Malta Today recently drew attention to the fact that a government promise to present legislation in Parliament that would have criminalised cyber abuse has remained shelved for over two years, with no indication of whether this could be enacted into law.

Proposed for the first time three years ago, the forgotten Bill stated that anyone accused of cyberbullying “ought to know that it will cause physical or mental harm to another person, including self-harm or arouse apprehension or fear in the other person for his or her own safety…”   The Bill would have provided legal protection to victims of abuse on digital platforms.

The effects of cyberbullying and abuse are, of course, very topical given the femicide of Nicolette Ghirxi.  The victim had reported her partner to the police over emailed insults and threats months prior to her murder.  Ghirxi’s aggressor, Edward William Johnston, was also believed to have shared intimate photos of his ex-partner.

In the government’s defence, one must point out that the Bill’s broad wording, especially surrounding the word “offensive”, was claimed by critics to possibly clamp down on freedom of speech.  The Opposition had warned that the Bill should not be an excuse to silence those who want to participate in a public debate through the return of some form of criminal libel.

Fair point?  Not in my opinion.  This over-emphasis on freedom of speech is just an excuse to let all sorts of odious and dangerous people threaten others and cause them ill-harm.  Freely-expressed opinions are a must in a democratic society, but verbal abuse should not be tolerated.  I don’t need to threaten anybody’s life and mental health to criticise them.  Probably, they would fear withering sarcasm more than the C-word.

While in Malta we dithered, the European Commission came up with a directive that criminalises physical violence, as well as psychological, economic and sexual violence against women across the EU, both offline and online.  The new rules include the prohibition of non-consensual sharing of intimate images, deepfakes, cyber-stalking, cyber-harassment, misogynous hate speech and “cyber-flashing”.  Malta is yet to transpose the directive into its law. 

The physical, psychological, emotional, and mental effects of cyberbullying have been well-documented in various studies.  They affect both grown-ups and children and can be devastating, also leading to more suicides.  Rather than a form of freedom of expression, cyberbullying denies freedom of expression to the victims concerned, who fear expressing their own feelings or opinions because they no longer feel safe to do so.

Forget the ‘boys will be boys’ saying.  Cyberbullying can be more pervasive than traditional bullying. While traditional bullying is generally limited to school and victims will have a reprieve at home, victims of cyberbullying can be reached anywhere, anytime, and the potential audience is huge. This is compounded by the fact that there is a lack of supervision. With traditional bullying, teachers are regarded as enforcers. With cyberbullying, there is no clear authority, and children express reluctance to tell adults for fear of losing computer privileges or being labelled as an informer.

The daily Press is replete with people abusing others and making threats.  Just last week, a manipulative man who warned his ex-partner not to go out with other men threatened to kill her if she reported him to the police.  Neville Abela, a 38-year-old Marsa resident who is currently unemployed, persisted in bombarding his former partner with messages in an apparent attempt to keep her under his thumb.

When the two split up, it appeared that they would go their separate ways and forget their relationship.  But all of a sudden, the man started sending ominous messages to his ex, even after she told him to leave her in peace.  Abela ordered his ex to “make sure to answer his calls” and warned that she was not to go out with other men “before three months had lapsed”.

He raised the ante with his last message to the woman: “Go to the police, no problem. I’ll spend a couple of days [locked up] inside. As soon as I step out, I’ll kill you,” read one of the messages, prompting his alleged victim to report the harassment at the Domestic Violence Unit.  Thank God, this time there was no delay.  The Police arrested the man and arraigned him in court, where the magistrate refused him bail.

A “divine right” to control women?

What is it about men that they think they have a divine right to control women?  Relying on my own experience of men I have worked with, a lot of them are sitting in a space of entitlement. They feel entitled to use certain behaviours and entitled to be the man of the house, because that’s what [they believe] men have always done, and that’s what they have witnessed in a patriarchal belief system.

Men will do things to feel power, to feel that sense of bravado. Some go out of their way in front of other men, to show how tough they are. Some feel very threatened by feminism and say that feminism has gone too far.  I once had a colleague who would ask his subordinates to call his wife and tell her that her husband would be very late returning home because of a business dinner.  All the while he would be wining and dining another woman.  So, on top of his well-known infidelity he would impose ridicule on his poor wife.

One of the fundamental drivers of male violence is a patriarchal value system that has its basis in gender inequality, where men hold more power than women in our society. In that system, men are socialised to be dominant and in charge, to never show vulnerability or look for healthy ways to express their emotional experience. Men learn that anger and aggression are socially acceptable in many ways.

Women in a position to do something

It doesn’t help that other women who are in a position to do something about it often forget their obligations.  I am sorely disappointed by our current crop of women MPs, who seem to feel that they have to submit to the men who put them in Parliament in the first place

I rarely see any opinions or parliamentary interventions attributed to them.  I am not referring particularly to domestic violence.  There are many other issues – such as poverty, inequality, health, laws and regulations that have inbuilt gender discrimination – on which they fail to militate.

I am basing myself on a search on the internet, which yields opinions written by Cyrus Engerer, Evarist Bartolo and other men, but few by women, excluding Parliamentary Secretary Rebecca Buttigieg.  Thank God, other women   ̶   such as President Emeritus Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, Dr Lara Dimitrijevic, Commissioner Audrey Friggieri, and the National Council of Women   ̶   have been more vociferous.