Personal experience: "My stepfather knocked out my mother's teeth with a rifle butt and burned all our documents..."

As you know, the State Duma, despite the obvious and numerous facts, flatly refuses to discuss the law prohibiting domestic violence. Moreover (and this will be discussed below), activists who call on the deputies to do this are already subject to criminal prosecution for the "reputational damage" that they inflict on their homeland by their actions. It is possible that another testimony will somehow help the people's choices to stand up for the very people who elect them.

A few days ago, a Muscovite Svetlana Izraileva published a post that literally blew up social networks - 5,000 likes, 1,000 shares, and even more comments.

“But for me it’s not cool at all,” writes Izraileva. “It’s so sad that it hurts and does not breathe. How many of you, wounded, damaged, mistrustful and buttoned up. You write from different cities and even countries, say that you know my feelings and understand what I mean. And I regret that you know and understand that you have experienced a similar experience or are experiencing now.

But pity is when you see only pain. And I also see strength in many of you. That innate resource, that inner light that allowed to get out of the dark well of fear, turn the page and keep a smile.

I thank you all for your support and condemnation, for your sensitivity and disbelief, for your empathy and criticism, for your concern and desire to prick. Any reflection speaks of the ability to feel, react, feel. It is indifference that is a signal that you are a living, pulsating person, and not a dead rabbit's foot. And the tonality of these signals is just a personal system of values, knowledge and experience of each.

I didn't want to blow up anything. I told my story because I was bored. Tired of dragging the past into the future. Tired of turning around and waiting for the blow. Tired of being afraid, living in a rack and wearing armor. You know, it's not scary without her. And even easy.

Am I offended by my mother? No. I love her. Do I justify? No. She herself chose the path of sacrifice, but I do not have to repeat it.

Have I forgiven my stepfather? No. I periodically fall into anger, resentment and self-pity. But anger and resentment destroy not him, but me, and pity is when only pain. And I don't just want pain. I want happiness, joy, a taste of life, a healthy psyche and chocolate ice cream. Will you?"

However, here is the scary post itself:

“I was 8 years old, and my stepfather beat me regularly even then, and not only on holidays. At first I thought my mother would intercede for me. The stepfather was a profitable party for her by all measures. With a house, money, hands from that place, and even took it with a makeweight. That is, with me. Gold, not a man. The environment hissed: grab, who needs you with a child? She grabbed it.

He did not drink for a year, but as soon as his brother was born, it started. Drunk, with a twisted face and goggled eyes, his stepfather clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, went into a rage and went into a rage, smearing a young woman and a girl on the walls.

On that day, he found a deuce in my notebook and went to get the rope into the yard to "teach" me a lesson. I heard heavy footsteps approaching, and, knowing what awaited me now, I hid behind my mother.

“We can do it”, - she said and took a step aside. At that moment, I realized that she could never protect me.

In order to somehow show my resistance, I decided that, like Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, I would endure everything with dignity so as not to give him pleasure. After 10 minutes of shock pedagogy, I was already screeching like a chopped pig, hating myself for not being Zoya. The next day I didn’t go to school because I couldn’t sit on a chair, and the marks from the rope were peeping out of the form.

Then I began to wait for dad. I expected him to find out how bad I was, to come, stick the first number for me and take me with him. Dad did not come either then or in the next 30 years.

And then I began to ask God to help me. But he didn't help. I thought that God doesn’t do anything for nothing, and I have to pay. I promised to give him all my sweets, then I promised not to eat sweets, then I assured that I would study well, then, then, then.

While I was waiting for God, I learned to determine the future by turning the key in the keyhole. The teachers did not give me bad grades in notebooks and diaries. Everyone knew and pretended not to know. I asked my mother a million times, let's go. She cried and said: "Who needs me with two children, how can I feed you, and I feel sorry for the cow". And I realized that women are weak and dependent, the cow is more valuable, and I am a burden.

Once the stepfather of a drunk driving a motorcycle was stopped by the then police, the inspectors came to the house and demanded that my mother give his license. She gave up in fear. The cops took money from him and released him in a neighboring village. He came back, knocked out my mother's teeth with a rifle butt, burned all our documents and my game "Monopoly", for which I saved six months. The cops were my last hope. After that I stopped asking.

