Ukraine: a woman rented a house in a town to receive clients, claimed superhuman abilities, and told a mother her small son was ill because a curse lay on the family

Proceedings

1. 2016-08-16 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Khmilnyk City District Court, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine (Хмільницький міськрайонний суд Вінницької області). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ОСОБА_4, was convicted of fraud under part 1 of article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and fined fifty tax-free minimum incomes, being 850 hryvnia, the court approving a reconciliation agreement reached with the victim four days earlier. The court found that she had decided to obtain property from residents of Khmilnyk by fraud and, to that end, arranged on 25 July 2016 through an unidentified person to rent a house in the town, arriving there on 28 July with her own minor daughter and another person. The victim telephoned her that day to say she was having problems in her family and with the health of her small child. The defendant told her 'that she possessed superhuman abilities and that the victim therefore needed to have a rite of removing the curse performed', and invited her to come the following morning bringing her young son. When they arrived she told the victim falsely 'that her son was ill and that a curse had been laid on her family, but that she knew how to divine and would be able to remove the curse', obtaining 50 hryvnia and food at that stage, and continuing the process of divination and curse removal with the involvement of the child's belongings, with further sums including 625 and 950 hryvnia.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• renting a house in the town in advance, to which those seeking help were invited
• the claim to possess superhuman abilities
• the assertion that the victim's small son was ill and that a curse lay on her family
• an instruction to bring the child to the rite, and the drawing of the child's belongings into it
• escalating payments as the rite was continued