Three men were acquitted of raping a 17-year-old girl after a court ruled that the evidence indicated that the sexual acts that took place were consensual.

All three men – 43-year-old Mellieħa resident Aldo Muscat, 40-year-old Ħamrun resident Noel Buttigieg and 46-year-old Żebbuġ resident Arnold Farrugia – were accused of raping the minor, violent indecent assault and offending public morals, and Mr Muscat was separately charged with encouraging a minor to prostitute herself, living off the earning of prostitution and being involved in the operation of a brothel.

Mr Buttigieg was sentenced to a 3-month jail term suspended for 12 months by Magistrate Audrey Demicoli after he was found guilty of offending public morals, but the other two men were acquitted of all charges filed against them.

The case dates back to May 2007, when the girl – who was six months pregnant and on leave from Mount Carmel Hospital – had fled from her parents’ home, and remained missing for around three weeks.

After receiving an anonymous tipoff, the police found the girl in a Qawra apartment belonging to a certain James Mifsud.

The girl claimed she had fled home because the man she was seeing no longer wanted her around, and that she had met Mr Buttigieg in the Mellieħa bar he worked in. She claimed that he offered her a lift to St Paul’s Bay, only to force her to have sex with him in the car.

She had sex with Mr Buttigieg on another occasion, and said that his friends started calling her, telling her that a video of the encounter was making the rounds.

The girl said that she had returned to the bar on another occasion, and had sex with Mr Buttigieg and another man, after returning to St Paul’s Bay, she went to the bar run by Mr Muscat, stating that she somehow ended up in Gozo and ended up having sex with him and Mr Farrugia.

She claimed that on their return to Malta, Mr Muscat violently coerced her into prostitution, stating that she started prostituting herself in his bar and that while she never saw a single cent, Mr Muscat was being paid Lm20 per encounter.

Mr Muscat had introduced her to Mr Mifsud, and had asked Lm20 from him. She said that Mr Mifsud refused to pay, and brought her to live in his apartment, where she had consensual sex with him. She did not meet any of the three men since.

Magistrate Demicoli observed that the prosecution’s case rested solely on the girl’s claims, but argued that her testimony could not be relied on.

She noted that the evidence showed that the girl had lied about her name and her age when speaking to the three defendants, as well as when talking to others.

The magistrate observed that the girl had claimed sexual abuse every time she fled home, and that while she claimed to fear Mr Buttigieg, she still gave him her phone number and sought him at the bar.

She also took into consideration the testimony of a friend of Mr Buttigieg, who is a soldier, who testified that the girl had told him that she enjoyed having sex with men in uniform because she enjoyed tearing it off, and the fact that other cases – concerning prostitution, drug trafficking and defilement of a minor – resulting from the girl’s claims had led to the defendants’ acquittal.

As a result, she ruled that the men should be acquitted of all charges, save for Mr Buttigieg being found guilty of offending public morals.

Inspector Louise Calleja prosecuted, while lawyers Veronique Dalli, Dean Hili, Arthur Azzopardi and Giannella de Marco appeared for the three men.