Boris Mestesug, an anesthesiologist and intensive care physician, was investigated on charges of rape, kidnapping, attempted rape, and sexual assault in a perverse form committed against two minor girls aged 10 and 12. These crimes allegedly occurred in 2010 and 2011. Prosecutors sought a sentence of 25 years’ imprisonment to be served in a high-security penitentiary.
However, after eight years of trial, in 2021 the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) ordered the termination of the proceedings without examining the facts related to the charges of rape and child sexual abuse – invoking “penal procedural errors.”
In dissenting opinions pertaining this case, two judges stated that the victims’ testimonies clearly established the guilt of Boris Mestesug and that the court had sufficient evidence for retrial.
Throughout this entire period, Mr. Mestesug continued to treat patients in several medical institutions in Chisinau. He is currently employed as an intensive care physician in the intensive care unit of the Clinical Psychiatric Hospital in the capital and at the “Extramed” Medical Center.
During our journalist investigation, we identified two more victims, individuals close to the doctor, who were sexually abused by him in his own home, without their parents’ knowledge. The victims believe Mestesug is a public danger since he’s avoided conviction, remains at large, and possesses a firearm. The doctor is a two-time shooting champion.
“This case concerns not only the children’s past but also our future as a society: if we accept impunity, we accept the repetition of sexual abuse against other children. It is essential that this case be viewed not as an isolated incident but as a warning regarding the way society and the justice system respond to sexual offences against children,” says lawyer Violeta Andriuta, who has lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
The medical institutions employing Mestesug emphasized that, at the time of his hiring, no final conviction had been issued against him and that they had not received any patient complaints since. The Ministry of Health invokes the presumption of innocence. Boris Mestesug has pleaded not guilty in the case.
Although we asked for comments from both institutions where he currently works—and they had more than 14 days to respond — he did not reply before publication. The director of the Psychiatric Hospital confirmed that the doctor had received our request. Nor did Mestesug answer our phone calls for his reaction.
Out the 11 magistrates involved in the trial, only one is still working in the justice system. The other eight resigned prior to the vetting procedure (the integrity review of judges’ ethical and financial background), while two were removed from office — one for corruption and the other due to an unexplained discrepancy of one million lei between his official income and actual expenditures.
Former Judge Maria Tertea, who presided over the case during the first examination, was dismissed in 2022. She had been detained and later sentenced by a lower court to a suspended five years’ prison term for accepting a bribe of $10,000 from a businessman in return for buying favorable decisions from a judge and a prosecutor. (Details HERE)
Anatolie Turcan, one of the SCJ justices involved in the case, was dismissed in 2024 by the Higher Council of Magistrates (HCM). A vetting commission found a gap exceeding one million lei between his declared income and de facto expenditures for the years 2012, 2013, and 2018. As a judge, he had also managed ten cases where the ECtHR found violations of the European Human Rights Convention, failing to provide any reasonable justification for disregarding ECtHR jurisprudence and coming short to uphold his ethical integrity criteria. (Details HERE)
The attorney representing Boris Mestesug, Ion Vizdoga, has been involved in several high-profile criminal cases. He represented the interests of businessman Veaceslav Platon, accused of embezzling hundreds of millions of lei from the Savings Bank (Banca de Economii), as well as former Prime Minister Vladimir Filat, who had spent nine years in prison for bribe-taking and influence peddling, before being released on parole in 2019. Mr. Vizdoga is currently in the defense team of former Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, who is in custody awaiting trial as a suspected mastermind in the one-billion-dollar bank fraud.
RISE Moldova, together with OCCRP and journalists from 48 countries, investigated medical practitioners across Europe who are currently barred from practicing or temporarily suspended in one country, yet continue their medical work elsewhere. The most serious cases include failed medical procedures, sexual assaults committed against patients, and surgeries performed without patient consent. Overall, the OCCRP has identified more than 100 punished doctors who relocated and continued to practice in other states.
The Moldovan Ministry of Health confirmed that the country does not have a medical database and does not employ a licensing system that would allow the suspension or revocation of a physician’s right to practice. The institution neither possesses a national register of doctors suspected, investigated, or prosecuted for offences such as rape, sexual abuse, malpractice, or corruption—crimes that jeopardize the health and lives of patients.
In the absence of any supervisory mechanism and without a conviction, Boris Mestesug has never been suspended and his medical license was never revoked. Structural shortcomings in both the justice system and the healthcare system have allowed him to continue working, while patients remained unaware that they were being treated by a person charged with sexual assault against two underage girls.
