The Investigative Committee will appeal the acquittal of a court in St. Petersburg, which acquitted five suspects of rape in one of the city’s orphanages. Such an order was given by the chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, according to the department’s website.
“The Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia instructed his subordinates to initiate the issue of appealing against the verdict of the court,” the ministry said.
The court hearing was held on December 29, the defendants were immediately released from custody.
The court acquitted the accused in the case of sexual abuse in an orphanage
The defendants in the case were the former director of school No. 565 of the Kirovsky district of St. Petersburg Stanislav Vinogradov, the former deputy director of the orphanage Mikhail Elin, former pupils and students of the school Andrei Soloviev, Pavel Prikashchikov and Kirill Pokalyuka. In April 2017, the UK opened a criminal case under the article on sexual intercourse and other acts of a sexual nature with a person under the age of sixteen (Article 132 of the Criminal Code). The department has identified 23 cases of sexual violence committed by the persons involved in relation to children from the orphanage “Center for the Promotion of Family Education No. 8” in the period from 2012 to 2017.
.