"A los militares rusos les encanta violar en público"
“The Russian military love to rape in public”
Texto Original en RUSO
С изнасилованными на войне украинками работают психологи-волонтеры. Вот их свидетельства
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Traduccion al Ingles
Volunteer psychologists work with Ukrainian women raped during the war. Following are their testimonies.
During war time, the number of sexual crimes is always on the rise. It is not yet possible to estimate the number of women who became victims of rape during the war in Ukraine: only a few criminal cases have been officially opened and are being investigated, however, judging by reports from volunteer services working with refugees and victims of war, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of such cases. «Kholod» («Холод») spoke with two psychologists who help Ukrainian victims of sexual violence.
«One girl told me that she would never love men again» — Oleksandra Kvitko, a psychologist of psychoanalysis branch works on the hotline at the Ombudsman of Ukraine.
I was the editor-in-chief of the Black Sea TV and radio station in Crimea. Having fled to Kyiv, when the Crimea was occupied, I gave birth to twins and went on maternity leave. The forced relocation and the problems of motherhood forced me to turn to a psychoanalisys. One day I found myself at the International Institute of Psychology in Depth («Міжнародний інститут глибинної психології»). That prompted me to study psychology. I completed my master's degree, and then I constantly advanced my training in various specializations - from eating disorders to problems of borderline personality disorder. I'm trying to collect as much knowledge as possible to help as many people as possible.
I was sure that everything would be over in two weeks. But these two weeks have been going on for eight years. During this time, I have been home once. And when on February 24 it became clear that I had to abandon everything again and leave [Kyiv] without destination, I resisted for a long time. The second escape is more difficult than the first. But the sirens and explosions outside the window urged me: I have two children, I needed to save their mental health. We moved to Transcarpathian region.
After the forced stop to my journalistic career, I decided to become a psychologist and work with people who were affected by the war. I graduated as a psychoanalyst and have been learning ever since. I graduated from the Harvard program online, and recently went to get my master's degree in psychology in Odessa. All these years I have been working with the military who survived the ATO (in Ukraine, the armed conflict in the Donbass was called an anti-terrorist operation. — note by «Kholod»). Many of them cannot cope with what they have experienced, and a special department has been built for veterans in the largest psychiatric clinic in Kyiv. The difference of the new stage of war, which started on February 24, is the incomparably greater number of civilian casualties.
We have created a hotline for men, women and children to call. I used to work with domestic cases of rape. Some people were raped by a father, some by an uncle, others by a neighbor. People addressed us in five, 10 or even 20 years after the rape. And now majority of cases address us at once. They started calling me after the liberation of the Kyiv region: from Bucha, Irpen. The stories that I will tell are not yet verified.
A girl called me this night. She was crying a lot - screaming that she was to blame. I say: it's not your fault in any way, what had happened? She replied that she wanted to collect flowers for her mother and so she went outside, although her mother told her not to. So, she went to pick flowers, and then the men appeared. And apart from the fact that she was touched everywhere, she remembers nothing else. Mom found her unconscious in the yard. We don't know yet what really happened there. But the girl feels guilty because she went out to pick flowers for her mother.
I also work with a 14-year-old girl who was raped by five men and she is now pregnant. The doctors said that a medical abortion could make it impossible for her to have children in the future. Because of that she is likely to keep the child. We are now working not even with the fact of gang rape, but with her attitude towards this child. This is not an isolated case. Girls aged 14, 15, 16 are often raped - after the war there will be many pregnant teenagers.
I am talking to a 16 year old girl. She was pregnant before. Then three men raped her and she lost her child. And I’m talking to a mother of an 11-year-old boy. She was tied to a chair and made watch him being raped. These cases were voiced by the Ombudsman of Ukraine, as we relay the information about them.
I am often asked why they had to do it this way? It seems to me to get even more pleasure, to feel even more power. This is such a sadism, a perversion that brings a lot of pleasure – specifically that a mom has to watch what they’re doing to him.
The Russian military love, according to eyewitnesses, to rape in public. One 20-year-old girl was raped by three people in the middle of the street. The girl's mother ran out into the street to help, but her daughter screamed - stay at home so that they don't touch you, I can handle it. In such cases, not only those who were raped suffer, but also witnesses. They cannot help the victims and suffer greatly from it. This is the so-called trauma of the survivor: people hate themselves for being spared, but their loved ones were not.