I did not ask when he shot us in the back, when he set fire to our apartment or threatened to drown us in an ice hole. I didn't ask when he killed my dog, and then her puppies. Or maybe the opposite. I didn’t ask when he kicked us out in December in cold weather, and we spent the night in an abandoned house, hugging three of us on the same bed. And my hand would not have trembled in Christian mercy, when I was already a teenager brought the poker over his bald head, if my mother had not shouted: “Svetka, don't you dare! They'll put you in!"

I was aggressive in puberty, fought and was even expelled from school. I was not registered with the juvenile commission, but the inspector once came to read me morality for prevention. Her stepfather threw her by the collar off the porch. She left and never came back. And I stayed there.

We left him only when I was already 16. One day, in which we were and nowhere. I went to school in the same clothes, because my stepfather didn't even give us a change of underwear. We had no money, food, or housing. The fellow villagers helped:

some were allowed to live in the old house, others reached into it with string bags of potatoes, cans of sauerkraut and pickled cucumbers. I was unbearably ashamed to accept all this, but I knew, one word, and my mother would come back. And who else needs her - a divorcee with two children and how can she feed them?

The stepfather was eventually imprisoned. He stole something from the collective farm. And I only started to be baptized in church again a couple of years ago. That's all I know about the system, registries, control, custody and the law.

I also know well sympathetic and highly moral people who are loudly indignant, speak the correct slogans and close the windows more tightly when they hear the cry: "Help". Who knock on the battery, because a family scandal interferes with sleep, and in the morning they discuss cars with a rowdy neighbor. Who pity children from dysfunctional families, but forbade their own to be friends with them and take them home. Who first say, ay, the clock is ticking, and then: what place did she think, slut. Who are now stigmatizing a poor mother who has lost her children, and tomorrow they will close their eyes to a colleague's bruise.

The tragedy in Rybinsk is a hyperbole of the nightmare of domestic violence that happens every day nearby. There is only one difference: Molchanov may well be mentally ill, but thousands of others, who beat and humiliate their wives, children and mothers, are quite healthy. And you know them.

Does anyone really think that this unfortunate woman was taking her girls to the slaughter? She just wanted a better life for herself and for them. So that everything is like people. And everyone who is now disgustingly asserting himself writes: "I would never be in her place...", go to the temple, light a candle, thank heaven that you are not in her place. And shut up.

PS. How did I get through this? I didn't know it was abnormal. I had everything like people..."

***

Reading this eerie confession, it is impossible not to remember that this kind of story has been regularly published for several years by Alena Popova, a consistent and unyielding fighter for the Domestic Violence Law. And what does she get in return? Law? No - criminal prosecution. And precisely for his persistence and adherence to principles. Here's what Popova wrote a few days ago:

“They want to bring a criminal offense against me. I am not kidding. Like in the story with Navalny, who hurt grandfather's feelings. And me under Art. 207.1 UK. For the fact that my posts about domestic violence pose a threat to the life and safety of citizens. It's magically simple.

At the request (as the precinct officer says) of the whole State Duma deputy Sergey Alekseevich Veremeyenko from United Russia .. I had no doubts. Here is the bright face of the deputy.

"Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the circumstances that pose a threat to the life and safety of citizens". This is how the article itself sounds.

The case, as I understand it, concerns our flash mob #Idontwanttodie and my posts here about the fact that in Russia (for the one who has dashed, I will inform you again and will never stop announcing this figure, never), according to Rosstat, 16.5 million victims of domestic violence ... Hear me all opponents of the law and all defenders of violence. This is a real figure and no one will ever be able to prove that Rosstat gave the wrong figures. I am already silent that the criminal article itself is about something else in general. But in our obscurantism, this is not particularly important, as usual.

The deputy wants me to be convicted, of course. The article itself generally assumes that “circumstances posing a threat to the life and safety of citizens, in this article, are recognized natural and man-made emergencies, environmental emergencies, including epidemics, epizootics and other circumstances resulting from accidents, dangerous natural phenomena, catastrophes, natural and other disasters that entailed (may entail) human casualties, damage to human health and the environment, significant material losses and disruption of the living conditions of the population".

