“Why did he choose me?”: what measures are needed to help victims of pedophiles

What does pedophilia look like?

Olya's story

Two men are dragging an escaping child along the Kostroma street.

Unfortunately, this girl will no longer be seen alive: a recidivist pedophile and his lover (for the seduction of which the eldest of the criminals served time at a young age) abuse five-year-old Veronica and kill her.

When we say "pedophile", the imagination draws a maniac who hides around the corner and follows the children.

In fact, often a pedophile is a person who enters the child's family.

Or even a relative.

Seven months ago, residents of one SNT near Moscow saw the

police drive up to the house of 59-year-old former music teacher Viktor K. (all names hereinafter changed. -

A couple of hours later, a message appeared in the SNT chat: “Viktor is accused of pedophilia.”

And most were not surprised.

As it turned out, many people knew about the musician's inclinations, but they preferred not to discuss this topic. 

The new neighbors, Alice and her husband Andrei, who built a dacha and moved in with their nine-year-old daughter Olya, were not told anything about the dangerous tenant.

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“Our site borders on Viktor’s site, he himself has two granddaughters, four and five years old, and they have a full-fledged playground right on the site: slides, swings, plasticine, children’s books and so on always lay on the veranda.

He gave the impression of an intellectual, well-read person, his wife is an acting well-known music teacher, the children also work in this area.

In general, this is a fairly well-known family in professional circles.

Victor always talked about his granddaughters with great enthusiasm, it was clear how much he loved them, and we began to let Olya play with them while we were building.

He willingly talked about his family, his mother, but only later I reflected that he, on the contrary, spoke little about himself, ”recalls Alice.

Only after a criminal case was opened, and Alice got acquainted with its materials, did she find out that Victor had already been convicted of pedophilia, and he had to end his career as a music teacher precisely for this reason.

According to the woman, the daughter did not immediately tell her parents everything that Victor did to her: at first she complained that "uncle crawls under the T-shirt."

Detailed questions of the daughter took the spouses a week.

It turned out that "Uncle Victor" climbed not only under the T-shirt, but also threw the girl on the bed, undressed her and rubbed her genitals against her.

When the parents realized what had happened, they found the Pedofilov.net website on the Internet, called the hotline, received instructions on what to do next, consulted a lawyer and a psychologist, and then called the police.

“It was difficult to convince Olya that it would be necessary to tell strangers about what happened, she told us: “I already told you everything, now you tell other adults.”

At this age, the child does not understand the sexual connotation, she still does not understand this.

But we tried to make her understand that this is our common cause, that we must punish this person for what he did to her badly and unpleasantly and forever protect other children from him, ”says Alice.

The police, despite the fact that the call came on Saturday, acted promptly.

The child, according to Alice, was interrogated very correctly, with a psychologist and a teacher, and then sent for two examinations: medical and psychological.

In parallel, Viktor was taken away for interrogation, who quickly confessed.

Olya does not personally participate in the process: her testimony was recorded on video.

After a psychiatric examination, she asked her parents never to bring her to this place again.

Alice, on the other hand, received several messages from people in the SNT chat.

Several girls admitted that they themselves became victims of Victor in childhood.

Unfortunately, the statute of limitations on their cases has expired.

In the first case of pedophilia, Victor served only a few years: the victim's parents themselves asked for leniency towards the teacher who molested their child.

Victor and his lawyers were able to convince the victims that it was an accident, a "one-time incident."

After his release, he had to give up his career in a music school, and he began to live in that same SNT.

The affected girls recalled that when they rode bicycles around the village in childhood, he caught up with them, grabbed them, threw them to the ground and climbed into their shorts.

One of the injured girls told her parents everything, but they decided to sort it out without the intervention of the police and simply forbade the pedophile to approach their child.

Now Viktor has expensive lawyers again.

His family continues to live in the summer at this very dacha.

Olya continues to ask her parents and psychologist the question: “Why did he choose me?

What is my fault?"

