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A senior officer in an Army draft commission is suspected of sexual abuse of draftees. The case consists of two episodes so far. Before that, the officer had a clean record and had taken part with the police in raids to round up draftees. Police received a complaint from the parents of a 17-year-old, who complained that their son had been attacked by a would-be rapist in the entranceway to a residential building. The attacker was frightened off by passersby. Then a complaint was received from the patents of an 18-year-old, who also managed to escape sexual assault. This victim told police that he had seen his attacker before, inside the Krasnogvardeisky district military commission. Police established the identity of 29-year-old Alexey Ivanov, the senior officer of the commission, and contacted several other young men who had had contact with Ivanov. One other young man complained about Ivanov when he was contacted.
Ivanov has been taken into custody on charges of “violent acts of a sexual nature.” The local prosecutor is commenting on the case only that the decision is being made whether or not to turn it over to the military prosecutor. Head of the Leningrad Military District information service Yury Klenov told Kommersant that the suspect has a good performance record and that “only a court can declare someone guilty.”
Ella Polyakova, head of the St. Petersburg chapter of the human rights organizations Soldiers' Mothers commented that “This is simply some sort of last days of Pompeii!” She said that, of all the cases her organization had dealt with, this was the first one of that nature.
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