Mother defends son accused of gang rape of sleeping schoolgirl
In Yekaterinburg, three young men have been arrested and accused of the gang rape of a 15-year-old schoolgirl. One of the detainees is 23-year-old Eduard Shafikov. His mother does not believe her son could do such a thing. She told this to E1.RU.
«When I found out about this, I felt really bad. I would never have thought my son was so wild. He has so many girl friends, he communicated with everyone, he always had a good character,» says Eduard«s mother. »He had a criminal record, but for a minor offense, theft, and even that was when he was a minor. I even spoke with a lawyer yesterday, he said: «You have such a good boy, he seemed to be working, what happened?»«
Eduard lives in Uralmash, he worked at a marketplace warehouse. He started frequenting the apartment on Bardina Street, where the rape occurred, at the beginning of this year. He drank there with friends. His mother had been to this address several times: first, when she was looking for her son during the New Year holidays, and then after his arrest — to pick up his things.
«It»s a flophouse, I don«t know what else to call it. How can anyone even go in there and stay. I immediately felt creepy and scared there. It»s a three-room apartment, the owners live there too. In one room, some half-naked woman was sleeping, in another a man all beaten up. Cockroaches everywhere, it stinks of urine,« the detainee»s mother said. «I would burn that apartment down. You can»t live in such places.«
She does not know the friends with whom Eduard is now charged under the same article, but she is sure her son got involved with a bad crowd.
«Drug addicts and alcoholics live there, they drink non-stop, drink, drink. What he was doing there, honestly, I just don»t understand,« Eduard»s mother says.
The woman has not yet been able to talk to her son. On January 14, the court sent him behind bars for two months — this is a pre-trial detention measure during the investigation.
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Read also instructions on how to protect children from kidnapping and rape, and how to teach them never to go with strangers.