! This investigation contains descriptions of child sexual abuse, including details that may be distressing or difficult to read.
THE TRAP
On the first day of autumn 2011, a 48-year-old doctor from Chisinau was driving through a village in southern Moldova. On a roadside, a 12-year-old girl named Olesea (*name changed to protect her identity) was walking home from the local shop. Her grandfather had asked her to buy a bottle of vodka. The motorist stopped his car next to her, and asked her to show him the way to the mayor’s office. The unsuspecting girl sat onto the back seat. But instead of driving to the mayoralty, the man drove outside the village. He stopped in a cornfield, saying he wanted to check whether there were still grapes.
“Until then, he had spoken very nicely to me,” Olesea recalls, explaining how the man gained her trust. After he stopped, he told her to look for hygienic paper under the back seat, to wrap the grape. “I bent down, and when I got back up, he was already next to me. That’s when I realized something wasn’t right, and I got scared.”
The man, who was later identified as Boris Mestesug, threatened her: “If you want everything to be fine, do what I say.” […] “I was thinking what could really happen to me. He forced me to take it in my mouth […] I said ‘no’ […] I can’t, it makes me sick. But he started yelling at me: ‘Do it!’ He threatened me and forced me to. Although I imposed myself and began crying […] I did what he wanted because I was terrified. Then he pulled my pants down and tried to [penetrate me]. He attempted to touch my [private parts] with [his penis].”
It is still hard for Olesea, now a grown-up woman, to recollect what happened to her on the back seat of Mestesug’s car, even after 14 years since that event. She speaks quickly and skips over the most painful details, as if she wants to free herself from those memories.
All of a sudden, he stopped. He wiped her privacy zone with hygienic paper. “I guess he wanted to get rid of the traces, even though he did not ejaculate,” Olesea recalls.
He got back behind the wheel and drove the girl back to the village. On the way, he handed her some money — around 50 lei — and told her to keep quiet. “He said he would come again, and that he would give me money, a phone, a scooter to get to the store more easily. But only if I stayed quiet.” His promises came with a condition —they would meet again once a week or every two weeks.
At one point, her mind turned to the bottle of vodka in her bag. “I was tempted to hit him on the head with it, because I realized what he was doing to me and I was scared. […] But then I saw that he was already taking me back to the village, and I calmed down. I told myself that what happened there is already in the past, and I would go my way,” Olesea remembers with feelings of anger and resignation.
MIX OF FEAR AND SHAME
The child rushed home and tearfully told her mother what had happened to her. However, she was too ashamed to share every detail. She lied that while she was trapped in the car, the man stepped out to answer a phone call, giving her enough time to put her clothes back on and jump out of the vehicle, slipping away unnoticed toward the village.
During a [sexual] abuse, the child experiences a total loss of control, and later, in order to preserve a minimum sense of internal coherence, the brain begins to search for explanations — and shame and self-blame become a way to make sense of an unbearable experience, explains psychologist Daniela Simboteanu, president of the National Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse (CNPAC).
“At that time, my mother took to the family doctor. She believed the doctor would learn more from me. I didn’t tell the doctor much either […] I felt ashamed both in front of my mother and the doctor.” Since they did not know who the kidnapper was, her mother did not report the incident to the police.
On the way home, Olesea’s mother told anyone she met along the street about the abduction. “By evening, the whole village knew. […] The next day at school, children mocked me: ‘Did you like the ride? Did you enjoy your time?’ I still remember those words, and they hurt.”
Olesea lived with her mother and grandfather, surviving on his pension, which was split among alcohol, cigarettes, and food, plus a meager income her mother earned occasionally doing day labor in the village and some charity from a religious organization.
“I was 12 years old and we were very poor. I literally had nothing to wear. He (the abuser) saw how I was dressed and thought he could do as he pleased. I was a child, and my mother had not taught us to avoid talking to strangers or getting their cars. […] And my mother was not the type of person I could talk to like a friend, to share everything with her.”
Sometimes, Olesea’s mother would join her grandfather’s drinking spree, trying to hide the marks left by years of violence she had experienced with Olesea’s father. After the incident in Mestesug’s car, the girl was left alone, crushed between fear and shame.
“When I saw my mother telling everyone what had happened, I shut myself off. I was afraid. (…) If I had shared only half of my story and it was already heard, then what would have been like if I had told the whole story?”
