TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
GR1 (Government): In addition, a comprehensive inspection of the orphanage for the past seven years was conducted.
GR1 (Government): In particular matters concerning the medical status of children, complaints submitted, and all other issues that could be of relevance to the alleged facts were scrutinized.
GR1 (Government): It was established that the psychologist at the orphanage worked regularly with the children on an individual basis, recorded every meeting, and prepared periodical individual reports which showed no signs of abuse or ill treatment.
GR1 (Government): The institution was constantly supervised by the local police and social authorities.
GR1 (Government): The measures taken to protect the children from ill treatment, namely the admission regime, the camera surveillance, a telephone helpline, and the complaint box, were specifically scrutinized.
GR1 (Government): No incidents corresponding to the applicants' allegations were reported through those means.
GR1 (Government): These preventive measures were available at the orphanage at the time the applicants resided there and were in compliance with Article 19 of the UN Convention.
GR1 (Government): The Convention on Human Rights requires effective deterrence against grave effects of ill treatment, and the children in particular are entitled to effective protection.
GR1 (Government): To this effect, we refer to Z and others versus the United Kingdom and MC versus Bulgaria.
GR1 (Government): In view of the state's obligation for prevention of abuse, the government point out that the children residing at the orphanage benefited from the necessary level of protection.
GR1 (Government): Moreover, they had contacts with the outside world as they went to school on a daily basis.
GR1 (Government): Some of them were in touch with their families.
GR1 (Government): It is very unlikely that all the children would prefer to remain silent and not to disclose their alleged experiences of sexual abuse.
GR1 (Government): In addition, the children were regularly examined by a general practitioner in accordance with Article 24 of the UN Convention, and most of them were subjected to detailed medical examinations in view of the pending adoption procedures.
GR1 (Government): As seen from the documents in enclosures 2, 3, and 4, the applicants also underwent full medical examinations every three months because they had been listed for international adoption.
GR1 (Government): The government explicitly noted that all three applicants passed a couple of psychiatric examinations in 2011 in relation to the adoption procedure.
GR1 (Government): The psychiatrist established that there were no signs of stress, depression, anxiety, or other symptoms that could point to an abuse.
GR1 (Government): The government noted in this regard that according to Article 7, paragraph 2 of the Child Protection Act, all professionals who become aware of the existence of a child in need of protection in the course of their work, irrespective of being bound by an occupational secret, shall immediately report the case to the competent authorities.
GR1 (Government): This obligation includes doctors, social workers, institutional staff, teachers, et cetera.
GR1 (Government): And the failure to abide by it is subject to sanctions.
GR1 (Government): It complies with the requirements set by the UN and C conventions.
GR1 (Government): No incidents of the alleged kind were ever reported with regard to the present case.
GR1 (Government): The government notes that the Bulgarian authorities investigated with diligence all relevant data available to them.
GR1 (Government): They paid attention to all details of the allegations of sexual abuse contained in the psychological notes drawn up by the Italian psychologists.
GR1 (Government): Considering that the testimony of minors should be taken with the utmost caution, the Bulgarian authorities did not disregard any part of it and scrutinized all the factual aspects that were deduced.
GR1 (Government): The government would like to point to some particularities of those notes.
GR1 (Government): First, they did not contain verbatim record of the applicant's statements.
GR1 (Government): Second, indisputably, the applicants had a weak command of Italian at the time.
GR1 (Government): Third, the adoptive parent was present at the meetings and, I quote, translated between times for the applicant X.
GR1 (Government): Fourth, in the resume transcripts of the psychological sessions, the applicants Y and Z never mentioned any, I quote, playing with adult men while such information is present in the psychological notes as uttered by them.
GR1 (Government): It should be underlined that the testimony of the applicants X and Y before the Italian prosecutor did not cast any new light on the alleged circumstances.
GR1 (Government): In view of that, no further questioning of the applicants seemed to be necessary at the time.
GR1 (Government): It is a well-known good practice that when it comes to the testimony of minors, interrogations should be reduced to the strictly necessary minimum in order to protect them from trauma and stress.
GR1 (Government): The government considered that after being comprised of the impugned facts, the Bulgarian authorities were seriously concerned.
GR1 (Government): They performed full, thorough, and objective investigations striving to shed light on the events.
GR1 (Government): It should be pointed out that there is no obligation under Article Three of the Convention for the authorities to establish identical facts or to come to a conclusion which coincides with the applicant's account of events.
GR1 (Government): In this regard, we refer to the case of MP and others versus Bulgaria and Maximov versus Russia.
