Communicated on 8 January 2018
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 41261/17
Valeriya Igorevna VOLODINA
against Russia
lodged on 1 June 2017
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Ms Valeriya Igorevna Volodina, is a Russian national, who was born in 1985 and lives in Ulyanovsk. She is represented before the Court by Ms V. Kogan and Mr E. Wesselink who are respectively director and chair of the governing board of the Stichting Justice Initiative, a human-rights organisation based in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
A. The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
1. Initial meeting and life together
In November 2014 the applicant met Mr S., an Azerbaijani national, and they started living together in Ulyanovsk.
In May 2015 they separated. S. got abusive and threatened the applicant and her son with death if she refused to come back to live with him.
2. Abduction in January 2016
In January 2016 the applicant decided to move away from S. and went to Moscow. She did not give her new address to anyone but published her CV on job-hunting websites. She received a call from D. who introduced himself as a human resources manager and invited her to an interview to a place outside Moscow.
On 21 January 2016 D. picked her up in his car and they drove off. On the way S. emerged from the back of the car and D. handed him over the car keys. S. took away the applicant’s mobile phone and personal stuff and told her they were going back to Ulyanovsk.
On 25 January 2016 S. beat the applicant up and she had a miscarriage. The local police came to the hospital and interviewed the applicant who told them she had been beaten by S. However, she was not informed of any procedural decision on her complaint.
3. Beatings in May 2016
On 18 May 2016 S. punched the applicant in the face, threw her to the ground and began choking her. The applicant complained to the police and submitted to a medical examination which recorded multiple bruises on the left side of her face, abrasions on her shoulders, elbows, shins and thighs.
On 12 August 2016 the police refused to institute criminal proceedings. Having interviewed the applicant and Mr S., it held that no prosecutable offence had been committed: his verbal threats were not sufficiently specific to constitute an offence under Article 119 of the Criminal Code (“Threat of death or bodily injury”), and a single punch did not amount to “battery” within the meaning of Article 116 which required that two or more blows be inflicted.
4. Beatings and an attempt on the applicant’s life in July 2016
In May 2016 the applicant returned to Moscow to hide from S.
On 30 July 2016, as she was about to drive off in her car, S. opened the car door and attacked her. Neighbours who witnessed the fight called the police. On the same day the applicant filed a criminal complaint against S., stating that he was violent and threatened her with death.
On 1 August 2016 the applicant received a text message from S. who told her that he had damaged the hydraulic brake system of her car. She called the police. An officer arrived and took stock of the extent of the damage, noting a cut to a plastic conduit containing a bundle of wires and a pool of transparent liquid next to the rear right wheel.
On 8 August 2016 the Mozhayskiy district police in Moscow refused the institution of criminal proceedings. They found that the applicant and S. “knew each other, had lived together before and maintained a common household”, that the applicant did not produce an independent assessment of the damage to her car, that a single blow was not constitutive of an offence under Article 116 of the Criminal Code and that the verbal threats were neither real nor specific to be prosecutable under Article 119.
On 16 September 2016 the applicant asked the Kuntsevskiy District Court in Moscow to review the decision of 8 August. She submitted in particular that the police had not considered the text messaging history showing that S. had the intention of causing her death by damaging the brakes of her car.
On 20 September 2016 the supervising prosecutor set aside the decision of 8 August which he described as being premature and incomplete. He directed the police to consider the text messages from S.
On 14 October 2016 the Kuntsevskiy District Court disallowed the applicant’s complaint, finding that the matter had become moot on account of the prosecutor’s decision to order an additional inquiry. On 1 December 2016 the Moscow City Court upheld that decision on appeal.
5. Tracking device
In September 2016 the applicant found an electronic device in the lining of her bag which she believed was a GPS tracker that S. had put there.
On 5 October 2016 she reported her suspicions to the Kuntsevskiy interdistrict investigations department in Moscow. The report was forwarded to the Special Technical Measures Bureau of the federal police (Бюро специальных технических мероприятий ГУ МВД РФ). As of the date of filing her application, she had not received any response.
B. Relevant domestic law
Article 116 of the Criminal Code defines “battery” as the infliction of beatings or other violence on another person which causes physical pain but does not result in bodily injuries. It underwent a number of major changes in the recent years.
Until 3 July 2016 unqualified battery was a criminal offence punishable with a fine, mandatory or community work or up to three months’ detention. Qualified battery entailed a longer deprivation of liberty.
On 3 July 2016 unqualified battery was decriminalised and reclassified as an administrative offence under Article 6.1.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences. However, the battery committed in respect of “close persons”, including as they did spouses, parents, siblings and domestic partners, remained a criminal offence punishable with a deprivation of liberty. The decriminalisation law also inserted new Article 116.1 establishing that the person who inflicts battery after having been convicted of the same in the administrative proceedings is liable to criminal prosecution.
On 7 February 2017 the reference to “close persons” was removed from the text of Article 116.
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains under Article 3 of the Convention, taken alone and in conjunction with Articles 13 and 14, that the State failed to protect her against domestic violence. The police refused to open a criminal case in connection with her allegations. She alleges that the existing legal framework is deficient because of the absence of legal provisions dealing with domestic violence, such as for instance restraining orders.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Was there a violation of Article 3 of the Convention as a result of the Russian authorities’ failure to take protective measures in the form of effective deterrence against serious breaches of the applicant’s personal integrity by her former partner S. (compare Opuz v. Turkey, no. 33401/02, §§ 159-76, ECHR 2009)?
2. Was there a violation of Article 3 of the Convention, taken on its own or in conjunction with Article 13, as a result to the police’s refusal to institute criminal proceedings into the applicant’s allegations of abuse and battery? Was the existing Russian legal framework and in particular the amended provisions of Article 116 of the Criminal Code adequate for dealing with serious cases of domestic violence?
3. Was there a violation of Article 14 of the Convention, taken in conjunction with Article 3, on account of indications that the domestic violence affected mainly women in Russia and that the passive attitude adopted by Russian police to cases of domestic violence created a climate that was conducive to that form of violence (compare Opuz, cited above, §§ 183-202)?
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