The healer refused to refund the fee — which was half of Domolazova’s monthly pension. While Domolazova is now more wary, her faith that some people have healing powers has not been shaken.
Every year, thousands of Russians claim to have been defrauded by people calling themselves clairvoyants, occultists, and self-styled witches, who advertise their services in Russian media.
In July a Moscow court handed an 11-year prison sentence to Grigory Grabovoi, a cult leader who allegedly promised to resurrect children killed in the Beslan school siege in 2004. He reportedly charged grieving relatives some 40,000 rubles.
Legislators in the Duma have proposed a law banning traditional healers from advertising.
But Lyudmila Stebenkova, a deputy in the Moscow city legislature, said the answer is to weed out the false healers from the true ones. She wants to expand Moscow’s testing and licensing system to the rest of the country and make it mandatory, creating a licensing system similar to the one for physicians.
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