GR1 (Government): The Bulgarian authorities complied with their positive obligation to look into the matter and to establish all the relevant facts by means of an appropriate investigation which required that all aspects of the applicant's allegations be examined and scrutinized.
GR1 (Government): On the grounds of the evidence gathered, the authorities concluded that there were no, that the allegations had not been confirmed.
GR1 (Government): The investigation was effective because the prosecution authorities gathered and analyzed all the available data in terms of established findings, interviews with the children at the orphanage, interrogations, checkups, et cetera.
GR1 (Government): None of the evidence gathered led to the reasonable assumption that the criminal offense had been committed.
GR1 (Government): In view of this and taking into account that the investigative measures did not produce sufficient evidence to establish that the alleged abuse had taken place, the conclusions of the Bulgarian authorities could not be deemed arbitrary or groundless.
GR1 (Government): I believe that the court will take into consideration the above reasoning.
GR1 (Government): Now I give the floor to my colleague.
Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos (JudgeP): Merci beaucoup, Madame Iva Stancheva-Chinova, vous avez la parole.
GR2 (Government): Honorable Mr. President and judges of the court,
GR2 (Government): I will address some issues concerning the developments before the agency, the proceedings in Italy, and the necessity of medical examinations in this case.
GR2 (Government): The government underlined that the adopter never approached the agency with any specific information allowing an inspection.
GR2 (Government): In his email of 16th of November, 2012, he only requested a telephone number alleging unspecified abuse in an unspecified orphanage.
GR2 (Government): On the same day, the agency received an email by the Italian Telefono Azzurro via the Nadia Foundation.
GR2 (Government): It contained a request by an anonymous Italian citizen who had adopted three Bulgarian children to receive the contact details of a competent organization in order to submit a signal for abuse.
GR2 (Government): In reply, on the 26th of November, the agency provided a telephone number and an email to the adopter.
GR2 (Government): He did not submit any further particular details.
GR2 (Government): The Telefono Azzurro communication was also forwarded to the Ministry of Justice on the 29th of November.
GR2 (Government): However, the attached email did not allow verification in the Registry of International Adoptions maintained by the ministry as it did not contain the name of the adopter while at the relevant period there had been four adoption procedures of three siblings in Italy.
GR2 (Government): Hence, the government considered that at the time it was not clear either who the alleged victims were or what the nature of the abuse against them was.
GR2 (Government): Therefore, the authorities could not be held accountable in this respect.
GR2 (Government): With regard to the nature of the proceedings in Italy, as a preliminary note, the government underlined that the state's positive obligations under Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention apply only in relation to ill treatment allegedly committed within their jurisdiction.
GR2 (Government): It follows in the present circumstances that since the alleged ill treatment occurred in Bulgaria, it was undisputedly for the Bulgarian authorities to investigate the events.
GR2 (Government): There was no such obligation on the part of the Italian authorities.
GR2 (Government): The Convention does not envisage that a high contracting party should intervene with the jurisdiction of another state on the applicant's behalf.
GR2 (Government): In this regard, we refer to the Commission decisions on L versus Sweden and Doberstein versus Germany.
GR2 (Government): Thus, there was no conflict of jurisdiction between Bulgaria and Italy.
GR2 (Government): The letter from the Italian prosecutor's office of 15th of January, 2013, transmitting the documents from Telefono Azzurro, explicitly stated that as the alleged offense was perpetrated on foreign territory and by foreign citizens, the Italian authorities were not competent to examine it.
GR2 (Government): The proceedings which took place in Italy were actually civil ones and concerned the evaluation of the parental capacity of the adopters and the adaptation of the applicants in the family.
GR2 (Government): The allegations of the applicants that they were started at the insistence of the Bulgarian authorities are untrue, which is evident from the email correspondence between the Bulgarian Vice Minister of Justice and Dr. Daniela Bacchetta.
GR2 (Government): Therefore, it was the competent Italian authorities who intervened by initiating a case at the Miner's Court.
GR2 (Government): In view of the above, the government point out that the decision of the Miner's Court is irrelevant to the present case, as it does not and may not concern criminal matters.
GR2 (Government): That is why it was never communicated to the Bulgarian authorities.
GR2 (Government): With regard to the applicants' allegations about the scientific veracity of the expert report prepared in the course of the civil proceedings before the Miner's Court, the government present a scientific analysis by Aldo Dvrish, a professor of applied social psychology at the University of Portsmouth, UK.
GR2 (Government): It is a comprehensive review of the available studies concerning the statement validity assessment, which I will refer to as SVA.
GR2 (Government): SVA has been used for the past 30 years to assess the veracity of child witnesses' testimony in cases of sexual offenses.
