Three teenage sisters who stabbed their abusive father to death could avoid jail time after claims they were abused and tortured by him.
The girls’ 57-year-old father was found by the elevator of their apartment with more than a dozen stab wounds in 2018.
Sisters Krestina, Angelina and Maria Khachaturyan branded their father Mikhail Khachaturyan an “evil sex abuser” and said they had suffered years of “systematic torture” from him.
The three girls, aged 19, 18 and 17-years-old, from Russia, who admitted using their father’s hunting knife to kill him may not have to spend time in jail for killing their ‘monster’ dad in light of psychiatric evaluations.
Their father, Mikhail Khachaturyan, was branded an ‘evil sex abuser’ after he was reportedly found stabbed ‘dozens’ of times by the elevator in the apartment block where they lived.
The eldest two sisters are facing murder charges, while the youngest sister Maria was declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
The sisters’ murder charges sparked an outcry in Russia and their lawyers have pressed for the murder allegations to be dropped against all the sisters or mitigated by re-categorizing the case as causing death by “self-defense”, as per The Sun newspaper.
Now charges could be dropped against all the sisters following a new psychiatric evaluation which showed the sisters were all suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at the time of the killing.
The evaluation also said the sisters were in an ‘unstable’ psychological state and feared for their lives after years of torture, rape, and sexual abuse from their “bullying mafia boss father,” as per the news article.
Expert opinion in the investigation had backed the sisters’ claims that he raped Krestina and Angelina and engaged in other sexual violence when they were underage, reported local newspapers, citing legal sources.
On the day of their father’s killing the girls had found his hunting knife from his car to protect themselves as they feared he would beat them.
Maria had been wounded previously with the knife as had the girls’ mother Aurelia who had fled the family home.
After waking he attacked his daughters with pepper spray, a frequent “punishment” accusing them of not keeping the apartment tidy enough for him, it was alleged.
The dad allegedly also told one of his daughters that she would take the place of their mother and give birth to his baby.
A petition signed by almost 50,000 people called for murder charges against the sisters to be dropped and posthumous legal action against the father for violence and pedophile sex abuse.
An expert involved in the evaluations described how Mikhail would order the girls to “get undressed in front of him” saying he wanted to “check them”. Adding, “Then [he] ordered them to sexually pleasure him, saying that he had problems with his prostate and it would be a cure.”
The sisters have been accused of lying by other family members, who have said Mikhail did not sexually abuse them and that they killed him for his money.
The sisters are set to argue that the murder was an act of necessary self-defense.
If the sisters are not cleared of murder, the eldest two face between eight and 20 years in prison.
I hope that the alleged horrific details of this case serve as mitigating circumstances; these young girls should have been loved and protected, but instead their account means they endured the unthinkable at the hands of their own father.
These girls need support and counselling not jail time. Please share if you agree.
