News

One of the priorities for the Russia’s Investigative Committee is solving and investigating crimes committed against socially unprotected groups of people, especially children. Protecting underage citizens of the Russian Federation from criminal encroachments is still an object of constant and close attention and an invariable principle in the work of the Committee.

Investigation of crimes committed against underage children, who sometimes become objects of crimes in their early years, is hard, but extremely important work. In 2012, investigators of the Russia’s Investigative Committee solved 13,811 crimes committed against underage children, including 489 murders, 1,080 rapes, 2,581 violent sex crimes, 3,750 other sexual abuses. Many of the victims are children of 13, 10 or even under 1. People were shocked at the tragic story with 8-months-old Anya Shkaptsova, who was murdered by her own parents. At first her father beat her and together with her mother they watched how the girl was dying during several days lying on the blanket in the bathroom. Even this was not the end of their cruelty as they pretended to be grieved, when all the country watched and holding the child’s toys begged people to help.

However, consistent work gives its results. Of course it is a positive tendency that a number of violent crimes against children between 2008 and 2012 have dropped off. In 2008, there were registered 62,175 such crimes, while in 2012 – 45,965. But, there are alarming tendencies as well. Special concern is arisen by the growing number of such crimes committed by close relatives of the victims. More than 6 thousand violent crimes in 2012 were committed by the children’s relatives, by parents – 4,580 crimes, in 2008 by relatives – 4,598 crimes, by parents – 3,471. This way we can say that the inter-family violence has grown by 37%. Another urgent problem is crimes committed by staff of orphanages and children’s homes. Tortures and physical violence against abandoned children committed by those people, who are to return to the underage faith in adults, hardly can leave anybody untouched. But senior residents can be even more violent in their actions than adults. At present, a criminal case is under investigation in Amur Region against two female residents of a boarding school for abandoned children. Two girls aged 16 and 17 systematically beat 7- and 9-year-old residents and filmed the process by a cell phone cam.

Another pressing problem is missing children, as the missing child is often helpless and can easily become a victim of a crime. The Investigative Committee pays special attention to each fact when the underage child gets missing. Although there is a tendency towards reduced number of missing children, the situation remains very hard. In 2008, in Russia 21,928 underage children (including 5,561 small children), 68 people were missing and 21,928 became victims to the crimes. 24,592 underage were searched in connection with their leaving their homes, boarding schools, special schools, schools and temporary isolation centers for underage criminals. 1,631 underage were missing (including 533 small children). In 2013 the number of missing children amounted to 13,455, including 3,999 children under 14. 30 underage, including 11 children under 14 became victims of crimes. In searching for missing children great importance is attached to efficient cooperation between both law enforcement bodies and voluntary organizations and ordinary people. For this purpose, the leadership of the Russia’s Investigative Committee have given orders to each investigator to be in constant contact with local voluntary organizations, in order to make working contacts with their coordinators if needed. In addition, a number of offers of the Investigative Committee have been included in the Presidential Decree “On national strategy of actions in the interests of children in 2012-2017”.

Leadership of the Russia’s Investigative Committee pays special attention to the crimes committed against underage citizens of Russia beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. At the moment investigators are leading criminal investigations into crimes against young Russian citizens in the territory of USA and Greece. Investigators are carrying out all the necessary operations in the case of 11-year-old Nikita Onishchenko, who hardly survived the attack of an animator on Crete. Request on submitting full copies of the criminal files, the documents permitting the Dutch animator to work in the hotel, and all the medical documents has already been sent to the GreekRepublic. The requests on the same medical documents from Germany have already been prepared as well. Investigators are also going to send a request in the Netherlands to find relatives of Sirino Shriver and question them whether he has any mental disorders. The Russia’s Investigative Committee will carry on defending interests of Russian citizens both in the territory of the Russian Federation and beyond, whichever country the crimes takes place in.