Russia’s media watchdog says state TV airing leaked photos of historian’s underage foster daughter isn’t a rights violation

Russia’s media and censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, has determined that the state television channel Rossiya didn’t violate the rights of historian Yuri Dmitriev’s underage foster daughter by airing nude photos of her leaked from a court case file, Karelia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Gennady Saraev wrote on his page on the social media site Odnoklassniki.

According to Saraev, Roskomnadzor’s response pointed out that the “photographs were subjected to special processing, they were covered with double computer retouching, which excludes the possibility of identifying both the child herself and the individual fragments of the images that fall under the definition of pornographic materials.”

That said, the children’s rights commissioner maintained that he considers it unacceptable “to use pronographic photographs of a child to attract public attention” to Dmitriev’s case.

The photographs of Dmitriev’s underage foster daughter — which have served as the main pieces of evidence in the criminal case against him — were aired during an episode of the legal and crime news program Vesti Dezhurnaya chast’ on October 26, 2020. On October 29, the Karelian Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling in Dmitriev’s case and sentenced him to 13 years in prison on criminal charges of sexually assaulting a minor.