Helen D’Amato claims that her selective quote against divorce was not a deliberate mistake, and her superior, Minister Dolores Cristina, will not push for the resignation of the Children’s Commissioner. But the omission, coming from a public officer with so much responsibility for children’s welfare, is a serious error.

It is unfortunate that, in our country, when people in authority make a serious mistake they tend to take it lightly and seem to want to brush it away like dust off a table. Elsewhere, someone in Mrs D’Amato’s position would have been forced to resign – had she not done so of her own volition.

When she met the anti-divorce lobby group, Mrs D’Amato said that children coming from a family where the husband and wife have divorced are at a greater risk of developing mental problems than children who live with their parents. What she failed to point out is that the report to which she was referring, on a study carried out by American specialists, concluded that “the majority of findings show that most children do well” after their parents divorce.

There are two things here. First of all, it was a gross omission on the part of Mrs D’Amato. She blundered heavily, going public with a selective quote that did not give the full picture of the report from which she was quoting.

Secondly, she said that the risks of suffering for children are higher, irrespective of whether the parents are divorced or separated, or whether the marriage is annulled. Considering that annulment and separation already exist, if one were to accept the Mrs D’Amato’s argument, children in Malta are already suffering the consequences of a marriage that has been annulled or has led to separation. But I have never heard Mrs D’Amato, or anyone else in the anti-divorce movement for that matter, speak out against annulment or separation.

That’s another way of being selective too.

I do not agree that children of divorced or separated parents, or from families that are deemed to have not existed through a marriage annulment, run a greater risk of developing mental health problems. If anything, they endure bigger emotional hardships from living with parents who are always at each other’s throats; and not with second families where the relationship between the adults in the house is peaceful. But if Mrs D’Amato and her allies want to make that point, they should also call for the abolition of separation and annulments, which they have accepted, but which have the same consequences as divorce.

To go back to Mrs D’Amato’s omission per se, I think she knew what she was doing when she chose the quote she did. She probably thought that it would not have been checked, that journalists would have simply taken it at face value and that, through her words, she would have been giving her moral support to the anti-divorce movement, the political party she comes from – which is against the introduction of the divorce, and the government that gave her the appointment.

If we, as journalists, had simply reported what she had said and gone on to our next job, her words would have made an impact, even considering the position she holds. But the three English-language newspapers delved into the matter (where were the other media, in particular the national television station?) and we confronted her by pointing out the conclusions of the same report that she conveniently omitted.

She was quite unwilling to explain, blaming a tight schedule, but she later reluctantly half-admitted her mistake, although she never apologised. The ministry that employs her said that it was never Mrs D’Amato’s intention to mislead or misinform. I have my doubts about that, but let us consider that it really was a genuine mistake. Would she have corrected the impression she had given, had the media not chased her to clarify her position?

I do not think so. I think she would have let it go and would have been pleased with herself for having contributed her bit for the anti-divorce movement.

And there’s another thing. If the omission was not deliberate, as Mrs D’Amato is contending, then it was a result of incompetence, as she should have checked the facts in full before trying to please Andre Camilleri and his disciples.

In either case – whether it was a calculated omission or the result of incompetence – Mrs D’Amato should have handed in her resignation. And, since she did not do so, she should have been asked to resign by her minister. But in Malta I guess it is too much to expect a resignation. When someone gets a seat, he or she is glued to it indefinitely.

My suspicion that the omission was intentional stems from the fact that the anti-divorce lobbyists have been misleading and deceiving the public right from the start of the campaign. They have come out with statements that are far from the truth and, quite frankly, when such manipulations come from a sector that plays the part of the holier-than-thou and tries to impose its insensitive views on the rest of the population, they are even harder to accept.

For one thing, they persist in calling the pro-divorce movement as the Moviment ghal divorzju bla raguni (Movement for divorce without a reason), plainly distorting the idea of a no-fault divorce that the pro-divorce lobbyists have been promoting. “No fault” should be translated into “bla tort”, but of course using “bla raguni” is intended to give the idea that the pro-divorce movement is in favour of a Las Vegas type of divorce, which is not the case.

“Bla raguni”, in Maltese, also gives the idea of “senseless”, and this is why the anti-divorce movement has resorted to this manipulation – because it suits them to depict the pro-divorce campaigners as people without scruples.

Again, I do not think that they were lost in translation. They know the difference between “reason” and “fault”, but they deliberately mis-translate to confuse the issue and get a better chance of convincing the more gullible of the electorate, not to mention the devout Catholics, that we will have a disaster if divorce is introduced.

There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from all this. The anti-divorce movement knows it has no valid arguments to put forward – to the extent that they are deliberately avoiding taking questions from the media – so they are contorting the issue to suit their purposes.

For them, the end justifies the means.

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