“Olya began to be afraid, for example, to ride in an elevator with other people, to panic in a situation where someone touches her.

We turned to a private psychologist.

Olya began to believe that she was “something not like that,” since this happened to her, she feels partly to blame for the situation, ”says the girl’s mother.

She notes that there is no state systemic rehabilitation for victims of pedophilia in Russia.

At the same time, the child will need help even years later, because when puberty passes, the memories of what happened will return and become brighter, as the child realizes what actually happened then.

“I am sure that there are no former pedophiles, and that these people should be isolated from society.

Victor, when he served time, simply changed his place of residence, and no one controlled him in any way, because there is no single database on pedophiles - and how can he be controlled?

I would like to appeal to all people who themselves or their children have become victims of pedophiles.

Be sure to contact law enforcement, regardless of your views on the system in the country.

In our case, the services worked promptly and correctly, the Investigative Committee and the criminal investigation department immediately got involved.

Do not keep silent about such cases, do not try to "solve the issue with the pedophile" on your own, because then the pedophile will win.

And by contacting official bodies, you will save other children, ”Alice concludes our conversation.

What does pedophilia look like?

History of Sveta

Victoria is a doctor, a few years ago she and her husband moved to St. Petersburg from a small town, he got a job as a security guard.

At the time when she married Andrei P., she was raising two daughters from her first marriage, they were 10 and 12 years old.

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Andrey is now in jail.

For committing violent acts of a sexual nature with a younger girl.

“He came from Ukraine, worked there as a children's coach, and there may actually be more victims.

After everything became known, I called up his first wife, and she says that her daughter from her first marriage also complained about him: that during the game he grabbed her by certain places, climbed under her clothes.

Then he began to beat them, and they divorced, ”Victoria begins the story.

When Victoria met Andrey, she was bribed by his attitude towards children: he played with them, talked a lot - and the woman decided that they could become a real family.

For several years everything went well, until in May 2021 the girls received many bad grades at school at once.

“I got angry with them and said that I was taking away their phones for a while, in which they sit all the time.

And then the youngest daughter, Sveta, told me: "I'll tell you something that you will suffer very much."

I thought it was teenage manipulation, I went to work, and when I returned home, Sveta came up to me again and said that she wanted to tell a secret.

And she wrote on a piece of paper: "Andrey asked me ... (to commit indecent acts)."

I began to question her in more detail about what was happening and told her that I would find out the truth anyway.

The daughter told me that this happened more than once, and that he raped her with his fingers, demanded oral sex and so on.

I called a relative who works in the authorities and consulted with him what to do next, and the next day I went to the Investigative Committee.

Law enforcement agencies acted quickly:

as soon as they heard that this man was in the same house with us, they immediately went and detained him.

The daughter was interrogated correctly, she told a lot of things that even she could not reveal to me, ”says Victoria.

When the investigators conducted the search, they saw that Andrei P. had set up webcams in the bathroom and was filming the girls while they were there.

Andrei P. filmed not only his adopted daughters, but also their girlfriends, when they came to visit, these recordings were found on his computer - along with gigabytes of child porn.

Victoria called the girls' parents, but they refused to write a statement: they say, you have already written, and he will receive his own.

Now Victoria and her daughters are rebuilding their lives.

The woman is afraid that her ex-husband, the girls' father and his family, as well as colleagues and friends, will find out about what happened.

She understands that everyone will blame, first of all, herself.

Sveta refused to go to a psychologist for a long time, and agreed to get help only at the beginning of 2022.

“The worst thing is that often affected children do not tell anyone or do not find support from their own parents, and as a result, these geeks go free and look for more and more victims,” Victoria concludes.

When Justice Isn't Enough

Even if information about a pedophile reaches caring adults and a case is initiated, no one helps families find an answer to the question: how to live on?

There is no state special system for the rehabilitation of children affected by pedophiles, and many of them need help for many years after the event.

Psychologist Oleg Belorekov says: not all young children understand what exactly the pedophile did to them, and devastating consequences for the psyche can come later, during puberty.

