‘She was left to drown’: Maltese NGOs demand court trauma training after magistrate berates domestic-violence survivor

**‘She was left to drown’: Maltese NGOs demand court trauma training after magistrate berates domestic-violence survivor**

A coalition of Maltese women’s shelters, lawyers and psychologists is demanding mandatory trauma-informed training for every magistrate, police officer and court official after a Gozo magistrate last week scolded a domestic-violence victim for “crying too much” and “wasting the court’s time”.

The 29-year-old mother of two, whose ex-partner is charged with attempted homicide after allegedly trying to strangle her in front of their children, broke down while giving evidence. According to a transcript leaked to *Hot Malta*, Magistrate Joseph Mifsud told her: “If you continue like this we’ll be here till Christmas. Control yourself, woman; this is not a soap opera.”

The remark, greeted by audible gasps in the courtroom, has ignited a national debate on how Malta’s justice system treats victims. Within hours the hashtag #DikMaKienetTejzisti (SheWasntActing) was trending, TikTok reels of women re-enacting the scene racked up 1.3 million views, and protest planners are already circulating graphics for a silent vigil outside the Courts of Justice in Valletta on Saturday.

“This is not an isolated incident, it is a cultural reflex,” Dr Lara Sammut, president of the Malta Women’s Lobby, told *Hot Malta*. “We have magistrates who still believe a battered woman must present like a Hollywood heroine: coherent, photogenic, grateful. Real trauma is messy, dissociative, tearful. If the bench cannot recognise survival responses it ends up re-victimising the very people it should protect.”

Statistics from the Commission on Domestic Violence show that 65 % of cases reported last year were dropped before indictment, often after victims withdrew because they felt unsupported. “When a woman is humiliated on the stand she goes home and tells her cousins, her neighbours, her daughter. The ripple effect is enormous,” Sammut added.

Malta’s legal fraternity is split. The Chamber of Advocates called the magistrate’s comments “unfortunate” but warned against “policing judicial language”. Conversely, the Malta Psychologists’ Association says the episode proves the need for a specialised “Domestic Violence Court” similar to the Drug Court pioneered in 2014. “We would never let a tax judge hear a maritime salvage case,” pointed out Dr Sina Bugeja. “Yet we expect generalist magistrates to decode complex trauma without any tools.”

Cultural context matters. Until 1991 a Maltese husband could still invoke the “right of correction” to hit his wife; the first shelter, Dar Merħba Bik, opened only in 1993. While Malta ratified the Istanbul Convention in 2014, old tropes persist: parish priests still counsel women to “forgive for the children’s sake”, and village *band clubs* remain male bastions where gossip blames victims for “breaking up the family”.

The government reacted swiftly. Parliamentary Secretary for Equality Rebecca Buttigieg announced a €450,000 pilot to embed court-support workers in every district, and said new judicial appointees will undergo gender-sensitivity coaching. Critics dismiss the move as cosmetic. “One-off workshops won’t cut it,” said lawyer and former police inspector Jacqueline Pace Valletta. “We need structural change: separate entrances so victims don’t bump into aggressors in the corridor; video-links for children; and a rule that consent for release on bail must be sought from the prosecution, not the bench.”

Victims themselves are speaking up. “I felt I was the one on trial,” the Gozo woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told *Hot Malta* by phone. “When the magistrate rolled his eyes I went numb. I kept thinking, ‘If I stop crying he might believe me.’ But the more I tried to swallow the tears the harder they came.” She has since dropped her request for a protection order and is considering leaving the island with her children. “I don’t want them to grow up in a place where Daddy can almost kill Mummy and Mummy is told to hurry up.”

Activists warn that such withdrawals embolden abusers and send a chilling message to the estimated one in four Maltese women who suffer intimate-partner violence. “Every time a magistrate mocks a victim, ten neighbours decide not to file that report,” said Sammut. “The silence that follows is the sound of impunity.”

Saturday’s vigil organisers are asking attendees to wear purple—the international colour against gender violence—and to bring a single white flower to lay on the courthouse steps. “We are not attacking one magistrate,” insisted student organiser Leanne Ellul. “We are dismantling a culture that still asks, ‘What did she do to provoke him?’”

Whether the outrage translates into lasting reform depends on the next budget cycle. The Women’s Lobby wants a line item for permanent trauma training, failure-to-protect protocols and a survivor-led review board. “Justice must stop being a second assault,” Sammut said. “Otherwise we will keep meeting here every few months, flowers in hand, mourning another woman who was left to drown in open court.”