Russia: two women jailed for a scripted curse-removal routine in which one posed as a healer and the other as a satisfied client, worked on elderly women in the street

Proceedings

1. 2019-11-18 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Leninsky District Court of Kursk, Kursk Oblast, Russia (Ленинский районный суд г. Курска). Two defendants, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО1 and ФИО2, were each convicted of two counts of fraud by deception and abuse of trust, committed by a group by prior conspiracy on a large scale, under part 3 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Each received ten months on the first count and eight months on the second, aggregated under part 3 of article 69 to one year's deprivation of liberty in a general-regime correctional colony; both remained in custody pending the judgment taking effect. The court found the pair agreed a division of roles in advance: one would approach an elderly woman in the street, strike up conversation and tell her falsely that she was a healer who would remove a curse, while the other would then approach the pair and tell the victim, equally falsely, that the first woman was a healer who had already removed a curse from her. The court found they knew throughout that they could not perform what they promised. Arrest orders over both defendants' property were lifted. A ten-day appeal period to the Kursk Regional Court was noted.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• the assertion that a curse (порча) lay on the victim and could be lifted
• a second participant vouching that the healer had already lifted a curse from her, to make the claim credible
• deliberate selection of elderly women approached in the street