“Hi, I’m Cyrus and I do things differently.”
Set against a vibrant red background, typed in bold, white letters, this is the message welcoming visitors to Maltese MEP Cyrus Engerer’s personal website.
At least, this isn’t a lie.
Member of the European Parliament since 2020, he is one of the very few who have a criminal conviction.
A politician who reasoned and argued in the Interinstitutional Body for Ethical Standards for “integrity of all members of all institutions of this European Union”, someone fighting to regain the “credibility” of the institutions “after a number of embarrassing and problematic issues” and bragging about his commitment to “equality and human rights”. A politician who supports #MeToo, having called it a “wake-up call on politicians” and promised to combat domestic violence and who criticized the Council, “and especially member states like France, Germany and Malta among others” that “blocked the inclusion of the non-consensual sex act as a criminal offence”. (When, the real argument at that time was whether the EU had the right to define “rape” or whether it belonged to national legislation.) A MEP who boasted about having tried to “do things differently” and having invited activists and sex workers to Brussels and about having planned “an event that brought together members of the most marginalized groups of society”, including drug addicts and sex workers.
Former Chair of the LGBTIQ Consultative Council and Advisor to the Minister of Equality in Malta.
As he is a man, who “never fit in a world that expected everyone to do things the same way” it shouldn’t probably come as a surprise that he handled the end of his relationship also differently than most of us would do. Like spending a few days cuddled up on the couch.
Well, he is the living example of the saying walk the talk and talk the walk.
His CV (both the very short version published on the website of the European Parliament and the “Nothing to Hide” section on his own page, that, for whatever reasons, starts only in 2020, as if nothing had happened before) is as transparent as a brick wall.
There is not a single word about the two-year prison sentence (suspended for two-years) he was given back in 2014.
Mr. Engerer was found guilty of distributing pornographic images. At one point of the investigation, both his parents were arrested. (Luckily for him, Maltese laws were modified just a few months prior to his arrest, thus people serving suspended sentence were allowed to vote and to run for elected positions.)
This, in itself could make anybody question the integrity of the person so passionately arguing against any form of sexual violence.
But Mr. Engerer didn’t just distribute some “random” porn downloaded from the Dark Net. Angered by the end of their relationship in 2009, Mr. Engerer kept on sending pornographic pictures about his former lover, Marvic Camilleri. The addressees were Mr. Camilleri’s employees and employers, probably to get him fired. Even worse, Mr. Engerer sent those emails using the office computer of a friend (or his own mother).
When the case made it to court, Mr. Engerer tried to bully his former lover, threatening him that more pictures could be published. And he did openly, in fact, without showing the slightest remorse – something the court couldn’t simply ignore.
In the end, he was ordered not to communicate with his victim or the victim’s family for one year.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, the brutally murdered Maltese investigative journalist argued for Mr. Engerer’s dismissal from his party, declaring that “no civil rights campaigner should go about with a criminal conviction for exacting vengeance on a former lover by stealing his personal photographs, in which he is naked and in compromising positions, and emailing them out anonymously to his former lover’s boss and office colleagues”.
Just like in 2011, when she sent entered into a public debate with Mr. Engerer, giving him advice on how one should maintain his integrity (when Mr. Engerer switched from the PN to the Labour Party), as simply switching ideologies is not only a “dishonourable step”, but proved his “shallow and unthinking” personality, her warnings in 2014 met deaf ears again.
“That kind of behaviour goes against the very spirit of civil rights and liberties,” Ms. Galizia continued, “this was a criminal act of vindictiveness, involving stealth, theft of images and plotting, and which drew in several third parties to whom the pictures were sent”.
Revenge porn. That’s the term for what Mr. Engerer did (though not a legal category).
Back in 2009, revenge porn was a mostly unknown phenomenon. It wasn’t completely new, as adult content providers began receiving complaints about pornographic content being posted without the subjects’ consent in 2008 and a year later, international media started to report about the issue, too.
Then very soon, activists all over the world were campaigning for the criminalization of revenge porn (or non-consensual pornography), considering it a form of sexual abuse. Many countries have already criminalized the act.
It is a victory for everybody involved that in 2022, former reality star Stephen Bear was found guilty of sharing private sexual pictures and videos with intent to cause distress. His victim has told media that she felt “ashamed, hurt, violated, even broken at times”.
It is hard to believe that a man, so sensitive about the plight of vulnerable minorities and of victims of sexual abuse, as Mr. Engerer, a person who now is, at least on the surface, a staunch advocate of people who were subjected to non-consensual sexual acts, was not fully aware of the gravity of his deeds.
And if he was, then maybe he could explain himself now.
But amidst his push for transparency and advocating for rule of law, he is strangely silent when it comes to his own deeds.
The latest development is that he will not seek re-election as a MEP but will focus on Malta instead, trying to seek change at home first (a thing that might or might not be set in stone, yet), because “Malta deserves change”.
He could start with campaigning for the criminalization of revenge porn in Malta.
Until then, voters in Europe can only hope that not all misfits get “inspired by him” and dare to do things differently” and “always be themselves”. At least not the way, he did it.