Human Rights Court sanctions Romania for failing to protect child abused by his father

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Tuesday, October 3, that the Romanian authorities failed to take measures to protect a child abused both mentally and physically by his father, and decided that Romania has to pay EUR 10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage. The case D.M.D. v. Romania, which concerned the proceedings brought by a son against his father for domestic abuse, reached ECHR in 2013. The proceedings in Romanian courts lasted over eight years and ended in the father’s conviction of physically and mentally abusing his child. However, the applicant complained that those proceedings had been ineffective and that he had not been awarded damages, reads a press release of the ECHR. The child was born in 2001 and lives in Bucharest. When he was just three years old, in 2004, when his mother called a child protection hotline to report that her husband was abusing their son. In just five months, she also complained to the police five times. After the fifth complaint, the authorities launched a criminal investigation and, in December 2007, indicted the child’s father. The case was then examined at three levels of jurisdiction. The father was acquitted in the first round of proceedings, the courts finding that his “occasionally inappropriate behavior” towards his son did not constitute a crime. However, the Bucharest County Court ultimately convicted the father in April 2012 of physically and verbally abusing his child. The proceedings eventually ended in November 2012 following an appeal on points of law by both parties. The Bucharest Court of Appeal reaffirmed that the father had abused his child and gave him a three-year suspended prison sentence. The length of the sentence was reduced, however, in order to take into account the excessive length of the proceedings. Both the applicant and the prosecutor complained that no compensation had been awarded. Moreover, the applicant also complained that the police, prosecutor’s office and courts had failed to investigate promptly and effectively his allegations of abuse, but also about the excessive length of the criminal proceedings against his father. The ECHR found that the authorities did little or nothing following the complaint to the child protection authorities, after the first four criminal complaints to the police or in the three years and six months it took to investigate and indict the father. Moreover, it said that the overall length of the proceedings, eight years and four months, had been excessive. The Human Rights Court also ruled that there had been several shortcomings in the proceedings. “While the courts had taken into account the excessive length of the proceedings when sentencing the father, they had failed to offer any comparable compensation to the applicant himself, despite his having also suffered the consequences of the extensive length of the case. Furthermore, the courts’ approach in this case to the issue of domestic abuse, apparently suggesting that “isolated and random” acts of violence could be tolerated within the family, was not compatible either with domestic law or with the Convention 3 – which both prohibit ill-treatment, including corporal punishment.” Moreover, the child had received absolutely no compensation for the abuse. Although prohibited by law since 2004, the abuse and negligence continue to be present in Romanian children’s lives.