The highest officials of the Malta College of Arts, Science & Technology (MCAST) knew about grave instances of sexual misconduct of its staff in front of students with a disability, and kept an inquiry report exposing the case hidden from the college’s Board of Governors, a recently published report has revealed.

An inquiry report which was penned in 2019 but which was, until this week, kept under wraps quoted from another report penned in 2017 which found that a “clique” of members of staff at the college had not only perpetuated a culture of bullying amongst staff, but had also committed “sexual misconduct” in a weekend live-in on one of MCAST’s programmes.

The allegations came to the notice of MCAST’s former head of HR Josephine Abdilla and concerns alleged abusive behaviour towards special needs students who form part of MCAST’s Pathway Programme during a live-in. She reported the matter to the former president and principal.

An inquiry was subsequently launched and concluded in the first few months of 2019, but was never published.

The report was kept in the dark until last week, when it was presented in a defamation case against newspaper MaltaToday.

An exit interview by Abdilla’s predecessor, Denise Galea Pirotta, led her to be made aware of abusive behaviour towards MCAST Pathway Programme students during college organised weekend live-ins in hotels. 

The ‘Pathway to Independent Living Programme’ was a course designed to meet the needs of students with learning disabilities within a vocational college. The programme catered for students with mild to moderate disabilities.

Amongst such abuses, which happened during these live ins, it was alleged that “lecturers who were supposed to take care of the students (with intellectual and development disabilities) brought in their partners, stood naked metres away from the students and also had parties, drank alcohol and conducted activities of a sexual nature… MCAST management knew about this and did nothing… The signed report of the inquiry is mentioning such aspects”.

The allegation became a central one in an inquiry which was commissioned in 2019, but the outcome on whether it was actually true or not was never revealed until now.

The sexual misconduct allegations were investigated by an inquiry board, which found that the allegations were not only true, but were also known and allowed to be perpetuated by the second largest tertiary educational institution in the country.

The report established a number of worrying matters.

The first is that “a clique of MCAST academic staff was allowed to perpetuate a state of terror, bullying, authoritarian behaviour, and intimidation against lecturers and other MCAST staff.”

“Members of the same clique disappeared or deserted from work for personal service, and sometimes even to travel, and were therefore repeatedly and unjustifiably assigned to their duties,” the report read.

“Some even interfered and discouraged staff members in their religious practice; and they removed the crucifixes from some of the MCAST halls without any authority and refused to put them back in place,” it continues.

Members of this same clique “committed or allowed serious deficiencies in the syllabus and administration of the Programme,” it continues.

These members of staff also showed “abusive behaviour towards the parents of a Pathway student, young people with intellectual and social difficulties, and sometimes with problems of serious psychiatric or psychological conditions; and threw verbal aggression towards the new coordinator of the Programme.”

The report reads that these members of staff showed “unprofessional and unethical behaviour during weekend live-ins in a hotel, including through sexual misconduct and consumption of alcohol, especially in the vicinity, if not presence, of the most socially vulnerable students of the Pathway Programme.”

Furthermore, the report found that the staff had “misbehaved with students on the Pathway Programme, including some students who were transgender.”

These same staff also failed to obtain parental permission or authority for certain decisions concerning students, used funds incorrectly, even if these were small amounts, gave unjustified promotions, and showed insubordination to their superiors.

The same investigative board’s report – which was dated May 2017 – read that “the Board are extremely concerned that nobody along the chain of command seemed to take these allegations seriously enough to take action.”

The inquiry noted how there were a total of four people who were responsible for these allegations, with one of them being the co-ordinator of the programme at that time.

The investigative board recommended that the co-ordinator of the programme should be brought before a disciplinary board “with Recommendation of Dismissal”, whilst another person should also be made to should pass through a disciplinary board “to determine whether her actions are tantamount in seriousness to warrant dismissal”.

In the same report it was also noted how despite being made known about other abuses which were happening, the college’s Principal of that time Steve Cachia, did not take any kind of action.

Even the Malta Union of Teachers’ MCAST representative said that “even though Mr Cachia, the Principal, had been spoken to many times, nothing had been done,” the report read.

The 2017 report also read how “The board are extremely concerned that nobody along the chain of command seemed to take these allegations seriously enough to take action”.

Despite the report and the grave situation that its contents had exposed, MCAST’s management still decided to ignore the course of action recommended by the board, it was observed.

In its conclusions on the case, the 2019 MCAST commissioned report read how the President of the Board of Governors Dr Silvio De Bono, and the Principal Steve Cachia, had shown grave shortcomings in how they handled the case.

The 2017 report, which detailed the situation as explained above, was not even circulated to members of MCAST’s Board of Governors by De Bono or Cachia, the 2019 report found.

In addition to this, back in May 2017, Principal Cachia had in a letter addressed to Dr Debono tried to justify why such recommendations were not taken in consideration.

To make matters worse, the report says, almost out of spite, instead of adopting the disciplinary actions recommended, both De Bono and Cachia decided to overrule the Pathway report and instead issued warning letters for the Programme coordinator and another alleged ‘bully’.

These warning letters were described by their issuers as “harsh warning letters”, but the report read that they “were nothing but silly warnings that did not even cover what the inquiry board found them guilty of.”

The report noted that apart from the mismanagement of the live-in Pathway allegations, only five months after being issued with the ‘warning letter’, one of the lecturers was promoted to Senior Lecturer 1 by the same management despite this person not having the documents stipulated by the collective agreement in order to hold the position.