“International studies show that fear, shame, and guilt are typical psychological effects of sexual trauma, not signs of consent or moral confusion. They are survival mechanisms. These emotions are also reinforced by social attitudes. The culture of silence, suspicion toward victims, and the lack of firm institutional response amplify the sense of guilt,” says specialist Daniela Simboteanu.
RETREAT
About a month later, the man appeared again. He parked his car and entered the village store. The girl saw him and hid under the counter, trembling from panic. The man left, but the shop assistant noted the car’s license plate number and called the police. Olesea’s mother arrived too. A complaint was filed, and the shop assistant was summoned as a witness.
On the same day, the girl’s mother, acting as her legal representative, filed a formal report with the police but the same day she changed her mind and pressed against the investigation, claiming that her daughter had made it all up to avoid being scolded for her long absence from home, according to court documents. “So, I didn’t know anything. I had no clue that my mother had changed her statements,” Olesea says now. A month later, the district prosecutor decided not to launch a criminal investigation due to the absence of signs of a crime.
The police should not have stopped just because a parent withdrew the complaint in a case of sexual assault, emphasizes Daniela Simboteanu, director of CNPAC. Sexual abuse of minors is a crime of public concern, not a private matter between parties. The state has an obligation enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child—to investigate, even when the family no longer requests it. And in the absence of a protective family, the state becomes, by law, the guardian of the child’s interests.
A few months later, Olesea was admitted to a boarding school for disadvantaged children in Romania, run by a religious organization. She returned home only during vacations. “I felt relieved. No one knew anything, and children no longer laughed at me. Since then, I’ve stayed here.”
ANOTHER VICTIM
2013. A year and a half after the state had abandoned Olesea, the police learned of another case of rape by a man traveling in his personal car. The victim was a 13-year-old girl from rural background. She had kept silent for three years until she could no longer cope with her experience.
One day, while watching a film about animals with her classmates, Elena (*name changed to protect her identity) flinched in horror and broke down in tears at a scene where a bear attacked another bear. She trembled uncontrollably and could not calm down, so she had to be taken home.
“It is very important for people to understand that Elena’s reaction was not accidental. An image, a sound, a smell — any element that even vaguely recalls the moment of abuse — can act as a traumatic trigger. The brain of a child who has experienced extreme violence does not process the event as an ordinary memory but ‘freezes’ it in an unintegrated sensory form. Years later, an ordinary stimulus can reactivate that bodily memory with the same emotional intensity as during the abuse,” explains child rights specialist Mrs. Simboteanu.
In the following days, the girl confessed to her mother and then to the police that she had been sexually abused by a man she knew only to possess a firearm and a motor car, and worked as a doctor.
From her testimonies, we learned that three years earlier, when Elena was just 10 years old, she and her younger siblings were looking after a cow grazing in the village cemetery.
Suddenly, they heard a gunshot. They rushed to see what happened and saw a man holding a gun. He told them he was shooting crows because they were eating what he had planted in the ground. After a while, the man approached them with a hoe. As they got acquainted, he asked which of them was the oldest, and Elena replied it was her. The man then asked the girl to follow him and help clean the cemetery. The girl agreed. Once they had moved far enough from her siblings, the man told her to sit in a ditch.
CEMETERY OF FEAR
“He demanded I speak to no one what we were going to do. He made me undress. I pulled my pants and underwear down to my knees. He too pulled down his pants and got naked. […] He then pushed me to lay on my back, spread my legs and leaned over me.
At first, I barely realized what he was doing to me. Then he grabbed his cucumber and touched my body with it; pushing it inside my private part. […] He remained still inside for a minute, then he took it out. Further on, the man tried to force his thing into my mouth but I shoved it away, and he didn’t insist. Before I got dressed back, he cleaned his cucumber and my pussy. I was wet, something was leaking out of it. […] After that, I stood up and ran to the cow. He was calling me out behind.”
The ordeal did not stop there. The child testified during the court hearings she’d been forced into at least four sex assaults in the defendant’s car the next days, as per the police report. That man offered cash – between 10 and 50 lei – when the girl would burst into crying during her raping acts.
The doctor kept returning to Elena’s village. He urged her to get into his car again, in return for money. The girl would run from him and walked the streets with fear. Two months before everything came to light, while she was playing near a sports field, she heard him stop his car again and call her out. Terrified, Elena ran and hid in someone’s yard. Later, she saw the scene with the bear attack, and she couldn’t hold it in anymore.
