Ukrainian Woman's Rape Stirs Public 'Vendetta': Leonid Bershidsky

On March 10, a passer-by in the Southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, population 500,000, heard faint moaning from a construction site and alerted a cop. The policeman climbed through a hole in the fence and found a sight he is likely never to forget: a naked girl somebody had tried to burn alive. Oksana Makar, 18, was barely hanging on to life: Doctors later estimated that her burns affected 55 percent of her body. She had also been raped and half-strangled.

Police acted quickly, and three suspects, all local men in their early 20s, were apprehended the next day. Among them was Maxim Prisyazhnyuk, the adopted son of a local government official. The police apparently let him go, along with another one of the young men. But news spread quickly, and in a matter of hours, the entire city, a center of the sagging Ukrainian shipbuilding industry, seemed up in arms. The suspects were promptly taken into custody again -- now they needed protection from an angry mob.