Ukraine: notes and objects were planted outside a shopkeeper's kiosk to make her believe a curse had been laid, then an accomplice thanked the 'healer' in her hearing — both women convicted in separate trials

Proceedings

1. 2013-03-21 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Storozhynets District Court, Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine (Сторожинецький районний суд Чернівецької області). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ОСОБА_4, was convicted of fraud under part 2 of article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, committed repeatedly and by prior conspiracy with another person whose case was severed, and sentenced to one year's restriction of liberty. Time spent in custody from 20 September 2012 was credited under article 72 at two days of restriction to one day of detention, and she was released from custody in the courtroom as the sentence was served. The court found that on 12 August 2012 the pair drove to the village of Boiany, learned of domestic difficulties affecting the victim, and that the defendant 'prepared and then planted, by the entrance to the working premises of citizen [the victim] — a trading kiosk — notes and other objects in the manner of divination, which were to serve as a basis for various suspicions arising in [the victim], preventing the development of her business and the wellbeing of her family'. The following day the two entered the kiosk together and the defendant, in the victim's presence, 'began to express words of gratitude' to the other person 'for supposedly having helped her in the removal of a curse', so creating in the victim a belief in that person's ability to remove curses, 'which contributed to [the victim] approaching the other person for help in removing the curse'.

2. 2014-04-25 · conviction and sentence of the second participant, in severed proceedings

   Storozhynets District Court, Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine (Сторожинецький районний суд Чернівецької області). The second participant, whose case had been severed from the first, was convicted of fraud committed by prior conspiracy under part 2 of article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and sentenced to one year's deprivation of liberty, from which she was released on probation under articles 75 and 76 with a one-year probation period and a duty to report periodically for registration. This judgment describes the same episode from the other side: it records that this defendant entered the kiosk on 13 August 2012 while the other, 'performing her role', had on 12 August 'scattered notes and other objects in the manner of divination' outside it, and that the other then, in the victim's presence, 'began to express words of gratitude' to this defendant 'for supposedly having helped her in the removal of a curse', thereby creating in the victim 'a feeling of the necessity of approaching' this defendant to have removed the curse 'connected with the planted notes and other traces of divination'.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• advance knowledge of the victim's domestic difficulties, used to make a curse a plausible explanation
• notes and objects planted outside the victim's workplace to serve as evidence that a curse had been laid
• a staged expression of gratitude to the supposed healer, performed in the victim's hearing
• the victim thereby approaching the healer of her own accord to ask for the curse to be removed