I also agree with the deputy that domestic violence is a real catastrophe. Thanks for confirming.

The district police officer found me. They will also call me to give explanations to Petrovka. Although it is clear to everyone that there is no composition at all. And no explanations are needed. Because, damn it, an article about something else.

I would also like to note that the system is not so actively involved in the protection of victims of violence. But instead of protecting victims of violence, I will have to spend my time explaining that violence is evil. And the deputy, instead of fighting for the law on the protection of victims of violence, decided to ask the security officials to check Popova. Powerful!

***

I was interviewed by two operatives of the E center at the request of deputy Veremeenko. My lawyer Alexey Parshin, co-author of our draft law on the prevention of domestic violence, for which we have all been fighting for many years.

In his request, the deputy asks to take control of my case a whole UK. And then, wandering through law enforcement officers, the request got to the E-center.

The very essence of my malicious actions is formulated as follows: "it discredits the law enforcement system as incapable of stopping and concealing such a large-scale level of violence, and DAMAGES the reputation of the Russian Federation at the international level".

The case really concerns my post about domestic violence and our coolest flash mob #Idontwanttodie.

And this whole story with a criminal offense and a group of operatives is really about what I WRITTEN, WILL WRITE AND WILL CONTINUE WRITING ABOUT VIOLENCE! And fight for our law. To be clear: I'm not surprised at all by what is happening. From the word at all.

It’s not I who dishonor Russia, but such requests. And the reluctance of the deputies to pass the law and protect the victims of violence shames the country. Of which, I REPEAT HERE AGAIN, according to Rosstat, more than 16 million !!! Yes, this hellish level of violence is real. Which no one can hide behind silence. There is a wild level of domestic violence in Russia.

In parallel with my criminal case for posts about violence, there is a case of two of my acquaintances who were beaten up by the husband of one of them in Moscow. And the girls are simply afraid to leave the house, because the police have not taken any measures to protect their life and health. And the rapist called one of them and began to tell why he was so quickly released from the police department.

In a telephone conversation, he says that he "connected serious people" so that he would not be imprisoned for 15 days. I wonder what kind of "serious people" are so serious that the dude who threw a knife at women, beat and threatened, is not even left under administrative arrest. Che, there are a lot of "serious people" we have divorced. Some "serious people" also manage to send requests to the UK at those who defend victims of violence. Divine!

So, citizen deputy Veremeyenko, I am going to continue to fight for our law and with the obscurantism that I observe in relation to the victims of violence.

***

Meanwhile, lawyer Marie Davtyan posted monstrous figures on domestic violence in Russia on her blog:

“Today they summoned E. to the Center for a poll. The reason was the deputy's request. Russian State Duma Deputy Veremeyenko did not like that Alena writes about the scale of the problem of domestic violence on social networks, and thus "discredits the law enforcement system as incapable of stopping and hiding such a large-scale level of violence, and damages the reputation of the Russian Federation at the international level."

I hasten to support my friend and colleague, but I’ll tell you right away that we will not sit together, everyone will sit down: Rosstat, VTsIOM, FOM and others.

Well, let's go by the numbers from the open access (everything is googled).

* Research of the Council of Women of Moscow State University, 2003

- 58% of women were attacked by someone from close men

- 18% of women are in a situation of regular physical violence by their husbands

* Research by Rosstat, 2001.

- 20% of women reported physical abuse in the family

- 38% of women have experienced verbal violence

* FOM, 2016

- 1/3 of Russians know about families where violence is used

* VTsIOM, 2017

- 1/3 of Russians are familiar with families where they use physical violence

* Questionnaire, 2019

- 52% of women said they have been assaulted by loved ones at least once

- 39% of them reported that it was a husband.

* Lady.Mail, 2019

-56% of women surveyed reported having experienced domestic violence

Sorry, guys, I passed everyone..."

I wonder how long the State Duma will continue to pretend that rampant domestic violence does not exist in Russia?