Summer.
Open verandas of cafes, walks in parks, garden beds.
From the news in our pandemic time, as a rule, there are stories about all new canceled plans, disputes about restrictions, vaccinations, the exchange of momentary gossip: who left whom, who got a job, who can or cannot get to which doctor, everything becomes more expensive. ..
Momentary, moderately alarming, moderately carefree.
We have all long been accustomed not to strain each other, except to speak out once every six months.
This topic comes up in conversations only occasionally.
When the next ones come - that's a terrible common word!
- news that a child was missing, found dead, was subjected to violence before his death.
It comes from the bottom of the eyes:
- You know, in my youth I also had an episode with a pedophile.
We are silent, because there is nothing to say.
Why didn't you write a statement to the police (in those years - the police)?
Because they didn’t trust adults, didn’t know the laws, didn’t think that they would look for a criminal, but most importantly, they were afraid that everyone would find out and public condemnation would begin.
And now the statute of limitations has already passed, and it is easier to survive, to talk to a psychologist, and even easier - to hide it there, at the bottom of the pupils, from where it will not jump out.
Last week, journalist Anastasia Mironova published her story. For 20 years now (the statute of limitations has now expired) she has been trying to initiate a case against a company of adult men who, as follows from her text on her personal blog, started in the late 1990s - 2000s (and possibly to this day ) acquaintance with schoolgirls aged 9-13, invited to the company with alcoholic beverages, “struck up relationships”, including the closest ones, and then simply changed “lovers” for those that were younger. Some of these former schoolgirls eventually gave birth to their children and already looked at what was happening through the eyes of adult women, resigning themselves to betrayal. According to Mironova, one of the leaders of this company, posing as a Frenchman, was convicted of pedophilia in Soviet times, then he was released and continued to do the same - to molest youngsters.The last video of his attempts to meet young girls was published recently. According to the "Frenchman" himself (published by the 72.ru portal), he paid the girls a bus ride and invited them to pick berries, and in the 1990s he helped teenagers get rid of suicidal thoughts simply at the call of his heart and is generally just a sociable person.
From a legal point of view, Mironova and other women who were adolescents in the 1990s have negligible chances of going to court: the statute of limitations has expired, it will be difficult to prove the existence of lecherous actions in court 20 years later, and so on. The others remain silent.
Unfortunately, this story is typical. Unfortunately, at work, I talked a lot with victims of pedophilia, moreover, I know people with whom this happened and who preferred to leave the situation in silence precisely because of their disbelief in the triumph of truth and unwillingness to go public. Most victims of pedophiles remain silent about what happened for years and often wait until they come of age to tell them what happened to them. Moreover, according to statistics, most often a person who is a part of the family is a pedophile: a stepfather, a relative, a family friend. And parents, even mothers, are often not at all on the side of their child. The family of a pedophile also, as a rule, does not believe to the last and goes from defense to attack - they say, the child invented everything.
But the most important thing is in these words: “I don’t want publicity, I don’t want a scandal, I will be condemned”.
The same Mironova on the Tyumen forums was instantly accused of standard sins, of which almost all victims of pedophilia are accused: “she invented to attract attention,” “wants to take revenge for the fact that that man left her,” “the schoolgirls themselves were depraved and went with adults drink alcohol ”and so on.
That is why the victims of pedophilia are silent.
They grow up, and pedophiles find themselves more and more silent ones.
Until not the first victim of the sadist is shown in the news: "Found, dead" or "Was admitted to intensive care with bleeding."
Further, the concerned public will once again demand the death penalty for pedophiles, in response, they will hear the next screams "what now, ask every schoolgirl for a passport", "a person can already be formed at 13".
There will be another empty debate about tightening control over the freed pedophiles, and the viewers of the federal yellow talk show will choke on saliva, discussing the next "love" of a 12-year-old pregnant girl and a "proud young father" of about 20, coming to the conclusion: "A real man, got married , advice and love, but why should everyone break their lives because of this? "
And again: “The missing girl has been found.
Dead. "
And more and more adult women in Russian cities raise children, go shopping and to work, forever keeping at the bottom of their pupils: “It happened to me too.
This not normal".
Let's be honest: yes, there is a minimal percentage of those who really want to poop on the image of the victim.
For example, a year ago, a certain girl wrote on Twitter that she was being corrupted by her stepfather.
The police drew attention to the tweet, the girl was summoned to the authorities, after which she admitted that she really invented everything in order to attract subscribers to her blog, accompanied by the jubilant shouts of the public: "You see, they make everything up!"
Is the adult mother of the family also inventing everything?
A girl who has been thinking about suicide for years because she is being raped is also making this up?
And most importantly, why do we begin to sympathize with the victim only if she is dead or seriously injured?
Why isn't anyone happy that the victim managed to escape at the last moment?
That she managed to stay relatively healthy?
Or, in order to feel sympathy, you first need to feed the soul with frames of bloody flesh?
Why are not men equated to animals, who, if "depraved schoolgirls" climb up to them, cannot just get up and leave?
And where did this myth about "depraved schoolgirls" come from?
Japanese anime?
Finally, I do not believe that condemning “girls who themselves went to try alcohol with adults” (by the way, I saw such comments even in support of the maniac Viktor Mokhov, who kept two girls in slavery in the basement for several years) grew up in the monastery themselves.
They had everything, too, just lucky, nothing happened.
Finally, why is it embarrassing to be a victim of pedophilia in our country?
What is the shame?
Find yourself a victim of a crime?
The answer is simple: to become a victim of a pedophile will be considered shameful until the average person stops wanting to see the victim in the form of a bloody piece of meat, over which one can cry and cry.
Until the average person understands: the fight against a pedophile is not a cry about the death penalty, but an outstretched helping hand in a specific situation to a specific woman.
What a simple "Hold on, I'm near!"
more valuable than a repost in social networks "Until they begin to be judged by lynching."
That "oh, this 12-year-old girl has love" is not love, but a crippled life, in which there will never be any place for any family values.
Pedophilia cannot always be proven.
We, ordinary citizens, cannot interfere in the work of the investigation.
But everyone can stop justifying it.
Right now.
Because it's a shame not to be a victim.
It's a shame to take the side of the aggressor, and then groan over the corpses on TV.
Until society learns to lend a helping hand to victims of pedophilia in the search for justice, before all the new girls turn into bloody pieces of flesh that they find dug in the forest, until then it, society, will receive more and more pieces of flesh dug in the forest.
As long as society is groaning around the "depraved schoolgirls" who are "themselves to blame", the next children will be found buried in the forest.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.