Krestina, Angelina and Maria. The trial of the Khachaturyan sisters divides Russia

It is a case that has divided Russian society for the past two years and will see tomorrow start a trial that promises to run a lot of ink. The trial of the Khachaturyan sisters: Krestina, Angelina and Maria are accused of premeditated and violent killing of their father, after years of sexual abuse. Russian public opinion is divided. Some believe it was self-defense, as the young women argue, and ask for the charge to be changed, others think it was a premeditated and extremely violent murder.

This is actually the thesis defended by the Russian public prosecutor’s office, since the body of Mikhail Khachaturyan was found on the stairs of the building where he lived in the modest Bibirevo neighborhood in Moscow in July 2018, with several injuries, including dozens of wounds in the chest and neck caused by a knife.

The crime was planned on the eve of the day of his death, when his father returned from a psychiatric clinic. Furious to see the room untidy and a strand of blond hair on the floor, Mikhail called the room one by one, accusing the young women of receiving men at home and spraying them with pepper gas, causing terror in the young women. Then he went to nap in a rocking chair. And it was at that moment that Krestina (19 years old), Angelina (18) and Maria (17) decided to attack her father with a hammer, a knife and the same spray that he had used before. The blows woke him up and it was then that one of them stabbed him to death, according to the interrogation transcripts given to the press.

Still according to the prosecution, the sisters tried to cause injuries to themselves to make it look like their father had attacked them before and only later called the police and an ambulance. The next day, they were arrested and confessed to the crime, claiming that they had suffered years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse by their father. They were forbidden to leave the house and had stopped going to school.

“We think they had no other choice. The father drove the girls to despair, their lives were a continuous hell. They cannot be compared to healthy, calm and balanced people. They developed serious mental illnesses, including abuse syndrome and post-traumatic stress. This was confirmed by all the exams “, said one of the sisters’ lawyers, Aleksey Parshin, recalling that the abuses had been perpetuating for four years, since the father had expelled the mother from home, under threat of death to her and her daughters.