The psychological report in the case file notes that Elena was overwhelmed by shame, fear, guilt, and despair. She had episodes of panic, anxiety, and a constant need for protection. The sexual assault deeply affected her ability to trust or relate to others, as well as her social adaptation. At home, she would only tell her mother that she felt sick, but refused to see a doctor.
“The symptoms of post-traumatic stress, intense fear, involuntary bodily reactions, confusion, defensive mechanisms, the pattern of fragmented memory — these are clear signs of real trauma, even when the body no longer shows marks,” Simboteanu explains.
In the years that followed, the effects of that abuse grew worse. Elena could no longer concentrate in class and had developed an irrational fear of men and cars. “She came home with her hair cut. She told me she was ugly and didn’t deserve to live. She would wrap herself in rugs to hide,” her mother recalls, her voice still trembling. Despite difficult life conditions, Elena’s mother tried to seek justice for her daughter.
The woman told the court that her daughter needed psychological support and treatment for anxiety and memory disorders. “She discontinued both, but not because she didn’t want to – money was the problem. I was raising four school-aged children and this case simply knocked me down.”
Fifteen years after the abuse, Elena is still searching for an explanation for what happened to her: “First of all, I didn’t know how to protect myself. I didn’t know how to open the car door, and I didn’t know how to scream so that someone would hear me.”
CASE REOPENING
After Elena’s complaint, the investigation into underage raping reopened in April 2013. The police also looked again in the case of Olesea. Even this time, Olesea did not tell the police the full version of her story – omitting to reveal the actual sexual abuse and insisting on her abduction and escape from the car. With her mother beside her, she felt too ashamed to confess what had happened in reality.
“In cases involving children, disclosure of abuse is often delayed. Children don’t have the words, nor the sense of safety, to explain what happened to them. Often, they feel ashamed, fear they won’t be believed or even that they will be punished. Many try to hide the trauma, to ‘forget’ it—but the body and the psyche do not forget. When the first flashbacks, nightmares, or disproportionate reactions to seemingly harmless stimuli appear, it’s a sign that the trauma is surfacing,” explains Simboteanu.
The two cases were connected for the investigation and Boris Mestesug was officially identified as a suspect. Three months later, he was formally charged.
During the hearing before the investigating judge, the girls came face to face with Mestesug again. “One girl started crying and trembling as soon as she saw him,” recalls Elena’s mother. Both girls refused to speak in his presence. They were able to continue testifying after his removal from the courtroom. Moldovan laws do provide for clear procedures meant to protect minors from traumatic experiences and direct contact with the alleged perpetrator, but they were not enforced. Article 110¹ of the Criminal Procedure Code states that the examination had to take place “in a separate room, before the investigating judge and other parties,” in the presence of a child psychologist.
Boris Mestesug was charged with rape and perverse sexual acts against a person under 14, taking advantage of the victims’ inability to defend themselves (Elena’s case), as well as the kidnapping of a child and attempted rape (Olesea’s case). Prosecutors requested a 25-year prison sentence in a high-security facility. Mestesug pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer argued that, if these crimes had taken place anyway, they were committed by someone else.
In November 2014, the case was submitted for examination in a first-instance court. The trial was marked by four years of court sessions alternating with repeated session postponements. At one point, the case was transferred to another court after Mestesug caused a car accident with the presiding judge in Stefan-Voda District and requested the judge’s replacement.
Olesea’s mother was already exhausted by frequent travel and court sessions. As the legal representative of her underage daughter, it was her duty to appear at every hearing. “My mother kept telling me: ‘I’m fed up. Every time I go, either he supposedly had an accident, or he was unable to come, or his lawyer couldn’t show up, so he [defendant] would not arrive either. So many court sessions postponed. […] So many trips and so much money wasted – all just to see neither coming for hearing,’” Olesea recalls.
The interpretation of evidence in favor of Meșteșug
During court hearings, Elena’s younger brothers confirmed they had seen Boris Mestesug several times. First time at the cemetery, then during his car’s pullover in the village. They testified that their sister had been taken for a ride and was later released in tears, although they did not really understand what had happened. The court, however, dismissed the siblings’ testimonies of abuse – interpreting instead as grounds for doubt and citing “discrepancies.”
