All 4 perpetrators in the Lviv homophobic attack case have been punished
Two of them received actual prison terms. And this is the FIRST CASE IN UKRAINE in which a hate-motivated attack was punished with imprisonment!
A reminder of how this case unfolded.
- On July 26, 2021, in Lviv, four young men attacked two guys — Serhii Savin and Maksym Verba — because they perceived the victims as gay.
- Insight NGO decided to provide the young men with legal support so that the attackers would not escape responsibility, because hate crimes are a huge problem in Ukraine today and there are difficulties with qualifying such crimes.
- For more than half a year, our attorney Oksana Huz worked to make sure that none of the attackers escaped responsibility for the crime.
- On January 27, 2022, the Halytskyi District Court of Lviv put a final end to this case and delivered a verdict on the last of the 4 attackers.
After the attack and the publicity it received, the police identified all the attackers but FOUND NO GROUNDS to qualify the crime under Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which provides for liability for committing a hate-motivated crime. The attackers’ actions were qualified, as is usually done in such cases, under Article 296 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (hooliganism).
However, the homophobic nature of the attack was taken into account.
Two of the attackers got away with suspended sentences, two more received actual terms — imprisonment for 4 years and 4.1 years.
On the one hand, this is a victory — ALL THE ATTACKERS have been identified and held responsible, and the REAL MOTIVE FOR THE CRIME has been taken into account. On the other, we understand that this outcome became possible largely thanks to the media publicity around the situation.
We thank Oksana Huz for her professionalism and excellent work; we are glad about this victory and about the fact that we secured THE FIRST ACTUAL PRISON TERMS IN UKRAINE for a hate-motivated attack.
But this is not enough.
The flaws in current legislation make it impossible to clearly qualify hate crimes and hold those responsible to account. The law simply has no clear definition of a “hate crime” or a punishment for it. In fact, crimes driven by homophobia happen constantly, while the motive is very hard to prove.
The legislation needs to change. First of all – PASS BILL #5488, which will provide real tools for holding those guilty of hate crimes accountable!