"He'll never hit her again."

The story of Oksana Goncharova - a journalist who is accused of murdering her former common-law husband

Journalist Oksana Goncharova was brutally beaten by the father of her children for more than 10 years - her friends and colleagues talk about this. They saw how she came to work with bruises and contusions, and they themselves called the police when her ex-partner locked Oksana at home.

At the end of September, the man died. Before this, he once again came to Oksana’s home and, according to her, attacked her with scissors. Goncharova says she tried to fight back. Now she has been in jail for more than a month and is awaiting trial on a murder charge. “Layout” tells how a business media journalist found herself in a situation of domestic violence and why she could not leave her abuser.

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“The main thing is to try not to kill him.”

On the night of December 26, 2020, several incomprehensible posts appeared on Facebook* of Oksana Goncharova, a journalist and former employee of Vedomosti and RBC. First she wrote: “Friends savesay.” Then: “right now.”

Some friends guessed that Oksana was once again attacked by her former common-law husband Alexey Samusev. One of her friends recalls that, having seen these posts, she called the police to Goncharova’s address.

What happened next, no one knows exactly. In the morning, Goncharova erased those messages and wrote a new post : “Friends, I scared everyone yesterday. My situation is really difficult, and I must give credit to the police - they helped me many times. The point is different. If I lock up this bastard, a bottle will fly into my apartment. In winter. Broken window. Children. This is cold, and these are his friends who love and respect him very much. The problem is not one person. It's systemic . But I can handle it. I swear."

Friends and colleagues say that this happened more than once: Goncharova wrote posts calling for help, and the police were called to her. According to them, the security forces came and escorted Samusev out of the apartment. Oksana deleted posts asking for help, thanked her friends, and then everything was repeated.

In the comments they wrote to her: “Alas, good girls often fall under the aggression of bad boys. The girls are not to blame, they were raised that way. Meanwhile, the boys were taught to fight. This is the result: boys, in the absence of war, arrange it in their families. The main thing is to try not to kill him. If you suddenly have nowhere to run, grab the children and come to us.”

On September 29, Alexey Samusev died. Oksana was detained and placed in a pre-trial detention center. She was charged with murder. As her lawyer Alexander Garanin says, during interrogation Oksana said that that day Alexey once again came to her home without an invitation. He drank vodka, swore, got into a fight and grabbed scissors from the table. According to Oksana, she tried to defend herself and accidentally made an awkward movement.

Oksana has been in custody for almost two months. In October, she asked to be released under house arrest, but the court left the journalist in pre-trial detention. She has two small children waiting for her at home. The youngest is three years old.

"We all had a dream"

Oksana Goncharova grew up in the Volgograd region. In her posts, she said that she missed the forest and the river, where she went with her mother as a child. After school, Goncharova entered the Faculty of Journalism at Volgograd State University. In her fifth year, her son Peter was born. Oksana’s mother helped raise him. The child's father did not participate in their life.

“It was difficult for Oksana, but nevertheless she studied well and passed all the exams,” recalls her classmate Saglara Mandzhieva. — We entered together, I studied there for two years, then transferred to Moscow State University. Oksana also moved to Moscow after graduating from university. She is well versed in her topics and is very meticulous, so she was able to get a job at Vedomosti and worked there for many years.”

Saglara recalls that Oksana, like many of her other friends, really wanted her to have her own home. “We all wandered around in different corners, and, of course, we all had a dream: to somehow buy our own home,” says Mandzhieva. “Oksana couldn’t buy living space in Moscow, but she had enough for an apartment in Elektrostal.”

It was there, as friends say, that Oksana met Alexei Samusev. He was her neighbor on the landing. They began an affair, although, according to Mandzhieva, between Oksana and Alexei “there was a huge gap.”

“I don’t even know if he’s read a single book in his life,” says Saglara. “But let’s just say he had good looks.” Oksana, of course, achieved everything herself, but it was hard for her. And when you are alone with a child and a man appears who begins to show signs of attention... I think that was the point. In addition, at the beginning of their relationship there were probably some feelings and no conflicts. True, this period was very short and lasted maybe a couple of months. And then he turned Oksana’s life into endless hell.”

“He beat her, and everyone accepted this as the norm”

On Samusev’s page in Odnoklassniki there is a post from 2013: “Unfortunately, only misfortune makes you understand who is close to you and who was just walking around.”

