Lovin Malta received several accounts of Maltese people who endured objectifying or inappropriate experiences while in a driving lesson. Scores of personal accounts detail the borderline dangerous situations that they were put in, with many of the students feeling as if they had no way out.

One girl was 17-years-old at the time of her driving lessons and she was blinded with red flags from the second she stepped into her instructor’s car.

“I got my instructor’s number from a friend and from day one, he’d speak of my friend in a sexual way. He’d talk about her body even though he was around 30/40 years old,” Jane began.

“One time, my friend and I were in a lesson together and he told us ‘ostja, your bodies are fucking hot and your faces are so beautiful.’”

At first, Jane explained that she thought he was trying to be complimentary, therefore she thought he was “creepy” but not necessarily “dangerous”. However, he soon started amping up the inappropriate advances.

“He would be constantly finding a reason to touch me, when he’d demonstrate using the gear he’d continue by stroking my arm for the next few minutes. Sometimes he even put his arm around me.”

Meanwhile, his extremely sexual comments caused Jane to put her guard up and be cautious while around him.

“One time I wore my hair in a ponytail and he said that he loved it when girls wore their hair like that, especially for ‘certain things’,” she said, indicating that he was referring to sexual acts.

Other times, his inappropriate behaviour surpassed solely sexual harassment. He sometimes cornered her and unloaded his instability and mental health issues onto the 17-year-old girl.

“During one lesson, we drove somewhere far and during the whole drive there he was telling me about how he fought with his friends and that he wanted to commit suicide,” she recounted.

This behaviour only got more and more concerning once he discovered that she had a boyfriend. He would tell her that her partner doesn’t deserve her and that he wishes that he could be good enough for a “girl like her”.

He even told her that he was going to bring her a rose during a lesson around the time of Valentine’s Day but he didn’t because he was worried that her boyfriend would “beat him up”, since he was a “strong” guy.

Jane explained that he’d constantly insult her boyfriend and when she’d put her foot down and get annoyed at him, the instructor would get mad. He therefore instilled fear of a dangerous reaction in the teen: “you never know how someone else is going to react”.

There were also times when he’d flip the narrative and try to act like a “nice guy” by attempting to gain sympathy from her.

“He’d tell me things like ‘no, you’re too pretty for me, I’m going to start going to the gym so that maybe I’d be hot enough for someone like you.’”

His behaviour was bordering on obsessive and he would do things like stopping her in front of her home and watching her enter.

In fact, after one lesson, she realised that she had accidentally forgotten her keys in the holder and when she asked to go pick them up, he insisted on dropping them at her house the next day. Now, Jane was going abroad the day after but was hesitant to tell him this because she wasn’t sure what he’d do.

So she kept insisting that she wanted to pick up the keys and he finally ceded to her request.

Her boyfriend drove her to Żabbar and when she arrived he asked her to go upstairs. While she didn’t go into detail about what happened, she explained that he was clearly disappointed that her boyfriend went to Żabbar with her.

Eventually, she took her test and failed. By the time she went back to lessons he had quit the job, but still insisted on messaging her.

This whole ordeal has stained the young girl’s life, impacting how she feels about driving to this day.

“I feel like I still hate driving.”

While Jane’s story was an in-depth account of consistent harassment, other people also opened up about their unacceptable experiences with people who they trusted to teach and protect them.

“Once my driving instructor was full-on looking at photos of nude women right next to me for the whole lesson,” one woman explained.

“He’d touch my thigh way too often for no reason.”

“He would literally always touch my leg, shoulder or hand when he spoke,” another woman similarly recounted.

“My driving instructor used to smoke weed frequently when I was in the car. When I passed my test, I had a smoke and he drove me home. It wasn’t an uncomfortable experience but it was definitely wrong,” one man explained prior to admitting that his instructor no longer works in that field.

Being a driving instructor is an immense responsibility, especially in a country where serious traffic accidents happen almost daily. Using this position to abuse power and make students feel uncomfortable is objectively wrong.

While none of the students opened up about whether they’d reported their instructors, there was a clear reluctance due to the hassle it would entail. It would feel like a useless affair, considering how reports of harassment in Malta aren’t given anything near the importance they deserve.

As mentioned at the start of this article, there is a clear lack of regulation within Transport Malta (TM) that allows instructors and examiners to operate unethically.

One cannot ignore the fact that TM is trying to rectify the issues within the transport sphere, however, more needs to be done to ensure that all instructors are registered, legitimate and vetted before they’re put into confined spaces with often defenceless teens.

If you or anyone you know has ever experienced anything like this and you want to share your story, reach out to [email protected]