Russia: two and a half years in a penal colony for a street healer who told five women in one day that a 'death curse' lay on them, removable only on unquestioning obedience

Proceedings

1. 2020-02-11 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Miass City Court, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia (Миасский городской суд Челябинской области). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment as ФИО1, was convicted of five counts of fraud by deception causing significant damage under part 2 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Sentences of one year eight months, one year eight months, one year, one year two months and ten months were imposed on the five counts and partially aggregated under part 2 of article 69 to two years six months' deprivation of liberty in a general-regime correctional colony. She was taken into custody in the courtroom. The court found that on 23 August 2019 she approached five women she did not know in the streets of Miass and told each either that she had a disease or that a 'death curse' had been laid on her, that she herself was a healer with the knowledge and powers to cure or to lift the curse, and that this was conditional on unquestioning compliance with all her instructions — having, as the court found, no such powers of healing at all. The first victim's loss was assessed at 36,000 roubles. The defendant had a previous conviction from 2014 for theft and fraud, from which she had been released on parole in 2016. The case was heard in the special procedure. Judge D.E. Serzhantov presided.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• the assertion that a 'death curse' (порча на смерть) had been laid on the victim and was harming her
• the assertion that the victim had a disease only the defendant could cure
• the express condition that the cure required unquestioning compliance with all the defendant's instructions