The photographs show a young man, often surrounded by friends, at a feast or in nature, sometimes with a glass or glass in his hand. In one of the photographs from 2011, he, dressed in light clothes, hugs Oksana and smiles, Oksana also looks pleased.

This is how Alexei, at first glance, seemed pleasant and “normal” to Peter, Goncharova’s eldest son, when they met. Peter was 9 or 10 years old at the time - he doesn’t remember exactly. Oksana just bought an apartment in Elektrostal and was able to move her son, who had previously lived with his grandmother near Volgograd.

Peter knew about Alexei even before the move. In the podcast “A Man Has a Right,” Goncharova’s eldest son recalls: “Mom called me, and I heard him in the background, I also talked to him.”

On the day when Peter and his grandmother arrived in Moscow, Oksana met them at the station, and Alexey was with her. “His image is still in my head,” Peter says in the podcast. — His suit was all white. The first impression was normal."

But soon, the young man recalls, his opinion about Alexei changed. There were conflicts and altercations at home. “I began to gradually recognize him as a person, and he was not close to me,” says Peter. “I didn’t follow his example, it wasn’t like he could give me anything, he was just my stepfather, he lived with my mother, but not stably. He lives for a month and goes away, and this has been the case for all the years that my mother has known him, and she has known him since about 2006-2007, and there has been no stability all this time. But there were conflicts and showdowns.”

According to Peter, he got it from his stepfather more than once - he tried to “educate” him with slaps on the head, he could “hit him for a bad grade,” “intimidate him, drive him into a corner.” Oksana “tried to explain to him that we need to communicate with children differently.” Samusev verbally agreed, and then took up his task again.

At what point the “stepfather” began to beat Oksana, Peter does not remember. But I am sure that this happened a long time ago and very often:

“He bullied her constantly. She wanted to leave this environment, because the whole yard here is like that. They all, his friends, grew up together and all took the side of this man. The fact that he beat her, beat her, everyone accepted this as the norm . The psychological impact was constant. <…> She hated this man, she did not forgive him and did not think that he would improve.”

As Peter recalls in a conversation with Vorstka, Oksana tried to break up with Samusev, stopped communicating with him, “repeatedly asked him to leave her life.” But he ignored her words: “Like a maniac, he watched her at the entrance, at the kindergarten, knew her typical routes and kept watch everywhere. He didn’t want to leave and tormented her.”

When Samusev came to Oksana’s house, it was very difficult not to let him in, explains Peter. The “stepfather” swore, knocked down the door, intimidated Oksana and calmed down only when she let him in.

It was also difficult to run and hide. Alexey still lived on the same landing, and all the neighbors knew him and were ready to support him. Oksana had no relatives either in Elektrostal or in Moscow.

At the same time, Alexey Samusev’s mother - Peter calls her Aunt Lyuba - communicated with the family and took her son’s side in all conflicts: “For her, Alexey was always right, and my mother was always to blame.”

According to Peter, Samusev broke Oksana’s nose and ribs, beat off her legs, and tore out her hair. She contacted the police more than once and filmed the beatings, but the police “sent replies that there was no evidence of a crime.” “ He didn’t beat you, just don’t let him in, ” this is what Peter claims the police told his mother.

Despite the scandals and fights, during the years that Oksana lived in Elektrostal, she and Alexey had two children - Matvey and Arseny. According to Peter, Oksana worked a lot with her younger sons, making sure that they were actively developing. All together - Oksana and three sons - they went to the stadium to play sports.

The calmest times in the family’s life, Peter says, were those when Samusev was arrested - Oksana and the children could relax for a while. As “Verstka” found out, over the past 15 years, Samusev has been given administrative penalties more than once for violations of administrative supervision, which is established for former prisoners, for appearing in a public place while intoxicated, and for beatings. Also, from 2010 to 2016, the court found him guilty of criminal charges four times. For example, in 2010 he was sent to a colony for 3.5 years for robbery and “causing harm to health.”

Returning from the colony or from arrest, Samusev each time again began to harass and intimidate Oksana. Peter believes that his mother wanted to change something, leave Elektrostal and completely forget about Samusev. But “ psychologically I couldn’t get out of it .”

