Communicated on 17 September 2019
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 31323/19
T.V.
against Russia
lodged on 3 June 2019
STATEMENT OF FACTS
1. The applicant, Ms T.V., is a Russian national, who was born in 1989 and lives in St Petersburg. She is represented before the Court by Ms Olga Karacheva and Ms Svetlana Gromova, lawyers practising in St Petersburg.
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. In 2008 the applicant married E. and they moved together to St Petersburg where their three children were born.
4. E. abused the applicant and children from the early days of their marriage. In 2017, she reported two violent assaults to the police but did not receive any assistance. In October 2017, the applicant took the children and moved out.
5. On 31 January or 1 February 2018 the applicant met E. in a café. He inveigled her into taking him to the place where she and the children lived. It appears that they spent the day together and he took children to the kindergarten. On the following day E. grew violent and assaulted her in the kitchen. He hit her on the head and body with his fists, the handle of a knife and a ladle. That night E. also had a sexual intercourse with her.
6. In the morning of 3 February 2018, when E. left the flat to buy food, the applicant ran away. She came to a police station where an ambulance picked her up and took her to a hospital. She underwent a twelve-day treatment for multiple wounds to her head, chest and limbs, brain concussion, cuts to her thighs, bruises and swelling of the outer labia, and other injuries. She continued outpatient treatment until 22 February 2018. Upon her discharge from the hospital, the guardianship authority advised her against returning to the flat where E. had abused her because of a risk of recurrent violence on his part. She was accommodated in a State-operated shelter for women.
7. On 5 February 2018 the police opened a criminal investigation into threats of death or grievous bodily harm, an offence under Article 119 of the Criminal Code. On 14 March 2018 the applicant asked the police to investigate her rape by E. She submitted that the intercourse had not been consensual; she had been unable to offer any resistance because of previous violence.
8. On 28 March 2018 the applicant gave a statement to the police. She explained that, while in the hospital, she had mentioned the rape to the gynaecologist but had not been able to bring herself to tell about it to the male police officer who was interviewing her.
9. On 25 April 2018 the senior investigator of the local police declined to open a criminal investigation into the alleged rape. She found no indications that rape had been committed because “it had not been reliably established that the sexual intercourse ... had not been based on mutual consent”, while the injuries the applicant had suffered were being investigated in the framework of a separate criminal case.
10. On 13 June 2018 the chief of the investigations department of the local police set aside the 25 April decision and gave orders to the investigator to commission a gynaecological assessment and to obtain character references from neighbours.
11. On 12 July 2018 the investigator issued a new decision declining to open a rape investigation. She noted the audio recordings from E.’s mobile phone, in which the applicant had “given a prayer for their reunion” on 1 February and, following her admission to the hospital on 5 February, she had talked to E. “in a calm voice” about spare parts for the family car. The medical assessment had corroborated the applicant’s allegations of bodily harm but not those of non-consensual sexual activity. Referring to those elements, the investigator concluded that indicators of the rape had been absent. In her assessment, “the violence he used and the threats he made were not directed at forcing a sexual act upon [the applicant] against her will but were committed by reason of his jealousy and her infidelity”.
12. The applicant challenged the investigator’s decision before a court. By judgment of 1 October 2018, as upheld on appeal on 26 December 2018, the Kolpino District Court in St Petersburg held that the impugned decision had been issued by a competent official in compliance with the procedural requirements. Referring to the investigator’s independent standing, it declined to give a substantive assessment of the reasons which had led the investigator to refuse an investigation into the rape allegation.
13. On 24 December 2018 a justice of the peace in court district no. 75 in St Petersburg found E. guilty of the offences of “tormenting” (Article 117 of the Criminal Code) and threats of death or grievous bodily injury (Article 119 of the Criminal Code) in connection with the violence he had used against the applicant on 2 and 3 February 2018. Taking as extenuating circumstances the facts that E. had four children and that he had apologised to the applicant, the magistrate sentenced him to two and a half years’ restrictions on his liberty. The restrictions included a prohibition on his leaving the Kizhiginskiy district in the Buryatiya Republic where he had his registered place of residence, going out in the night time, attending assemblies or public events, changing his place of residence or employment without consent from the probation authority, and a requirement to report to the probation authority twice a month.
COMPLAINTS
14. The applicant complains under Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention, taken alone or in conjunction with Articles 13 and 14, that the Russian authorities have not conducted an effective investigation into her allegations of rape and that they opted for prosecuting the less serious charges for discriminatory movies.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Did the Russian authorities carry out an effective investigation into the applicant’s allegations of rape which was compatible with their obligations under Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention, taken alone or in conjunction with Articles 13 and 14 (see M.C. v. Bulgaria, no. 39272/98, ECHR 2003‑XII)?
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