Police officers face a retrial for allegedly raping a colleague

A police officer faces a new trial for allegedly raping a female colleague at Msida police station.

The 34-year-old police officer was acquitted of rape charges in March last year but found guilty of harassing a second woman, a teenage recruit.

The attorney general had appealed the verdict, asking the court to overturn a ruling by the presiding judge who declared inadmissible a statement in which the defendant confessed to raping his colleague.

The police officer, who cannot be named by court order, was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for two years.

On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal, presided over by Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti, Justice Giovanni Grixti and Ms Justice Edwina Grima, overturned the verdict and declared that the defendant must be retried and the statement must be taken into evidence.

The alleged victim testified at the first trial that the defendants raped her in February 2018 and again the following month at Msida police station while they were both on duty.

Another colleague, a 19-year-old recruit, told the court she was sexually harassed by the officer, once in a police car while on night duty and another time while waiting outside the courthouse in Valletta.

During the trial, prosecutors told the judge that both women were traumatized by abuse at the hands of someone duty-bound to prevent crime.

Presiding judge Consuelo Scerri Herrera likened the Msida police station to a “brothel” but said the lax and permissive behavior there did not necessarily indicate criminal wrongdoing.

She said the alleged rape victim’s version was not credible and cleared the officers of all allegations involving her. A detailed analysis of her account found inconsistencies and it was “more likely” that the sex was consensual.

Normally, rape victims do everything they can to avoid their attacker, but in this case the woman changed shifts to be in Msida, sat across from him at dinner and did not request a transfer after the alleged attack.

However, the judge ruled that the defendant had exceeded the limits of what was possible in his behavior towards the second woman.

The inadmissibility of the defendant’s incriminating statements from 2018 was hotly debated during the trial.

Defense lawyers had argued that the confession was not legally valid because of a change in the law regarding cautioning an arrested person.

When the law was changed in November 2016 to introduce the right to legal representation during questioning, the warning was also changed.

The officer’s deposition took place in March 2018 and lawyers argued that the warning read and typed in the statement “in the smallest font size ever” was not consistent with the 2016 amendment.

This contained the final rule, which no longer applied, namely that anything the defendant failed to say could lead to inferences being drawn against him.

While before 2016 there was a restriction that a court could infer guilt if the suspect had sought legal representation before being questioned, after 2016 the law was changed to the exact opposite. The new rule stated that no inference of guilt could be made, and this, the defence argued, was not a formality but a radical revision of the previous position with enormous implications for the suspect’s legal rights.

The prosecution had insisted that although it was not disputed that the warning was out of date, this did not change the content of the statement.