Lynch's Children's Court in Verkhoshizhemye

      According to lawyer Tatyana Bazhina, representing the interests of 15-year-old Roman Oparin, judging by the "zeal of the police," the case regarding this fight is, at best, "intended to be muddled," and at worst, they are habitually planning to blame all sins on her client, if, of course, the hand-to-hand process of "intimidation and punishment" had not been recorded in detail by the surveillance camera. The attackers were unaware of it, as the café, in front of which Roman had his face and lips smashed to blood, lost a tooth, and suffered a concussion, had only opened a couple of months ago.

      Last Saturday, between two and three in the afternoon, Roman Oparin was walking down Kirova Street in the village of Verkhoshizhemye with a friend when he was confronted by two classmates who, judging by the video recording, struck him dozens of times. It is likely that not only possible drunkenness gave the teenagers a sense of "manliness," but also the awareness of complete impunity, which is often characteristic of children "not of the last people." Especially when the mother of the "active lyncher" works in the local administration.

      The police could not have been unaware that an attack had been made on the child and bodily harm had been inflicted, as the paramedics, who were called for Roman because he could not stand on his feet after the beating, are obliged to report to the "relevant authorities." However, the village surgeon, who "could not provide assistance to the patient" and referred him to the Kirov "trauma center," should have duplicated the report. Nevertheless, neither that day nor the next did the police rush to investigate the situation.

      Roman does not talk about why he was beaten and put on his knees, but it is not difficult to assume what caused the "attack." Let us recall that according to the materials of the criminal case, last autumn a group of six teenagers from Verkhoshizhemye held parties in an empty apartment of one of the private houses on Pervomayskaya Street in the village of Verkhoshizhemye. The boys listened to music, danced, and sometimes stayed overnight, probably to gain their first "adult experience."

      Neighbors, noticing the noise, reported it to the owner of the apartment, who, upon returning home, discovered a broken lock, traces of strangers, and the disappearance of an old Husqvarna chainsaw that had been stored on the porch. Later, a commodity expert assessed its value at four thousand rubles. The teenagers were quickly identified, and they did not deny that Roman had taken the saw, but not for selfish reasons, rather "out of curiosity": he disassembled it to see how it was arranged inside. He threw the parts out onto the street. The parents, apologizing for their son, compensated the owner for the damage caused.

      The police, emphasizing "illegal entry into a dwelling," initiated a criminal case under a "serious article," forwarding it to the Investigative Committee. At the same time, the investigation, for some reason diligently ignoring the "collective entry" and the fact that it was not Roman but his classmate who had opened the door lock, granted the other teenagers the status of "witnesses," attributing a "serious composition" to one Oparin.

      The Soviet court sent Roman to a "special closed institution," the essence of which was determined by the director of the Verkhoshizhemye school, who, laughing, told the crying mother kneeling before her: "Let him lie down, maybe it will help him." Given that the word "lie down" clearly does not refer to a euphemism and directly explains what methods and ways — mostly medicinal — the "educational process" might occur.

      The appellate court categorically disagreed with the sentence, reclassifying the charge to "medium severity," taking into account that there was definitely no break-in on Roman Oparin's part, and that the teenagers had been "freely visiting" the foreign apartment for a month and a half. On March 30, the Regional Court, where it was proven that the boy clearly did not fit the role of a monster or psychopath assigned to him, as he did not curse at teachers and received "absences" for being late to class, transferred the teenager to his mother's custody for one year.

      The appeal also separated the materials with a list of other witnesses who also regularly visited the foreign house, paying special attention to the real "violator of the inviolability of the dwelling." Despite having a "well-connected mother," he will likely have to answer not only under a serious article but also not expect that "intentional harm to health" will transition into the realm of administrative responsibility.

      On April 13, Roman Oparin's mother filed a lawsuit for compensation for moral damages from each of her son's attackers. As Tatyana Bazhina explained, the appeal to the court is more related to the intention to confirm and establish the real fact of the attack on the teenager, so that the investigation would find it "harder to slip out of the case" in the presence of an established fact. There is also an objective risk that the investigation might again possibly ignore the facts of the teenager's non-involvement in the crime and make her client guilty. For whom, in the case of a repeated conviction, a "real term" would await.