The case of the priest Grozovsky

Gleb Viktorovich Grozovsky was born on March 19, 1979 in Leningrad into a large family of the director of the Leningrad television , the former actor of the Alexandrinsky Theater and Theater named after V.F. Komissarzhevskaya Viktor Irozifovich Grozovsky (1934-2007), who became the priest of the Prince Vladimir Cathedral in St. Petersburg in 1987 Petersburg . Gleb’s father Victor was ordained deacon by the future patriarch (then archbishop) Kirill (Gundyaev) ^[10] . Gleb’s grandfather, Joseph Zelikovich Grozovsky (1905-1939), came from the Jewish family of the Minsk province ( Igumen district ), worked as deputy editor-in-chief of the Leningrad branch of the Izvestia newspaper, and in 1936 he was repressed as an “ enemy of the people ”, and ended up in Norillag , where he died ^[11] . Mother - Zinaida Grozovskaya, died on October 6, 2016 in St. Petersburg. Gleb Grozovsky has been married since 2003, his wife's name is Tatyana. The family has four children ^[12] , two of whom are foster ^{[9] [13]} .

From the age of eight, Gleb, who had 8 brothers and sisters ^[14] , played football , entered the Zenit football school, graduated from the sports class of school No. 93 in 1996. At 16, he was recognized as the top scorer and won the Golden Award boot at the international tournament in Germany ^[15] . He was with Vyacheslav Malafeev in the St. Petersburg football team. At the age of 18, he played for several months, at the invitation of B. S. Rappoport , at the Dynamo football club (St. Petersburg). Owing to a sports injury, he left professional sports. He graduated in 2000 from the P. F. Lesgaft University of Physical Culture and Sports (he defended his football coach’s diploma at the Department of Pedagogy) ^[16] , and in 2005 - the St. Petersburg Theological Seminary ^[13] .

In 2000 - 2004 he was a regular subdeacon of the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg Vladimir . In 2004, he was elevated to the rank of deacon of the Prince Vladimir Cathedral . After graduating from the seminary in 2005, he was ordained a priest and a year later began to serve in the Sophia Cathedral of Tsarskoye Selo ^[13] . Since 2004 - Member of the All-Church Orthodox Youth Movement ^[13] . More than 10 years he was a volunteer in orphanages ^[17] . He was engaged in the prevention of HIV and AIDS among children from orphanages and social institutions ^[18] . He worked at the Center for Social Adaptation of St. Basil the Great for juvenile offenders ^[13] . Since 2007, he was engaged in children's Orthodox camps. In 2009 - 2011 he worked in the Orthodox camp of the Tsarskoye Selo deanery on the island of Konevets ^[13] . In 2013, schoolchildren were taken four times to rest in the Leningrad Region and two times, accompanied by their parents, to Greece ^[17] .

In 2011, the priest Grozovsky was transferred by the rector of the church of John the Warrior in the village of Maloe Verevo ^[19] . After some time, Grozovsky began conducting youth programs on radio stations (including Grad Petrov ^[20] ), separately for three different faiths - Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant ^{[21] [22]} . Member of the All-Russian missionary Internet project " Father Online " ^[21] . Actively spoke on portals about Orthodoxy and education criticizing juvenile justice ^[17] . Since 2006, he has been an unofficial confessor to a number of Zenit football club players ^{[23] [24] [25] [26] [27]} . According to TASS and RIA Novosti , he held the position of Advisor to the General Director of FC Zenit on spiritual and moral issues ^{[7] [22] [13] [6]} .

According to the Rossiyskaya Gazeta , Grozovsky is the first chaplain in Russia as part of the Premier League football club; a special interview was devoted to the analysis of this phenomenon in 2009 ^[8] .

Corollary

On September 20, 2013, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, following the statements of the parents of the victims, opened a criminal case under the fourth part of Article 134 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - on sexual offenses against minors . At first, no charges were personally brought against anyone, and Priest Grozovsky passed the trial as a witness ^[7] .

After the initiation of the criminal case, on September 27, 2013, having learned about the interview of the investigator with a friend of the priest, Grozovsky urgently changed the tickets purchased on October 3 and left the territory of Russia ^[28] . On October 30, 2013, the RF IC recognized Grozovsky as the sole suspect in a criminal case and formally charged him ^[7] . At the time of the indictment, Grozovsky was in Israel , where, according to the BBC Russian Service , he joined the Center for Assistance to People Suffering from Alcohol and Drug Addiction ^[29] . On November 1, 2013, a decision was made in Russia on the absentee arrest of Grozovsky, and he was put on the international wanted list ^{[2] [30]} . While in Israel, Grozovsky rejected all the charges ^[31] , suggested that the case was ordered, mentioning the father of the child expelled from the camp, Sergei Zazimko, as well as the commitment of the parents of the affected children to occultism ^[3] . Through a lawyer, Grozovsky transmitted to the investigation his written testimonies, where he claimed that he was being persecuted for “social activity and civic position” ^[32] .

