Russian Vera Pekhteleva (23) had recently broken up with her boyfriend, when she went to his apartment in the town of Kemevoro on a January day last year to pick up her things. She never came out again.
The 23-year-old is said to have suffered a number of injuries before she was finally strangled. according to Moscow Times the violence must have lasted for 3.5 hours.
The case has made headlines in Russia over the past month, after audio files from neighbors’ emergency calls to the police were published.
According to Sky News called the neighbors seven times for help, without anyone coming. The channel has translated and reproduced one of the recordings:
Neighbor: “Can you hear her screaming behind the door?”
Operator: “What should I do about it?”
A male voice shouts, “Where are the police? She’s fucking killed in there! ”
Operator: “The police are coming, there is no reason to swear.”
The neighbors must finally have managed to break into the apartment. By then, Pekhteleva was already dead. The police had still not sent anyone to the scene.
Police: – Increase in violence in close relationships
Two police officers charged
A transcribed version of the audio recording was published on Facebook at the end of February by women’s rights activist Alena Popova, who claimed she had received the recording from the 23-year-old’s sister. Since then, the recording has been reproduced by a number of Russian media.
– Should police officers be punished for negligence? Of course. But now it is likely that they will get away with it. (…) We can not accept this. All those responsible in the police should be held responsible for Vera’s death, she writes in the post.
Dagbladet has contacted Popova. She has not yet responded to our inquiry.
Pekhteleva’s ex-girlfriend is charged with the murder. Following the publication of the audio recordings, two police officers have also been charged with negligence, for not sending anyone to the scene.
The federal investigative committee in the region concludes in a press release with the police acting “negligently”. The two have not pleaded guilty.
According to Sky News, the ex-girlfriend has stated that he did not intend to kill Pekhteleva. He just wanted to stop her screaming.
– I have tried to stay away from the recordings for a year, but in the end I could not help but hear them. They were shown on TV, says Vladimir Pekhtelev, Vera’s uncle, to the channel.
He believes that the attention around the case has contributed to the authorities now, one year later, having looked more closely at it.
Ingrid (25) skinned by her boyfriend
Large dark numbers
The actual extent of violence against women in Russia is unknown, as the authorities do not keep thorough statistics. And fresh review of relevant cases from the Russian judicial system, it is estimated that at least 5,000 women died after domestic violence in 2018. The authorities’ figures are considerably lower.
In a report from 2018, the human rights organization Human Rights Watch writes that the police often treat victims of domestic violence with hostility, and that they do not register or investigate alerts.
In 2017, President Vladimir Putin signed a law that partially decriminalized certain forms of domestic violence. If the violence does not lead to “serious injuries” and is not repeated more than once a year, this is now punished only with fines, rather than up to two years in prison, which was the penalty before 2017.
In May last year, Russian police and the Interior Ministry claimed that the corona pandemic had led to less domestic violence. Several women’s and human rights organizations claimed that the number of domestic violence cases had more than doubled from March to April.
– The police do nothing when the victims contact them. We know that the abuse is escalating, Marina Pisklakova-Parker added CBS last year.
Pisklakova-Parker founded Russia’s first helpline for domestic violence in the 1990s, and now runs the national center for violence prevention ANNA. She believes it is critical to put in place better legislation and early action by the police to stop the development.
According to NTB, Russia, with its 146 million inhabitants, has only around 200 shelters.
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