GR2 (Government): According to the established scientific theory and practice, the SVA consists of three stages, a semi-structured interview, a criteria-based content analysis, or CBCA, and an evaluation of the CBCA scores by means of a validity checklist.
GR2 (Government): The method has proven to be quite controversial, mainly due to the large error rate, which reaches 30% in controlled studies.
GR2 (Government): This error rate hardly puts these assessments as passing the standard of being beyond the reasonable doubt required for evidencing in criminal proceedings.
GR2 (Government): The error rate of SVA in real life cannot be objectively measured and is yet unknown.
GR2 (Government): The government point out that there is no consensus among high contracting parties as to whether they consider this method a legally valid evidence in criminal proceedings.
GR2 (Government): Even if presuming that the SVA results could be regarded reliable, it remains unclear why such a method, which is used solely for the purposes of criminal investigations, was applied in the civil proceedings for evaluation of the adoption process.
GR2 (Government): Moreover, the expert report presented before the Miners Court was incomplete and elaborated contrary to the set rules for the following reasons.
GR2 (Government): First, no semi-structured interviews with the three applicants were ever conducted.
GR2 (Government): The evidence in this case shows that all their questioning suffered from deficiencies.
GR2 (Government): The FAD intervened during the psychological assessments.
GR2 (Government): Applicants Y and Z were assessed together.
GR2 (Government): During the prosecutor's hearings, a number of suggestive questions were put.
GR2 (Government): Applicant Z was never heard by the prosecutor.
GR2 (Government): Second, no conclusive CBCA was performed either.
GR2 (Government): In his report, the expert only numbered the CBCA criteria without any explanation as to why and which of them were covered.
GR2 (Government): The stories of the applicants were never evaluated separately for each child, but in bulk.
GR2 (Government): Third, the expert did not conduct a validity checklist analysis.
GR2 (Government): The validity checklist consists of a list of external factors that might affect the CBCA scores.
GR2 (Government): It takes into account, inter alia, the appropriateness of knowledge and language, the interviewee's susceptibility to suggestion, evidence of suggestive leading or coercive questioning, and last but not least, the consistency with other evidence, for example, whether there are major elements in the statement that are contradicted by reliable physical or other concrete evidence.
GR2 (Government): None of the above was discussed in the report at hand.
GR2 (Government): Professor Vrisch commented in his analysis that there are many cases when the SVA cannot detect statements which are false, either because the interviewees may be confused about the circumstances or because they mix what they have actually experienced and what they have only imagined.
GR2 (Government): He underlined that the SVA experts should present those problems and limitations in court so that legal professionals could make an informed decision about the validity of the SVA results.
GR2 (Government): To the government's knowledge, the minors' court was never informed about those limitations.
GR2 (Government): Next, the government will make some additional comments on the necessity of medical examinations in the present case.
GR2 (Government): According to the court's case law, allegations of ill-treatment must be supported by appropriate evidence.
GR2 (Government): To assess this evidence, the court adopts the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, although such proof may fall from the coexistence of sufficiently strong, clear, and concordant inferences or of similar unrebutted presumptions of fact.
GR2 (Government): In this regard, we refer to Ireland versus the United Kingdom and Meduva versus Russia.
GR2 (Government): In the case at hand, the applicants never presented any medical evidence in support of their claims.
GR2 (Government): Undisputedly, they were not prevented from seeking medical assistance in order to acquire such evidence.
GR2 (Government): In this respect, the government would like to make the following submissions.
GR2 (Government): First, as evident from the medical examinations presented in enclosures two, three, and four, all three applicants were meticulously examined three times between March and December 2011.
GR2 (Government): The examinations included their private parts.
GR2 (Government): For applicants Y and Z, the conclusion was that their sexual organs were, I quote, without deviations, which means in normal condition for their age and with no traces of abuse.
GR2 (Government): For applicant X, the only deviation established was the scar from the inguinal hernia surgery.
GR2 (Government): These documents were at the free disposal of the adopters as they were appended to the adoption case file.
GR2 (Government): Second, it is a medically established fact that in more than 75% of the cases during the first sexual intercourse, the anatomical integrity of the hymen is irreversibly violated.
GR2 (Government): The trace is remaining visible until the woman gives natural birth.
GR2 (Government): Having in mind applicants Y and Z's young age at the time, a medical examination would prove with a high degree of certainty whether they had experienced sexual intercourses or not.
GR2 (Government): Third, concerning the allegations that such examinations would be too traumatizing for the applicants, the government present a statement by Dr. Alexander
GR2 (Government): Minchev, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine to the University Hospital Pirogov in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a member of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture.
GR2 (Government): The statement explains in detail how such examinations are conducted.
