A St. Petersburg resident was awarded 36 thousand euros in the ECHR for bullying in a kindergarten 12 years ago.

The ECHR awarded 36 thousand euros to a resident of St. Petersburg for bullying in a kindergarten to which he was subjected in 2005, according to the court’s website. Russia will have to pay three thousand euros as compensation for material damage, 25 thousand for moral damage and another 8 thousand euros for costs and expenses.

It is clarified that we are talking about a young man born in 2001. The interests of the minor were represented by the head of the international legal protection department of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Olga Sadovskaya.

As the human rights organization explains , in the spring of 2005, the parents of a four-year-old child noticed that he became nervous and did not want to attend kindergarten No. 42.

“During the summer holidays, his psychological state improved significantly, and his mood returned to normal. However, as soon as he returned to kindergarten in September, he became nervous again and began to be afraid of the dark and noises,” the CPT reported.

The mother noticed that his eyes began to twitch, and she also discovered a bruise on his temple. One of the teachers explained that the children were given eye drops with the antibiotic sulfacetamide to prevent infection. Subsequently, the boy’s mouth began to twitch, and a neurologist diagnosed him with hyperkinesis—increased excitation of the nervous system.

Then disciplinary punishment was applied to four employees, and the child was transferred to another kindergarten.

“Sasha told his parents how, because he couldn’t sleep during a quiet hour, they put him on a cot in the toilet and turned off the lights, scaring him with rats; another time he was forced to stand in the next room barefoot in his underpants with his hands raised during the entire daytime sleep. He was also sometimes punched in the back. One day the teachers sealed his mouth with duct tape. The boy began to choke and tried to remove the tape, then the teachers tied his hands with duct tape behind his back. Some of the children in his group were also subjected to similar types of punishment. All of them were forbidden to tell their parents about this,” continues the Committee for the Prevention of Torture.

In 2006, the boy’s mother contacted the prosecutor’s office, but a criminal case under Part 1 of Article 112 of the Criminal Code (intentional infliction of moderate harm to health) was opened only in 2009

“Many investigative actions were carried out with unreasonable delays. For example, an on-site verification of the victim’s testimony was organized three years after the events. Considering that at the time of the use of violence against the child he was 4 years old, the very content of this investigative action, carried out with such a delay, raises serious doubts,” emphasizes KPPT lawyer Sadovskaya.

The criminal case was discontinued due to the lack of corpus delicti.