Bratislava, Brussels, Budapest, 4 May 2022: The Bratislava I District Court have ruled in favour of a 30-year-old Romani man with an intellectual disability who was illegally held in police custody for four weeks in 2013. The Court, in its first instance judgment, awarded the man from Moldava… Read More
Validity has intervened before the European Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) in the case G.M. and others v. the Republic of Moldova. Our intervention highlights that forced sterilisation and forced abortion are forms of torture and ill-treatment, and constitute systemic discrimination against women… Read More
Recently, Validity intervened in the case of Tymoshenko v. Ukraine brought by a young woman with a psychosocial disability who was detained and treated against her will in a psychiatric hospital. The Ukrainian prosecution accused Ms Tymoshenko of hurting another person. Read More
Topház Social Care Institution became widely known after Validity revealed the inhumane and horrific treatment of its residents in a 2017 report. 220 residents were subject to torture and ill-treatment in Topház. Children as well as adult residents were put in metal cage beds, routinely chemically and/or physically restrained, were underweight, and physically, mentally and emotionally neglected. Topház is a closed… Read More
Hungarian court orders the Guardianship Authority to disclose to Validity the names and addresses of the public guardians responsible for the 220 victims of torture and ill-treatment in Topház social care institution. More than 25,000 people with disabilities live in residential social care institutions in Hungary, most of them placed… Read More
Eighteen women who were systematically sexually abused by their doctor at the Balti institution for a period of almost a decade in Moldova have finally achieved justice. Earlier this month, the Moldovan Supreme Court pronounced judgment in one of the most grievous cases of gender-based violence Validity has come across. Read More
Earlier this week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Ştefan Stoian, a young man with quadriplegia, who took a case against Romania for denial of his right to education. The disappointing verdict came after almost a decade of legal action… Read More
Georgi Tsenov spent most of his life in horrible conditions in an institution, fighting to be able to make choices about his own life. Now he has finally achieved recognition by the State for the ill-treatment he suffered over decades. Sofia City Court affirmed that the guardianship authority caused him… Read More
In a disappointing decision issued last week, the Russian Constitutional Court rejected the right of a woman in a social care institution to visit her father. The two had brought the case complaining that the social care institution where the daughter resides unconstitutionally prevented her from… Read More
Peter* has intellectual disabilities and lives in Poland. Ten years ago he was 33, and one day came home from attending a day-care centre and told his mother that he had been raped by a therapist at the centre and that he had been beaten with a belt. They went… Read More
Today in Bălți, Moldova, a psychiatrist was found guilty of several counts of rape that he committed during the course of a decade against 16 women under his care in a 400-bed social care institution. Dr. Florea Stanislav was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment. Ana (not her real name) recounted… Read More
Today, the European Court of Human Rights found that 55-year-old Jaroslav Červenka from the Czech Republic was deceived and wrongfully held in a social care institution for eight months (judgment here). Validity (formerly MDAC) calls on the Government to prohibit disability-based incarceration, and to evacuate the more… Read More