Elena’s own statements, backed up by a psychological evaluation demonstrating trauma, did not convince the judges. Of the four episodes of systematic sexual abuse, only two appeared in the final decision. The mother’s testimony was also excluded on the grounds that she represented two people simultaneously — the victim and a key witness – daughter and son.
“The insignificant inconsistencies in children’s statements should not be interpreted as lack of credibility. It’s a typical indicator of trauma. Children live the abuse all over again every time they are asked to recollect it and instinctively try to shield themselves from pain,” says psychologist Simboteanu.
The mother felt she was defending her child alone. The court-appointed lawyer seemed absent. “He just sat there quietly, didn’t say anything — it was mostly me and my daughter who spoke,” she recalls.
In Olesea’s case, the judges did not believe her, relying instead on a certificate issued and signed six years after the crime by the head of the Phthisio-Pneumology Institute. The document states that Mestesug had served, in fact, a 24-hour hospital shift on the day of the assault.
Meanwhile, the judges overlooked and dismissed key evidence from the prosecution bench: the statements of two witnesses who confirmed seeing his car near the village store on the day the victim recognized him. The testimony of the shop assistant — who saw the defendant inside the store and Olesea terrified — was also excluded. The court argued that the store assistant had been present when the minor filed the complaint, which supposedly made her “biased.”
A court must assess the evidence as a whole, not in isolation, explains lawyer Violeta Andriuta. “If the court accepts a certificate issued by a medical institution, it must be supported by additional evidence — such as witness testimony or other documents confirming its authenticity. In this case, one person claims that Dr. Mestesug was at work, while two others say they saw him in the village. The court is obligated to explain these contradictions and justify why it considers some evidence credible and views others with critical eyes. Here we have two diametrically opposed versions. Why was the certificate — which benefits the defendant — accepted over the statements of the witnesses and the child?” the lawyer wonders.
The first-instance court panel also concluded that Mestesug had not been present during the questioning of the underage witnesses — which, they argued, violated his right to a fair trial. They then annulled an official report in which both girls identified the alleged perpetrator, reasoning that they had recognized him from a photograph and dismissing the prosecution’s argument that a face-to-face identification could have traumatized the victims again. Elena and her mother, however, recall that the recognition happened in person. “There were four or five people in a row, and she recognized him immediately,” her mother says.
Mestesug’s defense relied on a forensic medical report which, years later, no longer showed signs of injury, and showed that Elena’s hymen was intact. Although the abuses described by the victims did not involve full penetration — and thus could not be expected to leave clear physical traces — the judges focused on the absence of visible “marks,” disregarding the statements of the victims.
“International studies and World Health Organization guidelines show that in over 90% of medical examinations identify no genital injuries and that an intact hymen in no way rules out abuse. Sexual abuse does not involve penetration alone — it includes touching, coercion, exposure, intimidation, threats, and anything that invades a child’s body and privacy. Psychological evidence is often the most conclusive. A traumatized child does not lie easily — but timing details get lost over time during an encounter with recollection of a story of sexual violence,” according to Simboteanu.
And yet the judges, who systematically disregarded the witness statements in this case, the victims’ testimonies — the only accounts describing in detail how they were sexually abused — were not enough to convict Mestesug.
“This over-technical, formalistic approach to the Criminal Procedure Code, which placed procedural formalities above the facts and victim protection, blatantly contradicted the binding case law of the European Court of Human Rights,” Vadim Vieru, a lawyer, comments on the trial.
PROCEDURES ON TRIAL
After exclusion of key evidence confirming the abuse of the two girls, the judges cited the Criminal Procedure Code and European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence to justify respecting Boris Mestesug’s rights. However, they chose to ignore the same provisions with regard to the victims.
Among others, the court found that mentioning the defendant’s name in the criminal investigation order before obtaining evidence of the rape could have violated Article 6 of the ECtHR — the right to a fair trial — and might have caused “very serious” consequences for the defendant. This procedural error led to the overall annulment of the investigation and, implicitly, all evidence collected afterward.
At the same time, the judges disregarded other ECtHR precedents in sexual abuse cases. In S.N. v. Sweden (2002), the Court ruled that authorities must avoid traumatizing children anew, using instead procedures adapted to victims’ age and psychological state. The Court also noted that in sexual abuse cases, victims’ statements may serve as decisive evidence when no other proof exists.
In M.C. v. Bulgaria (2003), the Court emphasized that contradictions between testimonies do not automatically justify their exclusion; instead, they must be carefully reviewed in light of the trauma and vulnerability of victims. The absence of physical injuries does not mean abuse did not occur, and authorities are obliged to consider the psychological effects, fear, and coercion — not just visible marks.