Oksana twice - in 2020 and 2021 - filed applications with Magistrate Ekaterina Smirnova against Samusev. But she refused to consider allegations of beatings and causing minor harm to health.

At the same time, the same judge twice convicted Samusev for threats to kill in 2019 and gave him suspended sentences, despite several previous convictions. The text of the verdicts does not indicate the name of the victim, but judging by the description of the circumstances, Oksana was also the victim. In one case, Samusev pinned the victim at the entrance door and threatened her with a knife, putting it to the woman’s neck or chest , and then punched her in the face several times. Another time, he threatened her with an unidentified sharp object, hitting the woman twice in the neck area and another time in the shoulder.

Now Oksana’s eldest son is 23 years old. After his mother ended up in a pre-trial detention center, the search for a lawyer and financial responsibility for the family fell on his shoulders. Remembering how 14 years ago a man in a white suit met him at the station, Peter does not understand “how he could have perceived him normally then. He was born in 86, lived all his life in Elektrostal and tried to portray himself as a bandit.”

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"Terrible place, terrible apartment"

Her friends knew that Oksana had beatings and scandals going on at home. Saglara Mandzhieva says that a couple of years after meeting Samusev, Oksana “didn’t have a single intact rib left,” her nose was broken, and “her teeth were repeatedly knocked out.”

“I came to Oksana in Elektrostal and saw with my own eyes an apartment drenched in blood. In the literal sense of the word,” says Mandzhieva.

Colleagues at Vedomosti say that they tried many times to take measures to help Goncharova, but nothing helped.

“Oksana worked in my department and often came to work beaten,” recalls former editor of Vedomosti Inna Kravchenko. “Sometimes she called and said that she couldn’t come because her husband locked her at home. For many years this happened before our eyes. She literally came with a black eye, cried, and we all consoled her as best we could. They tried to support her, told her to leave him. On the other hand, how can you force an adult?”

Kravchenko recalls that it was very difficult to watch Oksana’s torment. “Sometimes something so serious would happen that we would go to the editor-in-chief’s aquarium and try to discuss how we could help,” she says. “We collected money for her and helped with legal advice. Then he [Alexey] calmed down for a while. And then everything continued. And he became more active, as I understand it, he was under the influence of alcohol.”

Another colleague of Oksana Goncharova at Vedomosti, Alexandra Astakhova, recalls that she learned about what was happening when they no longer worked together.

“She wrote some fragmentary posts: “Here he comes again, please call the police,” says Astakhova. — It was about three years ago. It was clear that the man had a big problem right now. There are also such posts when a person writes and misses the letters. It is clear that horror is happening. Then she deleted them."

After one of these posts, Astakhova contacted mutual friends to find out Oksana’s address and called the police there.

“Apparently, I was not the only one who did this,” says Astakhova. — A few days later, Oksana wrote a post that everything ended well, because the police arrived and he left. I wrote to her in a personal message, and she told me that he beats her, hurts her children, and all this has been going on for many years.”

Astakhova recalls: that day she listened to Oksana and gave her contacts of several organizations that help women in situations of domestic violence. Her former colleague does not know whether Goncharova applied there.

Other subscribers also advised the journalist to contact specialized NGOs and noted in the comments under her posts human rights activist Mari Davtyan and Anna Rivina from “Violence. No". But more often, acquaintances advised the journalist to simply run away from the house, where Samusev could break into at any moment.

Saglara Mandzhieva recalls that she also repeatedly convinced Oksana to move out of that ill-fated apartment in Elektrostal.

“I kept saying that she needed to go to Moscow or to my friends’ dacha, where he wouldn’t pester her every day,” says Saglara. - But she had a mortgage. She answered: “Where am I going, I can’t sell this apartment, because it’s on a mortgage, I can’t rent it out, because no one will live in this Elektrostal. This is a terrible place, a terrible apartment. Who will live here?” There was such hopelessness. I said: well, to hell with renting out this apartment, just close it and run from there.”

But, as Saglara explains, it was difficult for Oksana to decide and organize a move with two small children. On the one hand, they were “like light in a window” for her. On the other hand, they were deprived of mobility. “When you’re like a cornered horse, when you’re stressed both at work and at home, it’s probably really, really hard to change anything,” says Mandzhieva. “You should have just taken her by the scruff of the neck and transported her somewhere without asking.”

