The papers reported that Roderick Cassar, currently serving a 40-year prison sentence for the murder of his wife, Bernice Cilia, has received two additional jail terms linked to domestic violence incidents that occurred before her murder.  One was for three months for holding a knife to his wife's throat on Mother's Day in 2022, and the other was for eight months for when he threatened to kill her in hospital.

Justice delayed is justice denied, according to a well-known legal maxim attributed to British Prime Minister William Gladstone.  The latest two sentences, like the first one, fail Bernice Cassar and her close relatives.  They come much too late, confirming that the public outrage in the aftermath of the murder was, and remains, valid.  The tragedy highlights systemic failings in the protection of domestic violence victims.

Bernice had filed several police reports in the months prior to her death, including one the day before she was killed, reporting breaches of a protection order and threats to her life.  A subsequent inquiry led by retired Judge Geoffrey Valenzia, citing resource shortages and poor risk-assessment procedures, found the State had failed to protect her.

Both the Council of Europe and the Venice Commission have repeatedly flagged the failings of Malta's justice system, while the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in multiple cases that the country is in breach on its duty to deliver timely justice, not to mention the European Commissions' Rule of Law report that Malta should step up its efforts to improve the system's efficiency.

Recently, we were regaled to the spectacle of Justice Brigitte Sultana hearing her cases from two tables in a corridor of the Law Courts due to no hall being available. Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti has been warning since 2022 that the court system is slowly collapsing due to the small size of the courts. On several occasions, he had urged the government to invest in new buildings.

But is there really a relationship between judicial timeliness and the quality of justice?  The evidence says so.  Alessandro Melcarne of the Department of Private Law of the University of Padua has conducted various studies of 171 countries over a 13-year period into this.  He found statistically significant evidence of a strong and positive relationship between judicial performance and countries' quality of justice.

Though it is not an excuse, Malta is not alone. The picture is one of growing backlog and slowing progress. The European Court of Human Rights itself reports that 650 of its judgments are still awaiting full implementation across EU member States. By the end of 2024, the average implementation time for leading ECHR judgments had reached 5 years and 4 months.

Justice is expensive.  Some people argue that the faster and the more efficient the system is made, the greater the incentive for people to sue each other.   Could be, but meanwhile Bernice and many others are dead, leaving behind grieving relatives and a trail of broken people.

Fasten your seat belt.  We all have to fasten our seat belts when we fly.  It's a mandatory safety practice, we are told.  But what if we do when the pilot himself is a fake?   It happened recently in Canada.  A former Air Canada pilot was prosecuted for flying tens of thousands of passengers for almost 17 years with a fake pilot's licence.

Geoffrey Wall rose to the position of pilot in command, flying Boeing 767s, 777s, and 787s, while earning almost €2 million in salary.   He never possessed an Airline Transport Pilot License for Aeroplanes, which was required when he was promoted to captain in 2009.  

Why he did it is beyond comprehension.  After all, he regularly underwent mandatory recurrent training, and his competency was beyond doubt.  His story echoes the 2002 film "Catch Me If You Can," where a teenager talks his way into flying for PanAm.

Faking licences of some sort seems to be quite common.  Last year the Malta Gaming Authority issued an alert on six online operators with fake licence claims.  The alert was issued after a Filipino online casino, improbably called PHLove, asserted that it was licensed by the MGA, which it wasn't.

Also last year, the National Audit Office launched a full investigation into allegations of widespread fraud in the issuing of identity cards and residence permits to foreign nationals.  This was after a magisterial inquiry was opened into claims by the former PN MP Jason Azzopardi that thousands of ID cards were issued fraudulently.  Both the investigation and inquiry are ongoing.

Faking is, I think, a feature of a society that rewards pretending, rather than honesty.  We live in a culture where success is shown, not explained; struggles are hidden; failure is embarrassing; and vulnerability is a sign of weakness.  So, people create better versions of themselves and their activities.  Most of us fall for them.

Off to Buskett.  My readers may wish to note that next week I might not be able to write this column.  It would be because I am seriously considering building a country cabin right in the middle of the orange orchard in Buskett.