“Psychological and psychiatric reports are essential in cases related to child sexual abuse — sometimes even the only evidence that can confirm the trauma’s authenticity,” insists Daniela Simboteanu, a psychologist and founder of the National Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse. “Understanding this is crucial, especially for court magistrates. In reality, the vast majority of sexual abuse cases leave no visible physical traces, particularly if time has passed between the abuse and the examination.”
Additionally, in the I.G. v. Moldova ruling (2012), the government had already been condemned for failing to effectively investigate allegations of rape assault on a 14-year-old girl. Although the victim reported the assault and a forensic examination confirmed a hymen tear, prosecutors closed the case without interviewing witnesses or assessing the victim psychologically, arguing that there were no signs of physical violence. Later, the investigation reopened, but the first-instance court ruled that, in the absence of these signs, the sexual contact had been consensual.
The rape charge was replaced with one regarding sexual intercourse with a minor. The defendant was sentenced to three years in prison, with suspension. The Balți Court of Appeal overturned the initial conviction, citing that reopening the investigation had violated the law. The ECtHR emphasized that the absence of physical marks cannot be interpreted as proof of consent and that the investigation should focus on the credibility of the statements and the context of the trauma, not the child’s physical resistance.
In May 2019, the first-instance panel of three female judges (Maria Tertea, Veronica Nichitenco, and Victoria Railean) ruled that the prosecutor who reopened the criminal investigation after the second sexual abuse case did not actually have the authority to do so.
They decided that Elena’s case did not introduce new circumstances or facts that would justify reopening the investigation, and Mestesug could not be investigated twice, even though no investigation had taken place in Olesea’s case.
CASE CLOSURE
The same court determined that the charge of sexual abuse of a person known to be under 14 was filed too late against Mestesug — more than a year after he had already been recognized as a suspect, rather than within the three-month window stipulated in the Criminal Procedure Code. As a result, all subsequent investigative activities were declared null and void. The General Prosecutor’s Office still disputes this point of view, citing judicial practice and Constitutional Court interpretation, and arguing that it could not represent a ground for terminating the case.
Procedural errors weighed more heavily than the abuse of two girls, aged 10 and 12. The criminal case was closed without the court ever ruling on the defendant’s guilt or innocence.
The only dissenting voice was that of Judge Victoria Railean, who issued a separate opinion. In her analysis, the evidence clearly demonstrated Boris Mestesug’s guilt. However, a judge’s dissenting opinion is not enough to secure a conviction, because decisions are made on majority vote. Dissenting opinions do not carry the same legal weight as a judgment; rather, they signal a magistrate’s disagreement with the final ruling issued in the case.
“It is difficult to understand how three judges, examining the same case and reviewing the same facts while applying the same legal provisions, can reach diametrically opposed conclusions. This is no longer simply a matter of legal interpretation, but a profound difference in perception and in the internal conviction each judge forms when assessing evidence and searching for the truth in a case. Such a discrepancy raises questions not only about the enforcement of the law, but also about how magistrates shape their inner conviction when deciding the fate of a child,” notes lawyer Violeta Andriuta.
It was a failure of the Moldovan justice system, legal expert Vadim Vieru concludes.
WHEN THE NEWS BROKE
The second day after the first-instance decision was issued, Jurnal TV published a news report about the doctor accused of rape who escaped punishment. For Irina (*name changed), the mother of a girl who periodically spent time at Boris Mestesug’s home, the news was a warning sign.
“I realized something was wrong. The next day I visited my daughter and showed her the report. […] She started crying and told me everything. […] We talked for about four hours. I can’t describe what I felt at that moment… It’s impossible to put into words what I was going through. (…) My husband couldn’t utter a single word for two days,” she said.
Valeria (*name changed) told her mother that the man had abused her repeatedly over the years, when she was still a child. Mestesug was a friend to her family and had earned their trust. When the girl tried to get away from him and warned she would tell her parents everything, the doctor replied that no one would believe her.
Mestesug walked out of the courtroom a free man, without conviction. He was a practicing anesthesiologist and had access to drugs that – in his words – could damage her memory and mental health. In court, he admitted he was in legal possession of a firearm and was a two-time sharp-shooting champion. “He’s a hunter. […], he has a hunting rifle, a pistol he always carries in his bag, and certificates showing he’s one of the best marksmen in Moldova,” Irina said.