On November 18, 2013, the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church Grozovsky was banned from serving until the end of the investigation ^[33] . From voluntary return to Russia in order to stand trial, despite the calls of the Russian Orthodox Church, Grozovsky refused guarantees of personal freedom ^[34] . At the end of December 2013, it became known that about 400 people signed the petition for changing the preventive measure against Grozovsky, including world boxing champions Nina Abrosova and Dmitry Kirillov , other athletes, parishioners, and representatives of the Orthodox community. The authors of the appeal, who had long been familiar with Grozovsky, described him as an “absolutely normal, respectable person who had been slandered,” over the next years of the investigation and the court, some football players, staff members, and fans of the St. Petersburg club Zenit also supported Grozovsky ^{[35 ] [6]} .

The criminal case was based on the testimonies of three schoolgirls - Katya, Maria and Daria ^{[28] [3]} (at the time of what happened he was 8, 9 and 12 years old ^[32] ) about the events that took place in children's Orthodox camps on the islands of Konevets (Leningrad Region) and Kos ( Greece ), respectively, in 2009 and 2013. The investigation first related the first episode to 2011, but after confirming the alibi of a priest who was in Turkey at that moment, the year was changed to 2009 ^[2] . According to the testimonies of individual pupils of the children's camp on the island of Konevets in Lake Ladoga , the priest went into the houses every night and kissed the girls on the lips, neck, stomach and genitals . According to the victims in the Philadelphia children's Orthodox camp on the island of Kos, the priest once entered the girls' room, lay between them on a common double bed and began to molest them. In the following days, in a confession, he urged children to hide these facts from their parents ^{[4] [28] [36]} .

On January 21, 2014, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill instructed the human rights center of the World Russian People’s Cathedral to study the circumstances of the criminal case against Grozovsky and the position of the parties, to inform the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Holy Synod about the results ^[37] .

September 21, 2014 Grozovsky was detained in Israel and taken into custody. Unofficially, at the level of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Israel immediately confirmed to the Russian authorities the readiness to extradite Grozovsky after a judicial review of the official application of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation ^[38] . During the consideration of Russia's demand for extradition, Grozovsky was imprisoned in Shatat (Shita) prison for especially dangerous criminals and terrorists, where he was detained for two years in a cell with seven Arabs who did not even speak English , his personal belongings from the priest, including the Gospel , were seized ^[34] . In obtaining citizenship of Israel , as Grozovsky requested, referring to his Jewish roots, he was denied ^[39] . On September 17, 2016, by an order of the Israeli Supreme Court, Grozovsky was extradited to Russia under the European Convention on Extradition. Soon after his return, Grozovsky was transferred to the Kresty detention center in St. Petersburg, and then to the Vyborg pre-trial detention center. On January 25, 2017, the investigation charged Grozovsky with the final version of the commission of three crimes under paragraph “b” part 4 of art. 132 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, providing for 12 to 20 years in prison ^{[2] [39] [29]} .

Victims

• Katya (born 2001) - at the time of the event on Konevets Island, the girl was 8 years old. By that time, she had neurological problems and myopia . From 2009 to 2013, the girl and her relatives maintained normal relations with Grozovsky, they did not make claims to the priest. At the time of the court hearing in 2017, the girl was diagnosed with brain cancer , and a certificate was attached to the case. Katya’s mother regarded her daughter’s dangerous illness as a consequence of Grozovsky’s criminal actions; the girl did not come to court;

• Maria (born 2004) - at the time of the event on the island of Kos, the girl was 9 years old, suffered from an organic brain disease ; did not come to court;

• Daria (born 2001) - at the time of the event on the island of Kos, the girl was 12 years old, before meeting Grozovsky, she suffered a trauma due to sexual violence and was treated in a psychiatric hospital . She personally testified in court ^{[3] [28]} .

