Woman acquitted of bigamy

A Filipino woman has been acquitted of bigamy after a court said the prosecution had failed to prove that her first husband was alive, or that the accused knew he was alive when she remarried. Evangeline Silos Hernandez Cauchi, 56, had married Francisco Hernandez, but  in August 2003 she married Ronald Cauchi in Malta. The court heard that In March 2008 an anonymous letter was sent to the Public Registry claiming that the accused had married a Maltese whilst she was still married to Francisco Hernandez. The accused had married  Francisco Hernandez in the Philippines in 1978 and they had three children. The accused came to Malta in December 2001 and lived with her cousin Ermelinda Mendoza Lewis for a while but then met Ronald Cauchi through an advert in a newspaper and moved in with him. They married on August 14, 2004. Before getting married the accused presented a death certificate of her first husband to the Public Registry showing that he passed away in September 2002. During interrogation, the accused told the police that her first  husband had abandoned the matrimonial home in 1994 because he was having an affair with another woman. She had brought up the children on her own.