The eldest son of Oksana Goncharova, 23-year-old Pyotr Goncharov, recalls that on September 28, 2022, he and his friends were on their way to Lipetsk, when a friend called him and said that his mother and stepfather had once again quarreled, after which his mother was taken to the police and stepfather to the hospital. “Then I felt that something bad had happened, and in the morning it turned out that a tragedy had happened,” Peter says in an interview with Forbes Woman.
On that day, according to Oksana’s testimony (the lawyer told the editors about this), her ex-civil husband Alexei Samusev came to her apartment without an invitation with his friend Maxim. She had to let Samusev in, because he did not know how to accept refusals: he cursed, broke down the door. “Knowing that his mother needed Internet access to work, he could break her phone or cut the Internet cable,” recalls Petr.
Aleksey Samusev and a friend were drinking in the kitchen; in addition to Goncharova, there were two of their common sons in the apartment: ten-year-old Matvey and four-year-old Arseny. At some point, a quarrel began, the drunk Aleksey attacked Oksana, broke her phone, and then took up the scissors. Oksana was able to intercept them and strike them. “Alexey did not let go of my hand at that moment, but, apparently, the scissors slipped into the soft part of the body, closer to the collarbone,” she said during interrogation, the lawyer says. According to the testimony of the journalist, she did not imagine that she could inflict a mortal wound, because Samusev kicked her in response and left the apartment. Soon an ambulance arrived at the house, and a little later, the police, who took Goncharova to the police station. Samusev died the next day.
After talking with a lawyer, son and girlfriend of Oksana Goncharova and talking with other experts, Forbes Woman talks about the criminal case and whether there is a chance for his retraining.
Case of Goncharova
On February 21, 2023, five months after the journalist was detained, the Investigative Committee of the city of Elektrostal completed the investigation of the criminal case and charged Oksana Goncharova with premeditated murder.
“Now we are getting acquainted with the case, after that we will file a petition that we do not agree with the charge and demand that it be retrained in self-defense, since Samusev (Goncharova’s former roommate) was the first to inflict bodily harm on her,” explains the journalist’s lawyer Alexander Garanin in a conversation with Forbes Woman.
When Goncharova was taken to the police station, she was assigned a state lawyer, who did not explain to her that she could insist that she defended herself and not admit guilt. “Well, you hit, admit it,” said the lawyer, and Goncharova obeyed. Now this is the main obstacle to her acquittal, says Garanin: “You admitted your guilt once, and the investigation no longer cares what you say.”
Not only the confession of guilt does not work in favor of Goncharova. The prosecution’s key witness, Maxim, Samusev’s friend with whom they had drinks in her apartment, insists that there was no quarrel between Samusev and Goncharova that evening. However, according to the lawyer, Maxim is also in conflict with the accused, since a year before the tragedy he stole her bank card, spent the money and received a year of probation as a punishment. “We tell the investigator that this witness is not objective, because he did not compensate Oksana for the damage from the crime and he has reason to slander her. Unfortunately, the investigator does not want to listen to us,” says lawyer Alexander Garanin. “We asked to check the witness and Oksana on a polygraph, but the investigation also refused,” he adds.
In her testimony, Goncharova claims that Samusev was the first to take the scissors and leave a cut on her back, so the lawyer asked for an examination to find out how long ago the cut had formed, but the investigators also refused him this, citing the fact that “the cut has no relation to the matter.”
Now the temporary guardian of her sons Arseny and Matvey – the brother of the deceased Alexei Samusev – wants to deprive her of parental rights and establish permanent custody of the children. Before the incident, he did not participate in their life in any way. The last time the eldest son Peter managed to get in touch with his brothers was in January 2023. The first court hearing in the case was held on March 6, the next is scheduled for April.
No strength to leave
Oksana met Alexei in 2007 in Elektrostal: he turned out to be her neighbor at the entrance to the house where she took an apartment on a mortgage. At first, everything was calm, recalls son Peter, who at that time was seven years old: “I grew up without a father. Perhaps I just wanted to have a complete family, so I thought that everything was fine with my stepdad. But then I got frustrated.”
