Ukraine: four years nine months for a repeat offender who told elderly women in the street a curse was on them requiring a ritual, then took their money inside their own homes

Proceedings

1. 2021-01-20 · conviction and sentence at first instance

   Zavodskyi District Court of Dniprodzerzhynsk, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine (Заводський районний суд м. Дніпродзержинська). The defendant, anonymised in the published judgment, was convicted of robbery under part 2 of article 186 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and of fraud under part 2 of article 190, receiving four years six months' deprivation of liberty on the first count and two years on the second. The lesser sentence was absorbed into the greater under part 1 of article 70, and a final term of four years nine months' deprivation of liberty was set under article 71 in conjunction with an earlier sentence. The court recorded that she was already a person previously convicted of offences against property who 'drew no proper conclusions for herself, did not take the path of correction, and again committed a series of similar criminal offences'. On 10 May 2020 she approached a woman she did not know, whom the judgment describes as elderly, and 'assured the latter that a curse lay upon her, for the removal of which it was necessary to perform a corresponding ritual', after which the two went together to the victim's flat. There, taking advantage of the fact that the victim 'was bewildered and did not understand that a criminal offence was being committed against her', she took 2,000 hryvnia which the victim handed over 'for the purpose of removing the curse'. The judgment records the same approach used against further women on 19 May 2020 and on other occasions.

Documented coercion mechanisms

• selection of elderly women approached in the street
• the assertion that a curse lay on the victim and that a ritual was needed to remove it
• accompanying the victim into her own home for that ritual
• exploitation of the victim's confusion once inside