In Malta we have many victims of murder who have been left short-handed by justice. Therese Sciberras is one such victim and her daughter, who is accused of murdering her as a teenager along with her then-boyfriend Robert Zahra, mounted a public defense for her case which is still ongoing. What is bizarre, is that Nikita McAnally conjured a defense for herself without even mentioning her case, depicting herself exclusively as a victim.
It would have been normal not to write about this case had the accused not mounted a defense for her case in public with the help of radio show host, Andrew Azzopardi. She was 15 when she committed the murder, so the court ordered a ban on her name, but if she as an adult is making a case for herself in public, the public ought to know very well the truth and all of the relevant details of her case. Public documents show that the murder may have been financially motivated, and in reality, the victim was even brutalised.
Despite our calls of solidarity with him, Andrew Azzopardi is not a real journalist – he’s an academic at the University of Malta on “well-being”, a subject related to social work. Here, he is following Peppi Azzopardi’s path of adopting a voyeuristic approach towards “suspected criminals” to boost viewership in a process where he exculpates his hosts as he popularises them in Maltese society. Supposedly, this would help them “rehabilitate” in society. This is horrible journalism at best.
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