After the tragedy in October 2017, Dominik called his grandmother and told her: “I’m sorry, but I think I killed them.” Dominik killed his mother’s 36-year-old partner and stabbed her in the abdomen.
The situation in the boy’s home had been bad for a long time. His mother and her partner, Rafał P., abused alcohol. Dominik worked and studied, but his family squandered his money. On that fateful day, he learned that his mother had sold some of his belongings at a pawnshop. That was the last straw. The boy attacked the woman and her partner.
At the family’s request, attorney Wojciech Kasprzyk undertook Dominik’s defense. Later, attorney Małgorzata Gruszecka, who has extensive legal experience, joined him. The case was handled well from the very beginning. One element of the support was collecting signatures backing Dominik, an initiative launched by Dawid Karol Kołodziej, president of the Polish Psychopedagogical Society.
“Let’s Free Dominik!” campaign
The effective work of the legal team, Dawid Karol Kołodziej’s surety, and the signature-collection campaign, which our istotne.pl portal joined, led to Dominik’s release from detention after more than three months, allowing him to stand trial while at liberty.
After leaving detention, Dominik was not allowed to contact his mother, who was awaiting trial for abusing her son. The boy found shelter with his grandparents and returned to work, where people had been waiting for him and warmly welcomed him. During the hearings, his colleagues testified about what a calm, reliable and loyal co-worker Dominik was.
“Dominik’s case began in 2017, and I have worked with him ever since,” says Dawid Kołodziej. “When I began working with Dominik as a psychotherapist, I felt and knew that he was a good person. I will never forget the moment Dominik learned about the verdict. We breathed a sigh of relief, threw our arms around each other and patted each other on the back. It was his first genuine emotional reaction since the incident. As he told me, that was the moment when he felt free and at ease. He was immensely happy and overcame the feeling that joy was something bad. I was with him at every hearing, every trip, during psychiatric and psychological examinations and conversations with experts. I supported him as a friend and as a therapist, lifted his spirits, took him on trips and showed him another kind of life. The kind that is normal for most people was extraordinary for him: going to the cinema, visiting a shopping mall, touring a museum. Our relationship will continue, and I will keep supporting him in everyday life. I promised this to Dominik and to the team of experts from Warsaw. Dominik’s transformation is becoming greater with time. He plays football, talks with friends—people he did not have before—and plans for the future. And I am glad that these efforts are producing results and that Dominik is coming back to life,” added the president of the Polish Psychopedagogical Society.
Closing arguments: five years in prison or acquittal?
In the courtroom, at the hearing that would determine Dominik’s future, two opposing positions clashed: those of the prosecutor and the defense attorneys. In his closing argument, prosecutor Sebastian Woźniak demanded five years in prison for Dominik. He said that Dominik’s victim, his mother’s partner, had the right to live and had a child and a family. However, the prosecutor himself did not defend the victim. He said that the partner’s conduct toward the accused and the lifestyle he led left much to be desired and had no social approval or acceptance.
“We are dealing with a drastic event,” the prosecutor said. “I request an extraordinary mitigation of the sentence and, ultimately, a five-year prison term. I realize that such a request is shocking to some, but I am not here to play on emotions. Personally, I feel sorry for the accused, but emotions cannot prevail here; the evidence and its analysis are important. I submit this request with full responsibility,” Sebastian Woźniak concluded.
Wojciech Kasprzyk replied to the prosecutor that emotions were present and had to be present in this case, and that a person must not be convicted for what others did to him.
“There must be emotions in cases of this kind, because if we have no emotions, there is something wrong with us,” Dominik’s attorney said. “We also have to consider every issue: the fact that a person is dead and the fact that this same person caused Dominik to sit in the dock today. The state apparatus failed across the board. That must also be said. There were probation officers, PCPR employees, police officers, community officers, counselors and teachers. Supposedly everyone knew things were bad, because Dominik’s brother had been taken away, but Dominik was forgotten. They decided that he was 17, so he could live in that dump, let them beat and hit him and so on. I apologize for my colloquialisms, but there were emotions here, and there should have been. We cannot convict a person for being abused throughout his entire life. And that abuse was cruel. Today people demand blood—not real blood, but symbolically; they want Dominik to go to prison. I do not know what I would have done in Dominik’s place on that tragic day. Some say, ‘I would have left home.’ But what if you have nowhere to go, if you remain in that bad place hoping things will get better? We often hear about people who die by suicide: one jumped from an overpass, another hanged himself, another drowned. We pass by indifferently and do not ask why they killed themselves. Dominik endured everything, and we should be glad he did not take his own life, because we would not be in this courtroom today. We would know nothing about his suffering,” the attorney added.
Attorney Małgorzata Gruszecka emphasized in her closing argument the social significance of the verdict, which could awaken state institutions that, as the attorney put it, sleep and have slept in cases involving alcoholic parents abusing their children.
“When we speak of acting in a state of affect, as in Dominik’s case, we know that there is no liability for such an act,” Małgorzata Gruszecka said, explaining her motion to acquit Dominik. “And we all have to confront this: the court, the prosecutor and the attorneys. In carrying out our duties, we must all consider how to prevent events of this kind and whom to alert so that tragedy does not occur. In the court in Bolesławiec, we have four volumes of probation records showing the harm Dominik suffered. And when Dominik’s mother, the accused, stood in the courtroom and said, ‘Please pardon my son and convict me,’ we understood one thing: Dominik had to end up this way because no one prevented it. With this verdict, we can prevent real harm. It will have great social significance because it will awaken institutions that sleep and have slept. Dominik has the right to return to a life he never knew.
In the reasoning supporting the verdict, Judge Daniel Strzelecki spoke of the accused’s difficult situation, in which he had faced, since childhood, circumstances of constant danger from his mother and her partners that were far too difficult for someone his age.
“The accused’s life was a struggle for survival,” the judge said. “He lived under constant threat. From his earliest years, he cared for his younger brother, although as a teenager he was not equipped to do so. He took him to kindergarten, picked him up and prepared food for him when his mother left home on drinking binges; he provided him with a basic sense of security, stayed with him and cared for him. All these circumstances led the experts to the correct conclusion that the deeper the disturbance and the greater the frustration in such a young person during the formative period of personality development, and the deeper the wounds, the greater the uncontrolled outburst of aggression we witnessed. As a result of years of frustration, fear and danger, and the mother’s and her partner’s attack at the critical moment, the accused’s emotions ceased to be subject to his intellectual control. The act escaped his control, and the accused found himself—in his own assessment—in a situation with no way out. All these circumstances led the court to conclude that the accused lacked criminal responsibility, even to a limited degree. The court also saw the need for a protective measure in the form of therapy to institutionally provide the accused with psychological support,” Daniel Strzelecki explained in his reasoning.
This is a very important verdict for victims who have been abused for years by domestic tormentors. Their defenders will certainly rely on it in the future. The in-depth psychological analysis of the accused is also important, showing the devastation experienced by a child and their personality when raised by alcoholic parents.
Prosecutor Sebastian Woźniak does not rule out potentially appealing the verdict, although he was not surprised by it given the course of the proceedings and the opinion of the Warsaw experts.