Irina tried to seek justice for her daughter and punish the abuser. She sought advice from a police officer in Chisinau, to whom she shared the story in detail. Then she filed a complaint. “I asked: ‘Will it be possible [to go to trial] without my daughter being present?’ No, he said. Her presence is mandatory.” Without a complaint from the victim, an investigation cannot be launched. Her daughter, however, wasn’t ready yet to tell the authorities what had happened to her. So, they stopped.
HOPE OF APPEAL
After the first verdict in Olesea’s and Elena’s case, case reached the Court of Appeals in Chisinau. There, the proceedings moved faster, this time without Olesea’s or Elena’s mother present in the courtroom.
“How was I supposed to go in Chisinau? 100 lei one way for two people? I need at least 400 lei I buy food. They sent me a folder home after a hearing session. I think I threw it in the fire,” Elena’s mother said. But she also admits that Boris Mestesug took advantage of the social vulnerability of the victims’ families’ and paid each 2,000 lei for about half a year. “We were paid not to go to court and let them sort things out alone.”
Letting the defendant at large, despite the obvious risk of influencing the victims and witnesses, was a serious failure of the justice system, lawyer Violeta Andriuta argues.
Olesea’s mother died in 2020 without ever seeing justice for her daughter.
After 11 months of examination, the Court of Appeals troika — Silvia Girbu, Sergiu Furdui and Stelian Teleuca — upheld the first-instance ruling without any changes. The criminal trial was declared null once again.
Upon the release of the final resolution, lawyer Violeta Andriuta – who learned about the case from Irina – stepped in to represent Olesea. Elena no longer wanted to hear anything about trial. In the appeal for the Supreme Court of Justice, the lawyer argued that the victims’ rights had been violated multiple times: the case had not been examined with due urgency, the courts had relied on irrelevant legal provisions, and they had embraced the defense’s arguments without looking at the core of the trial: the facts and evidence. The Supreme Court of Justice dismissed the case.
FINAL DECISION
In 2021, the Supreme Court of Justice dropped the charges and closed the criminal case against Boris Mestesug. The SCJ judges worked only to correct the legal slops of the lower courts.
The high court found that the first-instance and appeals courts had misinterpreted the procedure for reopening a criminal investigation. Under the law, reopening was allowed as long as the statute of limitations is valid. Even so, the SCJ panel including Judges Vladimir Timofti, Elena Cobzac, Nadejda Toma, Anatolie Turcan, and Victor Boico ruled that the case could no longer continue, because too much time had passed before Boris Meșteșug was formally charged.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Elena Cobzac stated that the lower courts had applied the law incorrectly and inconsistently, and that the substance of the case had not been examined. She argued that the Supreme Court of Justice should have ordered a retrial by a different Court of Appeals to ensure an effective procedure and a genuine investigation into the abuses reported by the underage victims, as required under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The high court’s decision to uphold the termination of the case on the grounds of delayed charges resembles a scenario for which Moldova has been already slapped by the ECtHR. In its 2018 judgment in Mereuța v. Moldova, the Strasbourg-based court held that an investigation cannot be considered effective when the state hides behind procedural deadlines.
In that case, a man was shot in a leg from a firearm, and although the assailant assumed the blame, he was never punished because prosecutors closed the investigation on the grounds that the charges were filed too late. The victim eventually had his leg amputated. The ECtHR concluded that such bureaucratic errors had undermined the investigation and led to the violation of Article 3 of the Convention.
After the SCJ’s decision, lawyer Violeta Andriuta filed a complaint with the ECtHR on Olesea’s behalf, highlighting the ineffective way in which the state had investigated and handled the case. “This is not simply a failure of our authorities — it is a serious violation of children’s rights. When the justice system protects the abuser instead of the child, we are no longer dealing with a mere mistake. Through the flawed way the case was handled, the state became, indirectly, an accomplice of Mestesug and inflicted suffering on these children,” the lawyer said.
She emphasizes that this case shows how sexually abused children are left for years without genuine protection from the state. “After a decade of judicial proceedings, the abuser remained unpunished, and the children were subjected to new suffering as a result of the missing effective response. Instead of protecting them, the justice system made them feel helpless and abandoned, effectively turning itself into the abuser’s advocate.”
“I imagine the judges simply don’t realize it. Only if those were their children, they’d probably understand,” Irina said.
