Stepfather sentenced to life imprisonment for raping 11-year-old stepdaughter - Prosecutor General
Kyiv • UNN
The court sentenced a stepfather to life imprisonment for raping his stepdaughter over a period of eight months. The victim is the daughter of a Hero of Ukraine who died at the front.
A stepfather who raped a young girl for eight months has been sentenced to life imprisonment. The girl is the biological daughter of a Hero of Ukraine who died at the front while defending the state. This was reported by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Ruslan Kravchenko, according to UNN.
According to Kravchenko, prosecutors in the Kharkiv region proved six episodes of the crime in this case.
The perpetrator gradually gained trust, entered the family, pretended to be caring for a long time, and later committed the violence. The rapist consciously and deliberately chose moments for the abuse when the mother was not at home and he was left alone with the girl
According to him, due to the ordeal, the child became withdrawn, her health deteriorated, and her school performance dropped. She remained silent for a long time but finally mustered the courage to tell her mother. Even after that, the path to justice proved to be difficult.
The mother, upon learning the truth, did not dare to seek help immediately. She did not believe that the system would work, that she would be heard, or that the criminal would be punished.
They went into hiding, endured threats from the man, and lived in fear. Eventually, the child herself called the law enforcement authorities.
A life sentence is exactly the punishment the prosecution insisted upon. For me, this case is not just about a verdict for a specific criminal. It is a verdict on a system in which a victim must hesitate before daring to seek protection and truth. This must change
The Prosecutor General emphasized that the state must protect children even from the possibility of such crimes being committed against them and create a system that works proactively so that crimes against children simply have no place.
A system where every child is protected, signals of danger are not ignored, and help arrives on time. We continue our work