Outrage in Russia as abused teen sisters charged with murder

One evening last summer, Mikhail Khachaturyan decided that his living room wasn't tidy enough, so he summoned his three teenage daughters one by one and doused each with pepper spray.

There was little unusual about this evening in the Khachaturyan household, according to court records, except for one thing: The sisters decided they couldn't take the violence and abuse anymore.

They waited until their father fell asleep in his rocking chair and attacked him with a kitchen knife and a hammer. He put up a fight, but died within minutes.

The Khachaturyan sisters, now aged 18, 19 and 20, were charged last month with premeditated murder, in a case that has drawn outrage and shone a light on the way the Russian justice system handles domestic violence and sexual abuse cases.

More than 200,000 people have signed an online petition urging the prosecutors to drop the murder charges, which could land the sisters in prison for up to 20 years.

Supporters of the sisters have protested outside Russian embassies in more than 20 locations abroad, and a theater has staged a performance in solidarity.

They had planned a major rally in central Moscow on Saturday, but said they had to cancel it, citing the City Hall refusal to provide security for the gathering.

"The Khachaturyan case is quite indicative of the general situation with domestic violence and how the Russian state responds to this problem," says Yulia Gorbunova, who authored an extensive report on domestic violence for Human Rights Watch last year.

Pressured by conservative family groups, President Vladimir Putin in 2017 signed a law decriminalizing some forms of domestic violence, which has no fixed definition in the Russian legislation.

Police routinely turn a blind eye to cases of domestic abuse, while preventive measures, such as restraining orders, are either lacking or not in wide use.

Court filings showed that the Khachaturyan sisters were repeatedly beaten by their father, a war veteran, and sexually abused.

He had kept a stockpile of knifes, guns and rifles at home despite having been diagnosed with a neurological disorder, and was known to shoot indoors. He repeatedly threatened neighbors and family with violence.

The Khacharutyan sisters' lawyers say the girls were driven to the edge.

"The first day we met," Krestina's lawyer Alexei Liptser said, "she said she's better off here, in jail, than living at home the way she had been."
"We have no protection," she says. "We will either get raped or we will get thrown into prison if we defend ourselves."
"The choice for these women was either to die or they had to protect themselves to the best of their ability."
But despite its detrimental effect on domestic violence victims, the measure sparked a rare public debate on domestic violence and abuse in a country where a proverb goes: "If he beats you, that means he loves you."