Court and Sentence

On June 22, 2017, a closed trial began in Priozersk . The case was led by Judge Lyudmila Yashina ^[6] . As set out by the investigator for particularly important cases of the Main Investigative Department of the RF IC in St. PetersburgAlexandra Gavrilova , in their testimonies the girls talked about the details "that they could not come up with due to the lack of sexual experience." Concerning the conclusion of a forensic medical examination that did not establish any signs of sexual violence among the victims, investigator Gavrilov clarified that Grozovsky was accused not of rape , but of sexual assault that did not leave visible marks and injuries. According to the investigation materials announced at the trial, all the injured girls were assigned a commission examination with the participation of a large number of specialists of various profiles who made "an unambiguous conclusion about the absence of signs of slander and fantasizing." The case file contains third-party evidence that Grozovsky went to the children after the end of the call. 99 audio recordings of telephone conversations of Grozovsky with lawyers, clergy, journalists, friends and witnesses in the case, the files of which Grozovsky stored in his computer archive, were added to the case and analyzed. According to the investigator, Grozovsky refused to undergo a sexological examination (the defense said that the court refused the request for a forensic examination for the presence of Grozovsky’s sexual preference disorder ^[2] ). The priest did not want to testify in court; instead, his written explanations had been heard earlier sent to him from Israel . One of the three injured girls, now living with their parents in the Czech Republic , came to court and testified ^[28] .

Almost 100 complaints and petitions of the Grozovsky defense side about violations by the investigation were rejected. Grozovsky did not plead guilty, in a final word at the court he said that "the very event of the crime does not exist as such," and therefore counts on "human understanding and a fair decision." At the verdict, the defendant arrived in the armor and the Zenith sweatshirt. With the blessing of the ruling bishop of the Gatchina diocese, Bishop Mitrofan (Osyak), in the church of John the Warrior of the village of Maloe Verevo , prayers for the protection of the former abbot of Father Gleb and the “blocking of the mouth of evil” were served during the announcement of the verdict and all court hearings ^{[2] [40] [6]} .

On January 17, 2018, the Priozersky city court sentenced Grozovsky to 14 years in prison in a maximum security colony and one year in prison. In the verdict, Grozovsky was found guilty of sexual assault against three minors during their stay in children's Orthodox camps on the islands of Konevets and Kos in 2009 and 2013. The convict is also charged with the obligation to pay victims 400 thousand rubles of compensation for non- pecuniary damage . Grozovsky called the verdict “absurd”, appealed to the court of appeal ^{[2] [41] [7] [42]} .

On April 13, 2018, the Leningrad Regional Court upheld the verdict, the appeal of the convicted person was dismissed ^[43] . In May 2018, Grozovsky was sent to penal colony No. 16 in the village of Murmashi, Murmansk Region , to serve his sentence ^[44] .

In October 2018, the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Leonid Korzhinek submitted a cassation appeal to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation for the verdict of the Priozersky City Court of the Leningrad Region ^[45] . According to Grozovsky’s lawyer Mikhail Utkin, this was done “in connection with the cruelty of the sentence,” and the Prosecutor General’s office “is seeking to reduce the term to 8.5 years in prison” ^[46] . At the end of November 2018, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, after studying the materials of the case, rejected the cassation appeal of the Grozovsky defense and the cassation submission of the Prosecutor General’s Office to review the case and reduce the sentence. Despite the entry into force of the verdict, the Russian Orthodox Church refused to bring Grozovsky to church court and deprive him of his holy dignity ^[1] .

Resonance

The investigation and the closed trial, which lasted 7 months (journalists were allowed only to announce the introductory and operative part of the verdict ^[29] ) attracted considerable attention of Russian and world media. Analysis and comments on the criminal case appeared, in particular, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta , Kommersant , Nezavisimaya Gazeta , Izvestia , TASS and Interfax news agencies, portals of leading Russian online media Gazeta.ru , Lenta.ru , RIA Novosti , NEWSru.com , RBC , on Channel One , on the Russia 1 television channel, on Radio Liberty , in programs of the BBC Russian Service , in many other publications ^{[47] [31] [32] [48] [49] [22] [50] [35]} . Publications and interviews about the Grozovsky case also appeared in the Israeli media, which caused dissatisfaction with the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation ^[51] .

Event Evaluation

St. Petersburg psychiatrist and sexologist invited to the court session as an expert Vladimir Efremov doubted the credibility of the girls' stories about the behavior of his mentor, he considered some intimate details impossible at all in real conditions, interpreted others as childish fantasies, regarded the results of gynecological studies unconvincing, surprised the expert and the fact that the victims remembered such a serious accident only after time after events ^[3] . The expert psychologist Irina Gorkova , speaking at the court, qualified the testimonies of the victims as “a children's clause” ^[2] .