EVERYTHING IS LEGAL
During the 15 years since the first victim publicly spoke about being raped by Mestesug, he continued to practice as a doctor. Although the law allows hospitals to suspend suspects during the court proceedings, this measure was never enforced.
“Article 76 of the Labor Code provides mechanisms for temporary suspension from duty if allegations can seriously harm the institution’s integrity or the safety of patients — especially in sensitive fields such as healthcare and protection of vulnerable persons,” explains Daniela Simboteanu.
Mestesug worked at the “Chiril Draganiuc” Institute of Pneumology from 2001 to 2020, at “Excellence” Clinical Center from 2015 to 2022, and has been employed at the “Extramed” Medical Center and the Chisinau Clinical Psychiatric Hospital since 2018 and 2020, respectively.
Each of these institutions said that, at the time of his hiring, there had been no final conviction that would have barred Mr. Mestesug from practicing. They received no formal requests from law-enforcement bodies and no complaints from patients regarding his conduct or medical work. So, they did nothing.
The “Excellence” Clinic noted that Mestesug used to oversee the delivery of contrast substance by a radiology technician during CT procedures. He would not have been alone with patients, the clinic’s representatives said, because “he had no an individual clinical role or direct contact outside a specialized team.”
At the Clinical Psychiatric Hospital, Mestesug provides care to in-patients, and its management has no record of complaints, reports, or disciplinary sanctions on his name. “There have been no objections regarding his professional or ethical conduct during his employment,” the institution’s answer says. In 2025, Mestesug earned at least 40,000 lei per month from the Clinical Psychiatric Hospital alone.
The “Extramed” Medical Center stated that Mestesug worked part-time and “barely comes once a week,” but declined to comment further on the specifics of his duties or his access to patients.
The Ministry of Health, too, invoked the doctor’s presumption of innocence, in September 2025, given that no final conviction exists. It maintains that any violations of patients’ rights can be sanctioned directly by the medical institutions under the Labor Code — but it doesn’t apply for abuses committed outside.
According to the same code, no medical specialist can be sacked without a final court ruling or serious breaches in their professional activity. “There are very strict procedures when you want to fire someone: first, you must issue a warning, a formal reprimand, a severe reprimand, and record all violations. If these requirements are not respected, the alleged violator can sue the medical institution and can be reinstated,” explains Rodica Gramma, a health management and legislation specialist.
Lawyer Sergiu Bozianu notes that an eventual dismissal at one institution does not prevent the doctor from being hired at another medical institution.
When a formal conviction is missing, the only option left for a medical institution managers is turning to an informal solution: ask the doctor to tender his resignation voluntarily in order to protect the institution’s reputation, notes Rodica Gramma — a choice that ultimately depends on Boris Mestesug.
If Moldova loses this case at the ECtHR, it could be ordered to deliver a retrial and award compensations to the victims. According to lawyer Andriuta, such a ruling would compel the state not only to take individual measures for the abused children but also to implement systemic reforms to prevent similar cases in the future. The enforcement of the ECtHR judgment would be monitored by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers and become a turning point in the protection of sexually abused children.
Of the 11 judges across three courts who handled the case, only Victoria Railean — who issued a separate opinion — has remained in the system. The other eight resigned before ethical and financial review, and two were removed from office.
TRACES OF ABUSE
Over time, Irina, whose daughter confided what she had endured in the doctor’s home as a child, learned that her girl was not the only to have been molested by Mestesug in the same apartment building. The man used the same pattern — gain trust and befriend the parents, manipulating and threatening the girl, convincing her that no one would believe her.
Fifteen years after the abuse, Elena still speaks emotionally, sometimes struggling to find the right words. She often repeats that she feels something is wrong with her. “I’m afraid of making a wrong choice. I’m afraid to buy what I want, such as clothes – a dress or shoes… For myself or my children. With my mom, I’m not.”
Although she wants to undergo therapy, she doesn’t know if the little money they have for food would be enough to cover the trip there. She often forgets things. “I go to the store and don’t remember what to get… Cooking food is still hard for me.”
Olesea says she is now ready to tell the full story of her abuse to the authorities. She wants to do it for other victims, so they won’t end up like her.
Sexual assault against underaged individuals whom the perpetrator surely knew were under 14 is classified by the Penal Code as an exceptionally serious crime. The statute of limitations in such cases is 25 years. Only if Valeria and other victims file official complaints can a new case open.
