When a married couple or as is becoming very normal and habitual even in our insular society, a couple are cohabiting or living together and in an effort not to break the relationship or the marriage, such couple agree to visit some Counsellor who somehow or other is authorized (one would not really know under what qualification banner) to counsel married persons or cohabitating partners with particular reference to whatever problem they may have, be it an extramarital relationship, or some sort of incompatibility, or whatever that if not tended might actually lead to the irretrievable breakdown of a marriage or irretrievable disbanding of an intimate relationship between a couple.

When such couple go for counselling, they do it on the implicit and maybe explicit understanding that they are going there to seek counseling, to help (if at all) solve their problem or reconcile their differences in such a way that they can keep on living together either as husband and wife or as a cohabitating couple. It certainly would not cross their mind, that whatever is stated in those counselling sessions could actually ever be used in open court by way of some sort of evidence in favour or against one party which would no doubt influence the Court in arriving at some sort of conclusion as to who may have been to blame for the breakdown of a relationship.

This is a serious issue which has to be tackled, as we are experiencing frequent Court summonses where counsellors are requested neigh ordered under penalty of Contempt of Court, to come to Court and give evidence relating to some counselling session or sessions which would have been undertaken vis-à-vis some couple, months or a year or two, or maybe more, before!

It is my considered opinion that this violates constitutionally the right to privacy in the intimate lives of a couple who in an effort to save that intimacy opt voluntarily to go before some counsellor (irrespective of the qualifications at this stage) to attempt to seek a solution so that, that relationship would not fall apart: it is most unfair on the couple and on the counsellor that such intimate details as may be confided to or before the counsellor would then have to be revealed in a Court Session when the parties eventually might have decided or either would have decided to file for legal separation, or maybe contest some issue relating to their intimate lives if the couple were a cohabitating partnership rather than a married partnership.

It is no solution for an application being made to the competent Court that such counsellor or other individuals in whom a certain amount of trust is established to be summoned to Court to give such evidence. This situation is being made public because a remedy has to be found, such as that the counsellor and the couple involved would have to sign a statement in advance that whatever is stated in those sessions can neither be recorded or notes kept or referred to should the couple involved end up in contentious Court Proceedings: what was dialogued before a Counsellor should never be brought before the Court!

Hence, in all fairness and for the sake of justice, we should respect the constitutionally-safeguarded Right of the privacy of individual lives because otherwise the whole concept of counselling will go to the dogs! People will stop going to consellors (irrespective of whom they may be at this present juncture of analytical discussion), if they are conscious that should the objective of the counselling sessions fail, and the situation ends up in contentious proceedings before a competent Court or Tribunal, whatever would have been stated in the strict confidentiality of counselling can be revealed under some Court Order. This violates the European Convention of Human Rights and Freedoms, the Data Protection Act, the Malta Constitution and the European Union Constitution, and runs counter to a number of judgments given by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg or the European Court of Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms at The Hague.

So let us respect the concept of Counselling Confidentiality because after all, this concept is there to safeguard the possibility that a conflicting couple in a marriage or in a cohabitating partnership save that relationship: making public what is stated in the implicit understanding that all this would remain in confidence and never used for purposes of evidence in Courts of Law or before some other Tribunal would flout this trust in Counselling Confidentiality.

So the responsibility in all concerned has to be seen in this light because it is my belief that with the best intentions of the authorities involved, an abuse is being made of one’s right to bring any sort of evidence before our Courts of Justice vis-à-vis the sacred principles involved in Counselling Confidentiality: let us not sacrifice what is essentially very intimate, to the whims of some interested individual or individuals who may have used deliberately and intentionally Counselling Sessions, to fish confidential information from the other side so that it will eventually be used in contentious proceedings before our Courts of Justice or some competent and officially recognized Tribunal. This apparent legal abuse must be stopped once and for all or else interested parties must be clearly forewarned as to what could result from counselling sessions made in the belief that these will remain confidential, when in point of fact eventually it will result that this would not be so!

Yours Truly:
Emmy D. BEZZINA:
Chairman/Founder-ALPHA: partit politiku