According to the theologian, Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev , the attention of the Russian state and church leadership was attracted to the Grozovsky case ^[49] . Commenting on the verdict, Kuraev did not see Grozovsky’s persecution for political reasons, but he pointed to “significant differences in the norms of communication with children in Russia and in the West.” The culture of communication with children that has taken root in Russia, according to Kuraev, is special: “to approach the child in the order of things in order to kiss him or, say, hug him”. Most of the accusations of inappropriate actions, Kuraev noted, are based on similar photographs, “and anyone can blame anyone for pedophilia . Very often, these accusations are far-fetched ” ^[40] . Archpriest Mikhail Vladimirov, rector of the Church of the Holy Right Prince Alexander Nevsky in the village of Aleksandrovka, who studied with the Grozovsky in the seminary and works with him in the diocese, is convinced of his innocence: “I also work with children and I understand that I can suffer as well, I’m sure that Gleb’s father was framed. ” According to the priest, the whole story could be associated with a conflict of commercial interests in the field of rehabilitation of drug addicts, where Grozovsky participated in projects ^[2] .

Critics ^{[ who? ]} Grozovsky focus attention ^{[ where? ]} that the priest lied, claiming that during the investigation in September 2013 he went to Israel on a “business trip” through the diocese, although it was objectively established later that Grozovsky went there entirely on his own initiative. He was in such a hurry that he flew to Israel a few days earlier than planned, as if he were fleeing. This gave rise to the assumption that Grozovsky wants to hide from the investigation. While in Israel, Grozovsky used all possible loopholes and tricks to avoid returning to his homeland and not going to the investigator, although Vsevolod Chaplin, the chairman of the Synodal Department for the Interaction of the Church and Society, publicly called on him on behalf of the ROC hierarchy ^{[52] [53] [ 54]} .

Some religious leaders believed that the history of Grozovsky also reflects friction in the consistory circles of the Russian Orthodox Church. The host of the Radio Liberty program “From a Christian point of view”, the priest of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (updated) Yakov Krotov , believed that in the Grozovsky case “the curtain on the clan character of modern Russian Orthodoxy is completely accidentally opened” ^[47] . Covering the investigation, the Interfax-Religion news agency quoted Grozovsky’s public defender, Andrei Murashko, who was astounded by the “unprecedented” interest in the Grozovsky case: “The scale of attention is as if the fate of the patriarch depends on him. I am becoming more and more convinced that politics is involved in this matter ” ^[34] .

The case was called “very resonant” by the head of the Human Rights Center of the World Russian National Council , religious scholar Roman Silantyev ^[55] , who was skeptical of the priest’s guilt, drawing attention to the strange circumstance that “the injured are already quite adult girls who did not appear for trial” ^{[ 52]} . It was noted that the accusations made on behalf of young children are, in principle, extremely difficult to refute ^[56] . According to experts of the newspaper Kommersant , people working with children, after the sentence and the negative background created by him, “are in a vulnerable situation because of public hysteria ” ^[2] .

• Уголовное дело священника Грозовского. Досье (неопр.) . ТАСС (19 января 2018). Date of treatment January 20, 2018.
• Александр Гаврилов, следователь по особо важным делам ГСУ СК РФ по Санкт-Петербургу; Анна Кострова. Следователь рассказал неизвестные подробности дела Глеба Грозовского (неопр.) . Петербургский дневник (19 января 2018). Дата обращения 22 января 2018.
• Волчек Д. Батюшка-офлайн (неопр.) . Радио Свобода (9 ноября 2013). Date of treatment January 20, 2018.
• Дело Глеба Грозовского. Хроника событий. Мнения сторон. Приговор суда (неопр.) . Пятый канал . ИД « Известия » (17 января 2018). Дата обращения 5 февраля 2018.

• Тумакова И. Глеб Грозовский: жизнь и служение (неопр.) . Фонтанка.ru ; Православие и мир (6 ноября 2013). Date of treatment January 20, 2018.
• Биография Глеба Грозовского (неопр.) . РИА Новости (11 ноября 2016). Date of treatment January 20, 2018.
• Биография петербургского священника Глеба Грозовского (неопр.) (недоступная ссылка) . Р-Спорт (29 февраля 2016). Дата обращения 5 февраля 2018. Архивировано 11 ноября 2018 года.

• Страница Глеба Грозовского в социальной сети « ВКонтакте »