It has always been my dream to have a place away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.  There, I could wax lyrical about the beauty of nature, listen to Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony, experience lower stress levels, and, why not, be at greater liberty to criticise the Planning Authority!

My abode will be nothing like Franklin Mangion's illegal villa in Armier.  I would never dream of putting up huge concrete walls in Buskett.  Instead, I am negotiating the purchase of the wooden structure illegally setup on the Buġibba foreshore recently. It is less intrusive and would fit in with the surrounding pastoral scene. 

Planning Authority, give me a hug.

Inspiring triumphs.  Last month, 21-year-old Siyabonga Khumalo, who lives with dwarfism and scoliosis, received a standing ovation after graduating Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Siyabonga achieved 21 distinctions, 14 Certificates of Merit, and six Dean's Commendations.  Refusing to let disability define his future, the young adult has shown a life-long curiosity, passion for learning, and a belief in his own ability to succeed.

He majored in two fields tied to his passion for people - Anthropology and Psychology. At the university, he participated actively in student organisations, won numerous awards, challenged stereotypes, and championed inclusivity.

Siyabonga is currently pursuing studying to complete his master's and earn his PhD before turning 40, eventually becoming a clinical psychologist. He is one of 153 students with disabilities who graduated from UKZN this year.

But you'd be wrong to assume we don't have similar triumphs over adversity in Malta. The list includes Julian Bajada, a qualified lawyer and para-athlete who was born with multiple congenital physical challenges; Maja Theuma, a prominent Maltese Paralympic swimmer who has set numerous national records and competed at world swimming championships; Angela Bettoni, a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and television presenter who is an outspoken disability advocate and actively debunks societal myths about disability through the performing arts; and Emily Slater, a highly successful scholar with autism who graduated from the University of Malta with a Master of Arts in Cultural Heritage Management, focusing her research on making archaeological sites accessible to neurodivergent persons.-

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I apologise to all the others whom I haven't mentioned. Theirs are examples of courage in the face of adversity.  The individuals concerned possess an indomitable spirit that propels them forward, defying the odds. Their inspiring stories of resilience and triumph remind us of the power of the human spirit and its capacity to overcome even the most daunting challenges.

Not so smart.  Any young couples who are wondering why they can't have a child should throw their Apple phones away.  It turns out the ubiquitous Apples are a kind of birth control.  As governments around the world scratch their heads how to reverse plunging birth rates, new studies suggest they have ignored a key culprit - the smartphone.

Middlebury College economist Caitlin Myers and her student Ezekiel Hooper have researched whether smartphones might have something to do with lower fertility rates.  And, bingo, they found that access to the iPhone correlated with reductions in births by 4.5 to 8.0% at ages 15 to 19 and by 3.2 to 6.6% at ages 20-24.

Myers and Hooper stress that iPhones are not the sole cause, but they argue that the phones played "a sizeable role" in the decline in US births after 2007.  As the gadgets became commonplace, "sexual activity fell sharply alongside rising consumption of pornography, a possible substitute for partnered sex," they added.

The same conclusion was reached by another study by University of Cincinnati economists Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso Boedo, who found evidence of similar trends on a global scale since 2007, when they measured smartphone penetration and teenage fertility rates in 128 countries.

Some academics are sceptical, however. They point out that teenage births in many countries have been falling since the early 1990s, long before the arrival of the smartphone.  But deeper dives into demographic data and into the factors that could be playing a role are increasingly revealing several unusual explanations for falling reproductive rates.

For example, a new theory is that prolonged exposure to radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (like keeping laptops in close proximity or heavy mobile phone usage) has the potential to lower male sperm quality. Other studies emphasise that long travel journeys and tiring, inflexible work in highly urbanised cities leave parents with little to no time, pushing many to stop at a single child.

Quote of the week. "We cannot allow our natural heritage to be degraded to the point where locals do not even dream of visiting Comino." Mark Camilleri Gambin, Momentum Secretary-General.