ECHR: Šiauliai citizens who hired girls for work online were rightly convicted of human trafficking

This week, the Strasbourg court made a relevant decision in the case based on the convicts’ complaint.

“The court decided that the article of the Criminal Code, which stipulates responsibility for human trafficking, is not ambiguous, and the interpretation of the Supreme Court of Lithuania was accurate and consistent and not expanded to the extent that it became subjective,” the court’s announcement reads.

It states that the article of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits punishment without the law, was not violated during the hearing of the case in Lithuanian courts.

As reported by the court, Vilandas Jasuitis and Darius Šimaitis published a job advertisement on the internet at an unspecified time saying that they were looking for “attractive girls for virtual communication in English with people from different countries of the world”. In 2012-2013, they employed several women based on this advertisement.

In April 2012, one of the girls, an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl at the time, turned to the police and indicated that the mentioned men threatened her and used psychological violence. The girl agreed to communicate with clients online, but was later asked to strip in front of clients, striptease, use sex toys, and do whatever the clients demanded, but she refused.

The incident led to an investigation and identified more women employed by the applicants, some of them from vulnerable social situations, who also claimed that they were threatened, shouted at and humiliated in front of their children.

One woman said she was threatened and offered money to change her statements to police.

In 2017, the Šiauliai District Court convicted both men of human trafficking and several other crimes. The court found that they recruited and forced women to provide pornographic services and profited from it.

“This court recognized that psychological violence and threats, as well as making the victims dependent on them, hiring them on the basis of false information, were part of the applicant’s modus operandi,” the ECtHR said in a statement.

The applicants appealed the verdict and the Court of Appeal acquitted them, finding that the lower court made a mistake in assessing the facts.

This sentence was appealed by the prosecutor and one of the victims to the Supreme Court, which found the applicants guilty of human trafficking. They were sentenced to five years in prison.

The convicts appealed to the Strasbourg court claiming that the national courts had interpreted the article of the Criminal Code on human trafficking too broadly.

According to the ECtHR, the question that was raised in the case was whether the applicants might have foreseen that their actions would support human trafficking. They emphasized that the article of the Criminal Code mentions slavery or conditions similar to slavery, but the court pointed out that these circumstances are not necessary to qualify as a criminal act.

At that time, actions such as limiting the ability to resist, taking advantage of the vulnerable, threats and fraud were within the scope of this article.

“The court, having assessed the facts established by the national courts, is certain that the applicants were able to take a dominant position in relation to the women they hired, taking advantage of their vulnerability and fraudulently exploiting them for pornographic services,” writes the ECtHR.

The Strasbourg court also noted that the applicants received money from it, so the crime was qualified correctly.