AGENTS PLAN TO DEPORT DAD AFTER DAUGHTER'S SEXUAL BATTERY

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)

Author: JAMES F. McCARTY PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

credits his sharp intellect and savvy survival skills with giving him the means to endure a half-century of oppression and death threats in his native Russia.

But lawyers and law enforcement officers say it was nothing short of good fortune that saved Bredyuk from a stretch in an Ohio prison after he pleaded guilty to sexual battery for fathering a child borne by his adopted 17-year-old daughter last year.

Bredyuk, 56, of North Royalton, was the beneficiary of a sharp pair of defense lawyers and a sympathetic judge who sentenced him to probation for his crime, a third-degree felony.

But they couldn't protect Bredyuk from being arrested again last week, this time by U.S. immigration agents seeking to have him deported for his crime. He was freed after posting a $15,000 cash bond.

Bredyuk has said he fears that if he is deported he faces retribution from vengeful former KGB agents.

At issue in the criminal case was whether Bredyuk's relationship with his daughter, while unforgivable, had more to do with Russian cultural differences or criminal depravity.

Defense attorneys argued that adopted children were treated more like servants than blood offspring in Bredyuk's homeland - an argument that Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy Russo said she believed.

Those familiar with Russian culture, including several local scholars, label such stories pure fiction.

"They think it's common in Russia for a father to sleep with his daughter? No way. It's incredible," Bredyuk's former wife, Ludmila, said.

Bredyuk declined to be interviewed, but hundreds of pages of court documents, police reports and immigration papers from his criminal case tell a bizarre story of Russian life and family tragedy.

At first, the Bredyuks appeared to be involved in a simple case of domestic violence when North Royalton detectives began investigating in January 1997. Ludmila was accusing her husband of inflicting a lifetime of beatings on her and her children. She moved out and filed for divorce.

But as police investigated, they couldn't help noticing that the eldest daughter was pregnant. When pressed for the identity of the father, she accused a high school classmate.

Ludmila doubted the story. Although Bredyuk claimed impotence when he was with her, he doted on his eldest daughter and sometimes at night would climb into bed with her, Ludmila said.

"I realized something was wrong," Ludmila said. She confronted her daughter, who told her to mind her own business.

The daughter's child, a boy, was born Feb. 7, 1997, and was put up for adoption. But first, police obtained a blood sample for DNA comparison with Bredyuk, based on Ludmila's suspicions. In April, they learned Bredyuk was the father of the child.

A Cuyahoga County grand jury indicted Bredyuk on six counts each of rape and sexual battery against his daughter.

Police and prosecutors didn't anticipate the next development in the case: Bredyuk's strongest defender was the victim, his eldest daughter.

"It was the most sickening situation I had ever seen," Detective Dave Loeding of the North Royalton police said. "It was so sad, and quite a bizarre case."

Bredyuk and the girl provided an explanation for the pregnancy that police and prosecutors openly laughed at and that even caused defense lawyers to roll their eyes.

The girl and Bredyuk maintained that they had never had sex with each other. Rather, she said she had obtained her father's semen while he slept, and then inseminated herself through a McDonald's straw.

To defend himself, Bredyuk hired Georg Abakumov, a Russian-speaking specialist in international law, and Jerome Emoff, one of the top criminal defense lawyers in Cleveland.

Bredyuk agreed to plead guilty on Dec. 2 to a single count of sexual battery - the definition of which includes unforced sex between a father and a daughter older than 13. He continued to maintain that he never had sex with his daughter.

But the key to keeping Bredyuk out of prison, Russo and defense lawyers said, was a 30-page document the lawyers prepared containing Bredyuk's background and a psychological report that diagnosed him as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

His lawyers declined to identify the trauma and excised it from a 30-page report they provided to a reporter.

Bredyuk was raised in a Siberian orphanage and worked as a mechanic on Russian MiG fighter jets, the document said. He was twice married and divorced when he wed Ludmila, 12 years his junior, in 1981. They had two natural sons and adopted two daughters.

In 1992, Bredyuk met

, owner of

in North Royalton, and began coming to the United States on short business visits. Bredyuk also agreed to locate children in orphanages for adoption by U.S. families and to host the adoptive couples in his comfortable Moscow apartment.

But the KGB began pressuring him to spy on the couples who stayed at his apartment, the document said. Bredyuk said he refused to cooperate, and in June 1995, he defected to the United States, claiming he feared death threats from former KGB agents.

The director of the Department of Justice's Immigration and Naturalization Service granted Bredyuk political asylum on May 28, 1996. "It has been determined you have established a well-founded fear of persecution upon return to your homeland," the document said.

