'My father killed my mother. How do you talk about that?'
09 November 2025

'My father killed my mother. How do you talk about that?'

Times Talk by Times of Malta

About

When Karl Schembri was a boy, his father carried a dark and unspoken history – years of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest.

The trauma left deep scars, and as an adult, his father’s mind began to unravel. The voices that haunted him eventually drove him to commit an unthinkable act: the murder of Schembri’s mother.

Schembri, an author, journalist and activist, has now finally broken a decades-long silence through his new novel Eħlisna mid-Deni (Deliver us from Evil).

He tells Times Talk the book - a work of fiction inspired by his real story - is his way of achieving justice for a human tragedy that the authorities systematically overlooked for years.