Peter recalls that he was afraid to do homework: “If I made the slightest mistake, my stepfather made me solve the entire collection of math problems, even if we had not yet covered new topics. If I refused, he drove me into a corner, liked to take the belt. I ran to his mother, Lyubov Petrovna, who lived next door, she told Alexei: “Don’t touch him, this is not your child.”
Not only Peter got it, but also his mother Oksana – Samusev beat her. “From the age of 15, I began to protect my mother when he rushed at her – my strength already allowed. We lived calmly only when he left,” says Peter.
Domestic violence usually does not start immediately, Marina Burmistrova, a senior psychologist at the Nizhny Novgorod Women’s Crisis Center, notes in a conversation with Forbes Woman: “First a rude word, then a displeased look, then a verbal insult, some kind of push, a slap or a slap in the face. Gradually it comes to beatings, but the woman adapts, tries to explain to herself the behavior of the author of violence. When she is ready to leave, she simply does not have the strength for this jerk.
“When we first met Oksana, she was punchy, and in recent years it has been very difficult to motivate her. She did not have faith in her own strength, that she could cut this “Gordian knot” of cruelty, ”Goncharova’s former colleague at the TrendFox PR agency Olga Pavlikova confirms the words of the psychologist.
Although Goncharova left Samusev (when exactly this happened, Peter does not remember), she could not forget about him: they lived in the same entrance, he constantly visited her, guarded at the house. The author of violence is just as dependent on the victim as she is on him, psychologist Marina Burmistrova explains: “He does not know how to interact with the world in a different way, he only knows how to pour his tension on another. He is unable to deal with his anger and feelings. Finding a new person who will tolerate this kind of treatment is difficult and time consuming, so he tries to keep the former partner around for as long as possible.
“For a long time I did not know that Oksana was being beaten, she carefully concealed it. Only sometimes she said that her ex-husband was preventing her from living, ”Olga Pavlikova, a former colleague of Goncharova, told Forbes Woman.
Psychologist Marina Burmistrova explains that women hide the fact that they are being abused for two main reasons: “Firstly, a woman takes responsibility for everything that happens to herself. Secondly, shame interferes with her. As long as a woman is silent about what is happening in her family, this is the weapon of her abuser. When she starts talking about violence, it becomes her weapon, but it is very difficult for a woman to cross this barrier, it seems that the whole world will condemn her.
Requests for help
Oksana Goncharova worked for the daily business newspaper Vedomosti for almost 12 years, collaborating with RBC. Her publications are still stored on the website of the publication in the sections “Career” and “Management”. In June 2017, Goncharova became a department head at the creative PR agency TrendFox, having worked in her position for two years. At the time of the tragedy, Oksana Goncharova collaborated with Avito – she wrote texts on her main topic.
On the night of December 26, 2020, a year and a half before the tragedy, Oksana Goncharova’s Facebook page (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist in Russia and banned in Russia), strange posts appeared, recalls former colleague Olga Pavlikova: “Oksana asked for help. This was seen by the clients of our company, who were her friends. They called me and said something terrible was going on. We found Oksana’s address and started calling the police, saying that the woman was being killed. They answered us with a mockery: “Today, will all Oksana’s friends call or not all?” Looks like no one came to help. The police have already stopped responding to calls to them.”
The next morning, Goncharova deleted all these posts and wrote: “Friends, I scared everyone yesterday. My situation is really difficult, and I must pay tribute to the police – they helped me many times. The point is different. If I put this bastard in jail (I already have a case in court), a bottle will fly into my apartment. In winter. Broken window. Children. It is cold, and these are his friends, who love and respect him very much. The problem is not with one person. She is systemic. But I can handle. I swear.”
The Ministry of Internal Affairs refused Goncharova to initiate a criminal case against Samusev at least nine times, starting in 2014 (copies of the refusal orders are at the disposal of Forbes Woman). Goncharova stated that Samusev threatened her with violence, sent threats via SMS, grabbed her by the hair and beat her against the wall, put a knife to her throat, strangled her, and broke windows in a neighbor’s apartment where Oksana ran away from him. As a result, the police investigator concluded that “in the actions of Samusev A.I. there is no crime.”