According to him, the victim of pedophilia may try to get rid of the negative consequences, try to "deserve forgiveness", believing that the reason for what happened is in him, but will only further destroy himself. 

“It is impossible to cope with the consequences of the harm caused by a pedophile on your own, because a person needs to accept the colossal negative consequences for his own psyche and learn to live with them,” Belorekov explains.

“Moreover, parents also need help, because the family is a single organism.

It is important that a system for providing long-term psychological assistance, mental hygiene, for years to come, and for many victims for life, should emerge in society.

For example, I have a client, she is 55 years old, and she became a victim of a pedophile at the age of six, and she lives with this all her life.

She started a family, gave birth to children, but her life was very difficult.

It is impossible to simply “forget”, to force out this trauma.”

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Belorekov says that when a pedophile is punished in court, it is important for the victim, as the child understands that justice has been served.

If this does not happen, then the victim begins to seek revenge in other ways and either adopts an aggressive model of behavior, thus trying to “punish” the outside world that did not protect her, or to show aggression towards herself.

Prosecuting a pedophile can become an anchor for the psyche as part of a rehabilitation program.

As for the question of whether it is possible to correct the behavior of the pedophile himself, Belorekov answers it negatively, since attraction to immature children is only part of a mental disorder.

Belorekov, like most people who provide assistance to victims of pedophilia, says that the same chemical castration for a pedophile is not an option, because, for example, a person may be unable to have sexual intercourse, but imitate friction with knife blows.

Who will take control of pedophiles?

The problem of rehabilitation of victims is not the only weak point of the system in the fight against pedophilia.

In 2019, a recidivist pedophile killed nine-year-old Lisa in Saratov.

The offender was then almost lynched, as a result he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Also on russian.rt.com “Liza became a common child of thousands of parents”: the mother of a girl killed in Saratov about the verdict and life after the tragedy

The killer of five-year-old Veronika from Kostroma was previously convicted of pedophilia, and the same person whom he corrupted became his accomplice in this case.

If we look at high-profile cases in recent years, we will see that most pedophiles, having served time for a past crime, go free and begin to look for new victims.

As a rule, society begins to blame the district police officers who are entrusted with control over the released criminals, but can they provide it in principle?

A former employee of the Investigative Committee, on condition of anonymity, says: pedophilia is a disease.

The problem is that law enforcement officers, as a rule, do not have specific knowledge about this disease, and there are no means of total technical control over this category of criminals yet.

“At all meetings on this issue, representatives of the medical community emphasize: pedophilia is a disease subject to registration, and a disease that is dangerous to others.

If we rely on studies on the influence of the general state of society on the development of mental illnesses in it, we will see that, after the collapse of the USSR, a surge began.

Now we can say that our society has crossed the threshold when the number of people prone to pedophilia has become significant.

And then there is the issue of prevention.

For example, when there was a surge in drug addiction, they began testing the same schoolchildren.

Are there methods for early detection of pedophiles?

Yes, they are.

The question is who should keep this issue under control so as to remain in the legal field.

And it is the doctors who should do this, since the district police officers and operatives do not have the knowledge,

A pedophile realizes his attraction to children when his psyche is in a phase of overexcitation, and if we approach the issue of prevention from a medical point of view, then we must take the path of preventing this phase, the interlocutor continues.

“When a pedophile is released, the processes of overexcitation begin to grow in him.

This can be detected on a polygraph, it can be detected by medical means, and this must be monitored, at least once a month.

It is necessary that the released pedophile not only come to the district police officer to formally register, but pass various tests, be registered and under medical monitoring, ”says the former investigator.

He also says that now there is no single methodology with clear criteria for the examination to be unambiguously legal.

In practice, this leads to the fact that if a person accused of pedophilia has connections and money, then he can challenge such examinations and evade responsibility, and the investigator can assess the prospect at the verification stage and simply refuse to start such a case.