"The blow was pretty weak"

In September 2022, Oksana’s eldest son Pyotr Goncharov traveled with a friend. On September 29, Aunt Lyuba called him and said: “Your mother cut Alyosha.” The next morning it turned out that Alexei had died. Peter immediately went home.

Oksana’s relatives and friends learned about what exactly happened that day only later, when her lawyer got acquainted with the testimony that the journalist gave to the investigator.

She said that on September 29 she was at home with her children. Samusev came to her apartment without asking, along with his friend Maxim, and they started drinking vodka. A quarrel began, Alexey threw Oksana’s phone at the wall and hit her. She demanded that he leave, she was afraid that Samusev “might beat him up badly.” But he didn't listen to her. Oksana said that she asked Maxim for help, but he refused to take his friend out of the apartment.

Alexey began to beat Oksana and grabbed the scissors that were lying on the coffee table. Oksana intercepted them to defend herself. “But, apparently, the scissors slipped into the soft part of the body, closer to the collarbone. Alexey did not let go of my hand at that moment, so the blow to him was quite weak,” she said.

After that, Samusev left. Oksana said during the investigation that he was conscious and could move normally - he even kicked her again before leaving the apartment . Only after some time did she hear that an ambulance had arrived at the house, and then the police. Alexey died, and the journalist was detained and soon sent to a pre-trial detention center. Oksana was charged with murder.

"It's a whole life"

Peter, returning to Elektrostal, no longer found his mother at home. He met with the investigator and took Oksana's personal belongings.

“She wore a ‘Save and Preserve’ bracelet on her left hand, I constantly saw it on her,” says Peter. - And then they return it to me along with the keys and credit card. I understood that my mother was alive, but it felt like I had lost her. It took an emotional toll. The thing is there, but the person is not.”

Despite his depressed state, he pulled himself together and told Oksana’s friends about what had happened. They gathered an initiative group in her support and announced a collection of money for a lawyer.

In October, a hearing was held in the Moscow Regional Court on the defense’s complaint against Goncharova’s arrest. She participated in the meeting remotely - via video link. Oksana asked to be placed under house arrest and said that she was worried about the children and wanted to be close to them.

“I would really like to continue helping my children financially. The victim had a large alimony debt, no one ever helped me, it was up to me to provide for the children,” she said. Goncharova also mentioned that the youngest child has anemia and needs special care. In such a situation, she said, the mother would cope better than a stranger. But Oksana was left in pre-trial detention. It took the judge no more than five minutes to make a decision.

If Oksana is convicted of murder, she could face up to 15 years in prison. Goncharova’s lawyer, Alexander Garanin, still hopes that the court will take into account “what the father of her children did to Oksana, especially what he did to her on the day of her death.” If the judge agrees that Oksana was forced to defend herself, then, according to the lawyer, there is a chance that the article will be reclassified as “self-defense.” In this case, the punishment should be less severe—even a suspended sentence is possible.

The lawyer says that he saw his client four times and noticed that she had a “good attitude.” She hopes that she will be allowed visits with her eldest son.

Since the moment of her arrest, Peter has seen Oksana only once - at the trial as part of her arrest. “When I saw her, I knew that to some extent her ordeal was over,” he says. - Emotional, psychological, physical - she suffered from it all, but, unfortunately, she suffered from it in the most difficult way imaginable. She was very, very tired, her physical and emotional resources were running out. Now we communicate by letters. I would like to have a short-term meeting.”

The youngest children Matvey and Arseny have not seen their mother since September 29. Now they live with their grandmother, Alexei’s mother. “Arseny is three years old, he doesn’t understand much, but he constantly asks where his mother is,” says Peter. — Matvey, despite his age, accepted everything like a man. He understands perfectly why this happened, he says: “He drove my mother.”

Oksana’s friend Saglara admits: upon learning of Samusev’s death, she experienced mixed feelings. On the one hand, a tragedy occurred. On the other hand, now Oksana is at least safe. “Lord, you probably can’t say that,” says Saglara. “But I realized that he would never hit her again.” We really hope that the court will take into account how much harm he caused to her and the children over 15 years. It’s been her whole life, you know?”

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Cover collage: Rim Saifutdinov

Editorial "Layout"