GR2 (Government): We note that they are very brief, only visual ones, and do not include any invasive methods.
GR2 (Government): Furthermore, they are performed in privacy by experienced medical practitioners and are generally far more sparing than a standard examination.
GR2 (Government): In addition, the statement points out that a medical examination of the applicant X could have also established with a high degree of certainty the existence of traces of sexual abuse.
GR2 (Government): Such examination would not be invasive or otherwise traumatizing either.
GR2 (Government): Finally, regarding the allegations of the applicants that the authorities tried to conceal the applicant X's surgical operation of inguinal hernia, the government point out that this information was provided to the adopters before the initiation of the adoption procedure.
GR2 (Government): We note that during his first three years of life, X did not reside in the orphanage and the surgery had been performed in that period.
GR2 (Government): The government said that inguinal hernia is the most common surgically treated condition in childhood.
GR2 (Government): The reasons for this condition are purely physiological.
GR2 (Government): The inguinal canal does not close on time and have nothing to do with abuse of any kind.
GR2 (Government): In the light of the above, the government considered that there are no sufficient, consistent or reliable indications that during their stay at the orphanage, the applicants were subjected to any sexual abuse.
GR2 (Government): in conclusion the government underlined that the Bulgarian authorities took all necessary and reasonable measures to ensure adequate protection of the applicants and the other children at the orphanage and to conduct full, thorough and timely investigation of the applicants' allegations.
GR2 (Government): In view of all considerations above, as well as the ones stated in our previous submissions, the government reckoned that the complaints under this application are manifestly ill-founded and respectfully ask you to uphold the chamber judgment.
Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos (JudgeP): Merci beaucoup, merci pour vos interventions.
Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos (JudgeP): J'invite maintenant les juges de la Grande Chambre qui le souhaitent à poser leurs questions au parti.
Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos (JudgeP): Le juge Sabato.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): Thank you, Mr. President.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): I have one question for the government.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): The government have made reference to the prosecutor's order and that they were all finally reviewed by the prosecutor's office at the Bulgarian Supreme Court of Cassation by an order which is dated 27th of January, 2017.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): I think this order in order to simplify, but the government already have referred to the reasoning which is contained in most of these orders.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): This order finds that the full investigation and underline this concept appear to have been carried out, but it did not reveal that the applicants have been subjected to any ill treatment.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): The prosecutor then examined the applicant's statements and found the applicant's initial statement to the psychologists and their replies when they were questioned by the Italian prosecutor before the youth court had been at variance with each other and contained contradictions.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): Therefore the prosecutor expressed the hypothesis that the children had seen sexual acts on television or that they had seen other persons performing them.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): Therefore the conclusion was that in view of their parents' disapproval of this behavior of the children and in order to avoid upsetting the parents, the children had told the story – this is a quotation – claiming to be victims of abuse.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): My question concerns this relationship between these two concepts.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): Full investigation, which we find in this order, and possible contradictions in the children depositions concerning abuse, which I understand these contradictions might occur in children depositions.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): What were the standards?
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): This is the question in the country at the time of the facts for a full investigation into sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): And you might also want to comment how were contradictions in the declarations of children assessed in the light of standard of evidence on child abuse.
Raffaele Sabato (Judge): Thank you.
Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos (JudgeP): Thank you very much, Judge Bošnjak.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): Let me first start with the question for the government, namely, in their accounts before the Italian authorities, the applicants mentioned specifically by name several other children from the orphanage that were involved in sexual abuse, either as victims or as perpetrators or both.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): It transpires from the file, and it was repeated today by the government, that the Bulgarian authorities heard several children in the course of investigation.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): My first question is whether those children specifically named by the applicants in their accounts were amongst those children heard by the Bulgarian authorities.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): Now, my second question is directed both to the applicants and to the government.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): In their pleadings today, but also in other documents submitted to the court, the government alleges deficiencies in interviews conducted with children before Italian authorities and other Italian institutions for several reasons.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): Now, I would first invite the applicants to comment on those alleged deficiencies, as alleged by the Bulgarian government.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): And I have a question in this respect directed to the Bulgarian government.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): It appears from your pleadings and from the documents in the file that the Bulgarian authorities never requested any legal assistance from the Italian authorities.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): In particular, the Bulgarian authorities did not request another hearing or a hearing of the applicants or their psychological evaluation or medical examination, although certain deficiencies are asserted by the Bulgarian authorities.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): How come never such a request was forwarded to the Italian authorities in light of such deficiencies asserted by the Bulgarian authorities?
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): And my final question is also directed to the Bulgarian government.
Marko Bošnjak (Judge): It's a follow-up of the facts and the question as highlighted by my colleague Judge Sabato.