiveness. Yes let’s forgive paedophiles after they have been punished and treated and made sure they never re-

offend again. It is insane to forgive them, let them go and be free to re-offend. Talk about our token love for children!

But again, it is watching or not watching The Da Vinci Code that worries Malta's practising and less practising Catholics. Abuse of children, sexually or otherwise, gets very little reaction indeed.