Nearly four in five women convicted of murder in Russia have survived domestic violence
The independent media outlets “Mediazona” and “Novaya Gazeta” have published a joint study on violence against women in Russia. Journalists examined the sentences against women convicted of murder and discovered that 79 percent had been sexually assaulted by those they later killed. The largest concentration of these cases — five percent of all convictions nationally — were in Bashkiria. Likewise, in 52 percent of cases were women were convicted of causing grievous bodily harm to others, the supposed victims were sexual assailants. In 83 percent of all cases where women were convicted of exceeding the limits of self-defense, the women were defending themselves against an abusive partner. According to Russian police statistics, 15,381 women suffered domestic violence in the first nine months of 2019.
Photo on frontpage: Sergey Konkov / TASS / Scanpix / LETA