There is another problem: in cases of pedophilia, a child can be manipulated by other adults in order to take revenge on the opponent, and again, there is no systemic expertise in these matters either.

This problem, again, should be solved with the involvement of medical specialists, says the former investigator.

Similar problems are also discussed in the legal community.

Stalin’s lawyer Gurevich has repeatedly dealt with legal assistance to victims of pedophilia, but she admits that if a case is initiated under a “pedophile” article, most likely it will go to court and end with a guilty verdict, even if the applicant himself declares a slander.

Gurevich cites as an example the situation when, in the fall of 2021, the Moscow City Court overturned the sentence of Sergei Complaint, sentenced to 13 years for sexual abuse of schoolgirls, who admitted that they had slandered a man. 

In 2018, two schoolgirls accused a 59-year-old man of pedophilia - they said that he followed them into the entrance and showed them a penis.

There were many inconsistencies in the criminal case, and soon the victims confessed to the slander.

The girls said that they made up the story because they skipped school, were afraid of the reaction of adults and decided to switch their attention to another topic.

“There must be systematic work with a combination of evidence, both direct and indirect, in order to avoid, for example, cases initiated on the grounds of personal revenge, for example, between former spouses.

Previously, such elements of crime could be considered by a jury, and there were more acquittals on them, but now, unfortunately, there are cases under such articles initiated under a slander, while there is no de facto responsibility for a slander,” notes Gurevich.

Victims are bullied

The leader of the “Surrender the Pedophile” movement, Anna Levchenko, says that the first problem (and the parents of the children whose stories were told at the beginning of this text also spoke about it) is the unwillingness of the injured party to act within the law and seek to imprison the offenders of their own children.

“On our hotline, we spend a huge amount of time convincing people to go to the police with a statement, instead of, roughly speaking, posting an ad on the Internet that this person is a pedophile.

Parents of the victims are often afraid of publicity, they are afraid of condemnation from relatives and friends, or vice versa, they are afraid of the revenge of the pedophile himself and his acquaintances, ”says Levchenko.

She notes that even in cases of pedophilia in our society, one can still face accusations against the victim and the victim's parents.

“Even after the murder of little Veronica, there were haters who wrote nasty things about the deceased and her mother.

It happens that relatives of the pedophiles themselves participate in the persecution of the victim, who cannot believe in the guilt of their loved one and write, for example, about the “perversion” of the victims.

We can recall the case of pedophilia against the priest Gleb Grozovsky, when even the diocese had to intervene and appeal to the flock to wait for the court verdict (Gleb Grozovsky was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2018, he was found guilty of sexual assault against three girls. —

) and not show aggression towards the victims.

Now there are fewer such cases, and the victims of pedophilia are beginning to openly talk about the violence they have suffered, they are less afraid to contact law enforcement agencies, but the problem of victim harassment still exists, ”says Levchenko.

Touching upon the topic of prevention of pedophilia, Levchenko notes that it is not enough to toughen the punishment, since the crime has already been committed.

“Children need to be taught to define the boundaries of their own bodies.

I’m not talking about “lessons on how to have sex”, but on the contrary: a child should know from childhood that no one can touch him under his underwear, these are the basics of safety that can even be included in a school life safety course.

We also need to work with the parent community so that informed parents can explain to their children, for example, what to do if someone starts asking them to send their nude photos on the Internet, and then blackmail them with it.

Unfortunately, there are also marginalized families that will not work with children on their own, and here the school should come to the rescue, as in a situation where the corruption of a child occurs within his own family.

Children must understand that they are being seduced and know where they can turn for help, even

In order to help a child who has become a victim of a pedophile, it is enough that at least one adult does not treat him indifferently, says Levchenko.

She also agrees with the need to create a system for the rehabilitation of victims of pedophilia.

Unfortunately, many families whose children have suffered from pedophiles cannot pay private specialists, and a child in such a situation needs more than one session, so it is necessary to discuss how the state can help such children so that the offender is punished, but his victim does not remain alone with her misfortune, the social activist adds.