Woman Found Guilty Of Cruelty, Adultery After Exploiting And Abusing Elderly Husband With Lover
A woman has been found guilty of adultery, cruelty and grievous injury after she and her lover methodically forced her vulnerable husband out of their home, forced to living in fields and work for meagre pay to fix the farm of the woman’s lover.
The case saw the man ferried between halfway homes and mental health centres in an attempt to protect him and keep him away from his family who were intent on gaining as much financially from him as they could, TVM reported.
The man, who is 61-years-old, became a victim of his wife and her partner after he was forced to first live in a small boxroom, before being taken to live in a field in Iklin and eventually a dirty garage in Marsa, while his wife and partner took his money and “lived comfortably” off the proceeds, Maltese psychiatrist Joseph Vella Baldacchino said during a separation case in front of Madam Justice Abigail Lofaro.
After the wife brought her lover into the family’s home, the man started to become a “victim of circumstance”. Eventually, state authorities were forced to intervene as the man had become “skin and bones”.
“At this point, I put my foot down and got him admitted to hospital for his own protection so he would no longer be exploited, as his wife was taking his money and cheques and he was placed in a halfway house,” the psychiatrist said.
However, even inside the halfway house, the wife and her partner continued to attempt to exploit the man, with the wife attempting to get him to pay over €13,000 in unpaid rent, electricity and mobile bills.
He was then taken to Mount Carmel Hospital for his own protection, even though he didn’t need to be there.
Then, he was taken to Dar il-Merill in Ħal Qormi as there was enough security in the home to stop the wife, partner or even the man’s children from reaching him; this comes after they had tried to get him to sign some documents while in hospital, but staff had intervened in time to stop him signing.
“He had ended up a victim of his wife and her lover.”
Beyong exploiting him financially, it also emerged that the wife’s partner would order the man to carry out work at the partner’s farm in Iklin, never paying him more than €10 for the work.
“They were living comfortably off him.”
In court, Madam Justice Lofaro said the man had become a victim of his wife and her lover, with the fact that the pair forced the man to live in substandard living conditions until becoming malnourished showed they had a clear intention to get rid of him and take his social benefits while running up bills in his name.
“There is no doubt the woman and her partner were plotting against him by taking advantage of his vulnerability,” she said.
The partner was found to be heavily complicit in the wife’s plans. The court agreed to separation proceedings, and ordered the woman to pay the 61-year-old €200 in alimony every four weeks to begin covering the costs she had caused.
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