The pair, who have a lovely seven-year-old daughter called Anna,
were both classified as people with mental health problems when they were young
– but that's not what makes them different. What makes them so interesting is
what they have done with their lives.
When Vitaly and
Natalya met nine years ago in St Peterburg's Smolny Asylum, each of them
did not understand why the other had been placed in care.
Vitaly had grown
up in an orphanage where he was designated 'educationally subnormal' but
Natalya told me: "All the orphanage kids get this tag".
Vitaly was
equally forthright about his then wife-to-be. "I asked Natalya, why are
you disabled? You can read and write. Then we started dating but we were
forbidden from being together. (The wardens) said why do you want a woman
As people with mental health problems in Russia, they had few -
if any - rights. In fact, mental illness is widely equated with dangerousness
and when Natalya told administrators at Smolny Asylum she was pregnant, they
took drastic action.
Natalya says she
was taken to a psychiatric hospital and forced to have an abortion.
"They
brought me to a medical ward and gave me an injection.
"I don't
remember the rest because I was bedridden and unconscious for two days.
"They
thought I was dead and the ambulance came two times but I don't remember that.
"I was told
later.
"But they
forced me to have the abortion anyway."
She says she
knows several other women from mental institutions who were also forced to have
the procedure and the St Petersburg-based lawyer who would eventually represent
the couple - Dimitry Bartenev - told me it's an "everyday story".
"We believe
that it is a common occurrence," he said. "But remember, once you are
labelled 'disabled', you lose your basic rights. What's exceptional about
Natalya and Vitaly is they fought back."
When Natalya
become pregnant a second time, the couple were determined not lose their baby,
deciding instead to make a run for it.
"I asked
(Vitaly) to saw off the bars on the window because my room was on the first
floor. So he sawed them and we ran away... we were renting a flat and then a
room, and I was pretty far along when we decided go back to the asylum because
they wouldn't be able to perform (an abortion)."
Natalya had a
healthy baby girl and they called her Anna but, three days after the birth,
medical staff took her away and placed her in an orphanage. Natalya was told
she could not visit her daughter and Vitaly spent a month just trying to find
out where Anna had gone.
The couple would
spent the next six years seeking the right to visit - and eventually live with
- their daughter. They told me that orphanage and government administrators
fought them every step of the way.
"They
started to threaten me," said Vitaly. "They said they would lock me
up and send me to the crazy ward."
Natalya accused
the authorities of simple prejudice.
She said:
"Officials think everyone who lives in an asylum are fools, that they
can't have children, they can't support themselves and we had to prove them
otherwise."
With the help of
Mr Bartenev and the charity Medical Disability Advocacy Centre, the couple
fought a series of arduous legal battles which culminated in a European Court
of Human Rights decision in March, which found the Russian government in
violation of Article 8 of the European Convention, setting out the right to
respect for family life.
The court
criticised officials for "silently ignoring all evidence and
arguments" made by Vitaly, resulting in a child being unnecessarily and
unlawfully separated from her parents.
As for Anna -
well, she seems a perfectly happy seven-year-old.
"I am an A
and B student," she told me, "I only got 3 Bs last quarter – the rest
are As and the sports teacher will let you train if you forget your gym
clothes."
And unlike at
the children's home, she says she "can spend two hours in a foamy
bath".
"If she
wanted to," says her mother.
