Lil din il-mara vjolenti trid tagħti ħames miljun ewro Prim Ministru?

Email xokkanti, wara episodju ta’ vjolenza domestika,  li ntbagħtet f’Malta fid-9 ta’ Diċembru 2009 fil-11:12am.

“This is the police commissioner’s personal number – 7949 1**0.

If you ring him, he will instruct his juniors not to proceed, even before it reaches court.

I strongly recommend that you do this, not for my sake because as you know I am perfectly at home in court, I feel extremely comfortable describing situations in great detail, and I know that law-suits about a wife throwing a tea-cup at her husband are the subject of ridicule (of the husband, not the wife).

Do it to spare your sons (to say nothing of your mother) the public humiliation, and also the distress of knowing that their father went to the police station and asked the police to prosecute their mother, who they love and care for deeply. Because they are normal, they will correctly see this as a far greater act of aggression, with greater and more far-reaching consequences, than throwing a tea-cup, whatever the consequences of throwing that tea-cup might have been. I don’t mind if you tell them I threw that cup – honestly. It’s not going to change their opinion of me. But if they discover what you did, it will change their opinion of you and cause them severe distress and worry especially now they are not present.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that in a moment of madness you were unable to distinguish – as the police inspector who spoke to me pointed out – between going after somebody with a broken beer bottle on a regular basis, which is what the law is there for, and flinging crockery in a rage, which happens in every household in which my friends lived when I was a child and in their own households now.

I hope you can also see that by going to court to prosecute your wife for throwing a tea-cup at you , you will become the subject not of pity and admiration, but of sheer ridicule. What were you thinking of, now that it’s the clear light of day : standing up in a court room packed with your sniggering colleagues and accusing your wife, as she stands in the dock like a criminal, of throwing a cup at you? How would you ever hold your head up again? What would that look like to your clients, and more to the point, you fail to understand that from there on in you would become known as ‘dak tal-kikkra’. It would also end the remotest possibility of a civil separation, because there is no way on earth that I am going to be civil to somebody who has asked the police to prosecute me. I would have to be mad.

Your wife dedicates 24 years of her life to raising three wonderful sons and this is how you repay her. I just can’t believe it. I am so shocked that I do not think I will ever recover. It is too much for me to take on board, that I am married to a man who is prepared to put me in the dock like a criminal and expose the entire family to public humiliation. I can’t even begin to explain how I feel, beyond complete disgust and utter misery.

I am prepared to put this behind me, but as long as I live I will never be able to understand your motivation or whether you thought beyond your immediate reaction. I keep hoping that you acted impulse and that it wasn’t a premeditated act of vindictiveness. Perhaps you don’t understand that you’re not John Zammit from Zebbug married to Maria Zammit. I know you love attention, but surely even you can see that ridicule and farce are the wrong sort of attention.

When that lawyer in Gozo used to report his American wife for throwing things at him, who came out worse – he or his wife? I honestly cannot believe you sank so low. That is the hardest part of all. Treat me as badly as you like. Go ahead and make a fool of yourself and of me. But if you cause distress to my sons – and you will by doing this – I will never forgive you. Ever”