Sometimes politics and all the backroom intrigue that goes with it take such centre stage that human-interest stories are often shoved aside.

As we wade through all the controversies and try to make sense of the constant political bickering, it is tempting to just switch off and stop caring. Then we come across stories about ordinary people who are suffering and things shift into perspective. We are jolted into thinking about the really important things in life.

The recent case of the 14-year-old girl with behavioural problems who ended up in Mount Carmel has once again brought to light the need for a proper facility for teenagers like her. She was put into a Church home at the age of eight because of an abusive mother; her father had to work so he could not care for her, although she stays with him on weekends. The girl does not have mental problems nor is she a criminal – but because she is unruly and “out of control”, she has fallen through the cracks of a system which does not cater for children like her. So she was sent to Mount Carmel.

This is not the first time that minors have been sent to Mount Carmel (or Corradino prison) simply because there was nowhere else for them to go. In the case of petty crime, first time offenders pose an even more worrying predicament when it comes to sentencing. The Young Offenders Unit Rehabilitation Services (YOURS), which exists within Corradino, only caters for males over the age of 16. Last year this led to the notorious case of a 13-year-old girl being sentenced to seven days’ detention in the actual prison after being involved in a fight and slightly injuring another girl.

What is needed is obvious: a place that is not an afterthought or a “unit” in an already existing institution, but an actual juvenile home. There are countless international models on which this kind of facility can be based, and Maltese expertise in this field is surely not lacking. What is lacking, I’m always told, are funds – and this really angers me. So, we can find money for all sorts of airy-fairy projects and yet, no one is willing to allocate funds for a project, which could prevent “difficult” youngsters from turning into hardened criminals. This would not only be an investment in possibly turning round the lives of these young people, but also an investment in us, as a society. After all, if no attempt is made to reform today’s delinquents we will still have to deal with them later on down the line as their crimes become more serious.

But I guess a juvenile home doesn’t sound as snazzy as a bridge or a Parliament building.

It’s just another kid

When we are safely cocooned in our own little world where everything is OK, it is easy to forget that (maybe even next door) someone might be living a nightmare.

The case of those children who were neglected and abused by their mother and her partner has been on my mind ever since I read about it. The details, which came out in court, make for stomach-churning reading. The children were covered with cigarette burns and bruises from repeated beatings; their hair was infested with lice and they were filthy. I write these descriptions with a heavy heart and find myself resorting to an empty platitude – how can anyone do that to children?

The paltry six-month suspended sentence for the woman and six months jail for the man were met with understandable public outrage. Then this week I read that after these incidents of abuse, which dated back to 2002, the woman (who apparently was a prostitute) went on to have another four children.

Now, I am not going to judge this 30-year-old woman for her lifestyle because she is probably a victim herself, but I find it abhorrent that she kept bringing children into the world. Why bring them into her world in particular, where nothing is as it should be as far as children are concerned? It is obvious that she did not have the coping mechanisms to care for her offspring, and yet she chose to have seven children who are suffering as a result of her failings. The way I see it, if you want to screw up your own life fine, but once you have children, whatever you do is inflicted on them too.

Three of the children are now in foster homes and one is in a children’s home. But, because the mother has convinced the court that “she has changed her ways”, the eldest child and the two youngest ones are being allowed to live with her. This latest information is what galls me the most.

According to the report she is being carefully monitored, and on the face of it this sounds like a storybook happy ending. But where the story of these children is concerned I cannot shake this feeling of unease.

I just hope I’m very wrong.

Who’s your daddy?

The issue of unwed mothers is in the news again after a study by Dr Angela Abela was presented before the Social Affairs Committee. We are told that 25 per cent of children born out of wedlock in 2006 were to school-age girls.

These figures make for depressing reading – what future can these girls possibly have, and what kind of emotional and financial stability can they in turn provide for their children? There are the exceptions, of course, of young mothers for whom everything turns out all right because of solid family support and because the child’s father is still in the picture.

But the “unknown father” phenomenon is still there. The recent paper by Fr Paul Galea, which was presented at a recent seminar on marriage, gives us the statistic that one out of 10 children born to unmarried mothers is listed as having an “unknown father”.

Now whether this is being done to collect benefits, or because the mother does not want the biological father to have rights over the child due to the instability of the couple’s relationship, the fact remains that we have a generation of children growing up without a father figure.

Just picture the predicament of these girls and boys going through life always wondering whether that man on the corner could be their Daddy. Imagine the turmoil during their adolescence (which is angst-ridden at the best of times), when they are gripped by feelings of insecurity, identity crisis and always wondering, wondering – who is the man that fathered me?

Valletta slum-dwellers used to be the taunted mercilessly with the jeer, “min hu missierek?” (Who’s your daddy?). These days there seem to be so many fatherless children, the question is no longer just applicable to those who live in the seedier parts of Malta.

I say all this not to sound like one of those holier-than-thou people who lecture youngsters about the “evils” of pre-marital sex. Just as night turns into day, teenagers will always want to have sex. But really, someone has to start drumming into the heads of randy teens that those few moments of unprotected passion can (and often do) result in a wailing baby. Maybe it’s about time teenage mothers visited schools with a baby in tow to talk to adolescents about the harsh reality of what it all means. They should describe in graphic detail how your life changes, how you will no longer be able to do what you want when you want to, and how you will have to kiss your carefree youth goodbye.

I often suspect that these young girls who are so careless about their own reproduction have this romantic, glassy-eyed view of babies. Perhaps they yearn to get pregnant to have someone “of their own” to love and who will love them back.

Or they think that getting pregnant will ensure their boyfriend won’t leave them (ha!). Or… frankly, who knows what is going on in their head? Judging from the number of under-age girls that are getting pregnant, I would say – not much.

But I also feel that boys are getting away too easily. They, too, need to be handed responsibility in all this. In Maltese we still use the expression “ragel bandiera bajda”, which literally means, “a man is a white flag” – nothing he does ever shows. Whereas the girl with her protruding stomach and later, pushing a pram, will always be labelled as the girl in town who got knocked up. While this idiom speaks volumes about how our culture shames the female while exonerating the man, it is a bit too pat. For too long it has been a convenient escape route for the father who helped to create this baby.

In other countries, there is a description for men who don’t financially or emotionally support their kids. They are called “deadbeat Dads” – and it is often deliberately used to hit men where it hurts most, their pride. And even if the father in question is still legally a boy in the eyes of society, he now needs to stand up and be a man.

By allowing this “unknown father” trend to continue, the message we are giving boys is that it’s OK to keep getting girls pregnant because they can just wash their hands and walk away from “the problem”.

We are constantly speaking about teenage mothers, but teenage fathers too need to be held accountable for what they have done. And if a boy feels this is all too much to handle and is overwhelmed by the enormity of it all, then maybe next time he’ll use contraception.

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