DNIPRO, Ukraine, Aug 3 (Reuters) – When the body of 34-year-old Liubov Borniakova was found at her home in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro in January, it had 75 bruises, according to the coroner’s report. .
Her husband, Yakov Borniakov, had been hiding inside their apartment for the previous month after deserting from the army, according to Borniakova’s aunt and a neighbor. He got drunk and repeatedly hit Borniakova in the two weeks before she died, they told Reuters.
“There was just no place in her that was alive,” said Kateryna Vedrentseva, the aunt, who said she arrived at Borniakova’s home hours after her death on the night of Jan. 8.
“They hit his arms, his head, his legs, everything.”
Reuters could not reach Yakov Borniakov, his lawyer or his family for comment. A Dnipro police spokesman said a criminal investigation was underway into Borniakova’s death, but declined to provide further details.
Recorded cases of domestic violence in Ukraine initially declined after Russia invaded in February 2022, when millions of people fled the fighting.
But, as families have returned to their old homes or resettled in new ones, cases have soared this year, according to previously unreported national police data reviewed by Reuters.
In the first five months of this year, registered cases rose 51% compared to the same period in 2022, the data showed. They were more than a third higher than the previous record in 2020, which experts had linked to pandemic lockdowns.
More than a dozen officials and experts working in the sector told Reuters the increase was the result of increased stress, economic hardship, unemployment and conflict-related trauma. In the vast majority of cases the victims are women, they said.
“(The increase) is due to psychological stress and many hardships. People lost everything,” Ukraine’s gender policy commissioner, Kateryna Levchenko, told Reuters in an interview in May.
Police recorded 349,355 cases of domestic violence between January and May 2023, compared with 231,244 in the same period of 2022 and 190,277 in the first five months of 2021, the data showed.
Most experts and practitioners in the field told Reuters they fear the problem will worsen as long as the war rages on and lingers long after the conflict is over due to traumatized troops returning from the front lines.
CENTRAL AXIS
Dnipro has become a transit point for people fleeing the occupied areas and fighting to the east and south.
After opening in September, a United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)-run government help center for survivors of domestic violence had provided support to 800 people, mostly women, by mid-May.
Of that number, only about 35% filed complaints with the police, according to a social worker at the center, suggesting, as experts and professionals in the field say, that domestic violence may be more widespread than police data indicates. .
Dnipro police did not respond to a request for comment on the data.
Psychologist Tetyana Pogorila, who works at the center, said that for people displaced to Dnipro by the war, being in an unfamiliar place made some victims of domestic violence more dependent on their abusers.
“People come and the family could be living together in one room,” Pogorila said. “Some find work, others don’t and their financial situation deteriorates. Add to this the global situation in the country and anxiety, this increases stress and conflict.”
State resources have also been stretched by the war.
Levchenko, the gender policy commissioner, said some women’s shelters have been repurposed to house people displaced by the fighting and part of the state budget allocated for gender-based violence has been redirected to defense spending.
The funding allocation was reduced to 4.2 million euros this year from around 10 million euros in 2021, it added.
Yulia Usenko, head of the Department for Protection of Children’s Interests and Combating Violence at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, said law enforcement agencies had been alerted to possible problems related to traumatized troops returning from forehead.
The office created a unit to oversee domestic violence court proceedings in February, Usenko said.
But the lack of funds has social service workers worried.
“We expect a very high rate of violence,” said Lilia Kalytiuk, director of the Dnipro center for social services, which runs a refugee shelter.
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Borniakov left the army in November, documents reviewed by Reuters show. He returned to Dnipro, where he began drinking alcohol at home and beating Borniakova, who stopped leaving the house, according to Olga Dmitrichenko, her neighbor.
In the days before her death, Borniakova planned to go to Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, but “didn’t make it,” Dmitrichenko said: “I told her: ‘Go! Go!'”
Borniakova’s three children now live with their cousin a short distance from her grave in Dnipro.
Police had initially closed their investigation into Borniakova’s death after medical experts concluded she had died of heart failure, according to a police report seen by Reuters dated January 27, 2023.
The family’s lawyer, Yulia Seheda, successfully appealed that decision, arguing that the heart attack was induced by heavy blows. A court document dated March 28 showed that the criminal investigation into Borniakova’s death had been reopened.
“If we can at least get a domestic violence charge, it will be a victory,” Seheda said, adding that some judges and police still held the view that domestic violence was a private matter to be resolved between a couple.
A domestic violence conviction carries a maximum of just two years in prison under Ukrainian law; many violators are fined between 170 and 340 hryvnia ($5-10) or receive a community service sentence.
Levchenko, the government commissioner, said the police and judicial system had been reformed since 2015 so that domestic violence was treated as a crime and dedicated law enforcement services had been created.
She said an increase in registered domestic violence cases was partly a reflection of police paying more attention to the problem.
Dmitrichenko, the neighbor, said Borniakova never filed a formal complaint against her husband and did not open the door for police when Dmitrichenko called them in November. Dnipro police did not respond to questions about the incident, which Reuters could not independently confirm.
The family is currently trying to remove her husband’s name from her headstone and replace it with her maiden name.
“His name is Liubov Pilipenko,” Vedrentseva said, on a recent visit to the cemetery.
Reporting by Layli Foroudi; Additional reporting by Olena Harmash in Kyiv; Edited by Mike Collett-White and Daniel Flynn
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