NEWS | Wednesday, 15 October 2008

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Teenage girl still in prison for lack of alternative accommodation

Raphael Vassallo
She has been granted bail and is subject to a care order issued by the law courts; but a 15-year-old girl, accused of murdering her mother earlier this year, is still detained at the Corradino Correctional Facility (CCF) because there is simply nowhere else for her to go.
The case goes back to February, when Tereza Grech, 47 from San Gwann, was discovered dead in her Mensija residence. A post-mortem established that the woman had been shot with a firearm and stabbed numerous times with a pointed instrument.
Her 15-year-old daughter, who cannot be named by court order, was arraigned for the murder together with 31-year-old Raymond Zammit, a mini-van driver from Hal Ghaxaq.
Zammit was initially denied bail and remanded in custody; but this decision was later reversed, and both Zammit and the murder victim’s daughter were granted bail.
Ironically, it is the younger of the two who is still in custody, as there appears to be no suitable accommodation available in Malta for underage female offenders other than the Young Offenders’ Unit Rehabilitation Services (YOURS), which by all accounts is “not for girls”.
The lack of adequate prison facilities for underage girls has repeatedly been raised by MaltaToday, both in relation to this case, and also to the case of a 13-year-old girl sentenced to seven days’ imprisonment for physically assaulting another young teenager in March 2007.
Both girls were at first transferred to Mount Carmel Hospital in Attard, after it transpired that no specific division existed for underage female offenders at the CCF.
In the case of the 15-year-old who stands accused of murder, lawyer Dr Joseph Giglio is hopeful that a temporary solution to this impasse is now imminent.
“We are at the final stages of finding alternative accommodation,” Dr Giglio said on Monday.
“We have been pushing for a solution to this problem for some time now, but to date it has proved impossible to find placement in any suitable institution. For various reasons, her own home is not an ideal environment.”
Overcrowding of existing institutions is among the problems encountered, although the teenager’s difficult behaviour is also acknowledged to be a factor. But according to her lawyer, a private charity has now agreed to admit the young offender... who, as recipient of a care order, is theoretically the responsibility of the Social Policy Ministry.
In fact it is understood that matters were facilitated by the direct intervention of Social Policy Minister John Dalli, who brokered the agreement with the charity concerned.
However, the proposed accommodation remains at best a stopgap measure, and as things stand, Malta’s correctional facilities remain ill-equipped to deal with underage female offenders.

rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt

Juvenile prison
www.maltatoday.com.mt/midweek/2008/01/16/t3.html

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