Russia: a Mother of God pendant and a crucifix taken from a shop assistant for a curse-removal rite

Proceedings

1. 2017-06-13 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Starooskolsky City Court, Belgorod Oblast, Russia (Старооскольский городской суд Белгородской области). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО1, was convicted of fraud causing significant damage to a citizen under ч.2 ст.159 of the Criminal Code, for an offence committed on 27 May 2013 in a shop in Stary Oskol. The court found that, under the pretext of removing a curse and performing the corresponding rite, she took from the shop assistant a 585-standard gold chain weighing 2g worth 3,477 roubles, a 585-standard gold pendant bearing an icon of the Mother of God weighing 3g worth 5,254 roubles, a 585-standard gold cross pendant with the crucified Christ weighing 1.5g worth 2,517 roubles, and a Nokia mobile telephone worth 2,797 roubles, together with further items, causing a loss of 16,628 roubles. She was sentenced to two years' deprivation of liberty and, by partial addition under ч.5 ст.69 with a sentence of the Nerekhtsky District Court of Kostroma Oblast of 30 May 2014 as varied by a judge of the Zubovo-Polyansky District Court of Mordovia on 16 June 2016, to a final term of five years in a correctional colony. No civil claim was brought.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• the approach made at the victim's workplace, a shop counter she could not leave
• the removal of a curse and the performance of «соответствующего обряда» — the corresponding rite — given as the basis for handing the items over
• the items taken including the victim's own devotional objects: a gold pendant bearing an icon of the Mother of God and a gold crucifix with the figure of Christ