In the interim, he had had a falling-out with Cole, who fired him. She claimed he lied to her about adoption deals. He said he didn't. He has been unemployed since arriving in the United States, living off more than $200,000 he earned working for Cole.

In court, Ludmila wrote Russo a letter asking her to be severe.

A presentence report from the probation department and the Department of Children and Family Services were considered by the judge, but were not available because they were not public.

Assistant County Prosecutor Michael Horn assured Ludmila that she had nothing to fear - the judge told him all along that Bredyuk was going to prison; it was only a question of how long. Indeed, Bredyuk's suitcase was packed for a long stretch behind bars, Abakumov and Emoff said.

On Dec. 10, Russo reviewed the defense document. But before passing judgment, she met privately with the victim. About 10 minutes later, the girl rushed out of the courtroom in tears.

Russo ordered the courtroom closed, evicting everyone except the lawyers, the defendant, court personnel and a newspaper reporter. She said she did it to avoid an emotional scene.

With Ludmila barred from the courtroom, Russo proceeded to attack her, according to court transcripts.

"It is unacceptable for any parent to fail to protect a child," Russo said. "Fear is not an excuse. Fear in this case was nothing more than selfishness ... It is this court's opinion that she is equally culpable. Her conduct as well disgusts me."

In deciding Bredyuk's fate, Russo said she considered the nonviolent nature of the crime, the supposed different cultural view of Russian adopted children, the pleas of mercy from the victim, Bredyuk's refugee status, his poor command of English and his bad heart - and she lauded the defense document for bringing it all together for her.

Then she sentenced Bredyuk to two years in prison, which she suspended in lieu of three years probation with conditions: He must have no contact with the victim for three years, and he must undergo counseling for his psychiatric problems. Father and daughter will be allowed to exchange letters after one year.

"I was shocked," Horn said. "I couldn't understand her rationale. [Ludmila] had no control over the situation at home. She tried to stop it, and Bredyuk told her to mind her own business."

Kerry Capka, the North Royalton prosecutor responsible for the domestic violence case pending against Bredyuk, said she considered Ludmila a case study of a battered wife. "She was too scared to react."

Russo recently elaborated on her reasoning.

"I found that document and his history extremely helpful," she said. "There are some cases that break your heart, and this was clearly one of them. What would I have accomplished by sending him to prison?"

The judge said that, during their private meeting, the victim assumed the entire blame for her pregnancy. "The last thing I wanted to do was to make her more of a victim," Russo said. "I don't excuse what he did, but both parents were responsible. Ludmila knew and she could have stopped it."

As for the cultural gap suggested in court, Russo said she had no reason to doubt the veracity of the information provided by the defense lawyers, and Horn delivered no opposing views.

But others disputed the contention that it was an accepted practice for fathers to have sex with their adopted children.

In addition to Ludmila and Cole, that opinion was challenged by Michael Feinstein, president and publisher of the "Russian Magazine" published in Solon, and Russian scholar Jeannette Tuve, professor emeritus at Cleveland State University.

Feinstein said people in Russia did not in any way subscribe to the notion. He said the Bredyuk situation was neither "traditional" nor "cultural," but something specific to that family.

"I never heard of such a thing," Tuve said. "Adopted children are not treated any differently than natural-born children" in Russia.

In the aftermath of the criminal case, both parents are seeking court-awarded custody of the three youngest children. The eldest daughter and son have sided with their father and are living with separate foster families outside Northeast Ohio. The youngest adopted daughter and son support their mother and live with her.

Ludmila said all of her attempts to reconcile with her eldest daughter - who turned 18 last month - were rebuffed.

Bredyuk's next dealings will be with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Under a strict new round of immigration laws that took effect last January, Bredyuk's probation holds no standing in deportation proceedings, said Deputy District Director Richard Kowalchik of the INS Cleveland office.

All that an immigration judge will consider is his guilty plea and the two-year sentence that Russo suspended. Russo will not be involved, and Bredyuk's immigration lawyers declined to comment.

"For our purposes, he has met the threshhold for deportation," Tom Costello, assistant district director for investigations in the INS Cleveland office, said. "If we can find a country that will take him, we'll try to move him there. Otherwise, he's going back to Russia."

Caption:

PHOTO BY CHUCK CROW / PLAIN DEALER PHOTOGRAPHER Ludmila Bredyuk of North Royalton said she knew something was wrong but had to wait for the DNA test before determining that her daughter bore Anatoli Bredyuk's child.