Olga Pavlikova says that she persuaded Goncharova to leave the apartment where the journalist lived next door to her ex-civil husband, but she replied that her “mortgage interfered” – Oksana managed to pay for the apartment right on the eve of the incident. “Oksana had no living relatives, she had no one to go to. She also has three children, she supports them all,” says Pavlikova. – Recently, Oksana often asked to find her temporary housing. When my colleagues and I finally found him in September, we could not get through to her. Then they got through to Petya (son). It turned out that we didn’t make it.”
Death or prison
In Russia, domestic violence is not criminalized. The relevant bill has not even been adopted for consideration. In addition, in 2017, beatings were decriminalized – this crime was considered an administrative offense if it was committed for the first time. Some women have to endure beatings and threats for years, sometimes it comes to such life-threatening situations when it is no longer possible to defend themselves without consequences for themselves or the aggressor. Hence the infamous self-defense stories that sometimes result in the perpetrator of the violence dying and the woman on trial for murder.
In 2019, journalists from Mediazona (the publication is included in the register of foreign media agents) and Novaya Gazeta analyzed more than 4,000 sentences from 2016 to 2018 and found that four out of five women (79%) convicted of murder ( part 1 of article 105 of the Criminal Code), protected themselves from domestic violence; in 97% of cases, the murder weapon was a kitchen knife.
From 2011 to 2019, among all women killed in Russia, 65.8% were victims of domestic violence, and in 2021 – 71.7%. The situation was aggravated by the pandemic: due to self-isolation, couples had to spend a lot of time with each other, and women were locked at home with rapists. Partners in Russia kill 92% of victims of domestic violence, found out the Consortium of Women’s NGOs. He, having studied the sentences for serious crimes, found out that in 2020 and 2021, 2,680 women died from domestic violence.
Women who killed a partner can still hope for an acquittal. Galina Kotova from Vladivostok stabbed her husband when he was strangling her. She spent 10 months in a pre-trial detention center, was sentenced to three years in prison, but the court of second instance acquitted her. Tatyana Vorobyeva from the Volgograd region was sentenced to two years in prison for stabbing her drunken roommate in the chest after he attacked her, began to beat and choke her. The Supreme Court overturned previous court decisions and dropped the criminal case against Vorobyova.
The most high-profile case of domestic violence is the case of sisters Angelina, Maria and Krestina Khachaturyan, who, according to investigators, killed their father Mikhail Khachaturyan in 2018 by attacking him with a knife while he was sleeping in a chair. They pleaded guilty and talked about years of physical and sexual abuse by their father. Despite this, the investigation charged the girls with a murder committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy. Under this article, sisters can face up to 20 years in prison. The process became resonant, after which the Prosecutor General’s Office drew attention to it. In December 2020, prosecutors refused to approve the indictment of the investigators and ordered the Investigative Committee to reclassify the “murder” as “necessary defense”. A few months later, in March 2021, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against their late father, and in August 2021, the Khachaturian sisters were recognized as victims, ruling that they developed post-traumatic stress disorder due to abuse. But so far their own business has not been retrained.
As Aleksey Liptser, Angelina Khachaturyan’s lawyer, explained to Forbes Woman, the main difficulty in reclassifying a murder case as self-defense is that “our investigation proceeds from the fact that it is necessary to initiate a case under the most serious article, and “we’ll figure it out later.” Unfortunately, this leads to the fact that in the future the investigators are simply afraid to change the article to a less serious one or reclassify the charge, because they believe that they will be suspected of some kind of their own interest.
Initiating a case immediately under a serious article is also a mechanism of pressure, says Liptser: “So it is possible to identify a person in a pre-trial detention center, where it is easier to force him to confess. In a good way, it is necessary to understand what preceded the events, what harm was done to the person before his actions, how systematic and dangerous this harm was. Including with the help of forensic psychiatric examinations.”
Oksana Goncharova has a chance to be released, her lawyer Alexander Garanin believes: “She had bodily injuries, they are recorded in the criminal case file. The personality of the deceased also leaves much to be desired: he was convicted three times. We can say that Oksana was really aware of the threat to her life and health.”
But Aleksey Liptser is pessimistic: according to him, the reclassification of cases of premeditated murder into self-defense is extremely rare, and the situation in which Oksana Goncharova finds herself is difficult: the journalist faces from 7 to 15 years in prison.
The editors of Forbes Woman wrote a letter to Oksana Goncharova in jail. After receiving a response, with the permission of Goncharova, the letter will be published.
