A court in Malta today found Matthew Grech, who repented of his homosexual lifestyle after coming to faith in Christ, not guilty of “advertising conversion practices.”
Grech had faced the possibility of jail time and a fine if found guilty. As it is, he had to endure a three-year trial and 17 court appearances prior to his not-guilty verdict for publicly sharing his story.
“When I became a Christian, everything changed,” Grech says in a 2023 YouTube video about his case. “I moved away from a homosexual lifestyle, and for sharing this hope and story, I am now facing a criminal court and being charged with advertising so-called conversion practices.”
In 2022, Grech told his testimony of coming to Jesus Christ and leaving homosexuality on PMnews Malta, a free-speech online media platform. A few days later, he received a call from the police, ordering him to report to the police station because three people had claimed that he and the program’s hosts were advertising conversion practices. In 2016 Malta had passed a law banning such practices.
In a press release from Christian Concern, which assisted and supported Grech along with his Maltese lawyers, Grech said: “For three long years, my life has been turned completely upside down, not for harming anyone, not for inciting hatred, not for breaking the law, but for sharing my personal testimony of hope and renewal on a podcast. … I stand here today grateful, grateful to my legal team, grateful to those who supported me, and above all grateful to God, whose transforming grace is the very story I was prosecuted for telling.”
Following the verdict, Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre, said: “Today’s not‑guilty verdict is a clear and decisive victory, not only for Matthew, but for Christian freedom and free speech across the world. After years of pressure, the attempt to criminalize him has collapsed because the prosecution could never coherently define what ‘conversion therapy’ even means. It is an undefined, politically loaded term with no grounding in fact, and it should never have been used to target a young man simply for sharing his Christian testimony.
“This case has exposed how activists have sought to weaponize the law to silence people like Matthew who express mainstream Christian beliefs about sexuality, marriage and identity. There was never any credible evidence justifying the charges brought against him, only an aggressive campaign to shut down viewpoints that diverge from a prevailing ideology.”
The journalists who interviewed Grech were also put through the lengthy trial and found not guilty.
Christian Concern says the verdict will have an international impact and other nations will now see that such bans are neither desirable nor straightforward to implement.
“For us Christians, change is possible; change is real,” Grech said in the video, “and it’s an experience that has brought us so much joy, so much freedom and hope and liberation, and it deserves to be celebrated. … The Good News of Jesus Christ, and the full hope that the Gospel offers, should be shared, should be celebrated and should be protected in our laws.”