Here is a story from the day before yesterday that struck me. They raped the younger sister in the family in turns, I don’t understand why they always do this in groups. She was 19 and the eldest sister was 21. The eldest ran out to the military and begged on her knees to take her, not her sister. The older girl was stopped by a Russian military man and said: “No, you will watch. And tell everybody that this will happen with every Nazi whore." They did not have access to doctors, and the younger sister was all torn after the rape. The eldest treated her wounds herself and thought why this didn’t happen to her all the time. The youngest, who was raped, cannot speak yet - she constantly vomits. Psychologically, she can't stomach it. I also sometimes vomit after sessions.
Mostly people call at night when the victims start having nightmares. They hear explosions that aren't there. They start screaming. Their parents and their relatives call us.
After the war started, almost all psychologists in Ukraine work for free, despite their own poor financial state. I recently met a psychologist who has also been giving free consultations all this time. She has a five-year-old child, her livelihood is running out. She asked if I knew someone who needed a cleaner. It is not so easy to find donors, but we receive professional help from colleagues. Psychologists from Poland and Israel share how to work with war crime survivors. The condition that patients are in is called "acute stress disorder", and our task is to ensure that it does not turn into post-traumatic stress disorder.
The rapists that the victims talk about are always men in military uniform with a covered face: in a balaclava or with a bandage over half of the face. You can't see anything but the eyes. It's scary, because when you know the rapist by sight, you at least think that you can recognize him in any case. And when the rapist is impersonal, then every man in the mind of the victim becomes a potential rapist. One girl told me that she would never love men again.
We have five people working on the hotline: I work all the time, and four more girls change - two weeks after a week-long break. There are about 85 calls to the line per week, which is a lot for three psychologists. I sleep two hours a day and eat almost nothing. From a psychological point of view, the stories that I work with seem to saturate me. When it becomes completely unbearable I go for walks, hug my children, stroke my beautiful cat. In addition, I have four hours of my personal analysis a week, and I am also a member of specialized groups where psychologists go to get help.
Surviving a week after the liberation of the Kyiv region was very difficult. And now reports are starting to come in from the liberated Kherson region. I'm scared to imagine what happened in Mariupol. I have a lot of experience, but I have never encountered such an outrageous level of cruelty in my practice. Many people ask me where does all this cruelty come from. Those who have experienced violence or witnessed it say that judging by the voices, the rapists are young guys, 20-25 years old. They are the same age as Putin's rule. I think that they were instilled with an attitude towards Ukrainians as second-class people, they feel their impunity and thirst for power. But most importantly, domestic violence has been decriminalized in Russia. It's sort of normalized. We also have problems with this, but we are fixing that, “beating means love” phrase no longer works. And these people do not know any other love, for them to beat, to rape the weak is the norm.
«The horrors that they tell me now, I have only seen in the movies»
Anna Maruzhenko, gestalt therapist and sexologist
Before the war, I lived in the center of Kyiv. For the first three days of the war, I was in denial. And then tanks passed under my window. I took a dog, a cat, children, my mother and moved to Warsaw.
In the early days of the war, most sessions were canceled because no one knew what to do next. Some people were already on the move, some people were just gathering their things. Many of them called me and offered their help. So my clients and I switched roles - they briefly became my psychologists. Many are now in a difficult financial situation, so I meet them halfway: our sessions are paid only by those who have the ability to do so. I work for free with the rest.
My area of expertise is Deep Gestalt Therapy, I work in depth with crisis situations and sexualized violence. I experienced violence myself, so it’s a little easier for clients to open up to me: I tell them about my experience and how I lived through it, this is how an exchange, a dialogue begins. Before the war, I mostly worked with stories of sexualized abuse experienced during childhood. These clients come to me later as adults. Often these are quite severe cases. But the horrors that clients tell me now, previously I saw only in the movies.
In the context of the war, deep therapy has given way to slightly more superficial support. Now the sessions begin with questions: where are you, how are your loved ones, is everyone safe? The main thing is the focus on resources, on survival. We try to improve the sleep, the diet. An important difference between wartime and civilian life is the inability to return to the usual routine, which creates a safe context for living through trauma. People leave, change their place of residence, change the social circle and that is a stressful context, it is more difficult to immerse yourself in the trauma itself.
Almost no one who comes to me or my colleagues in therapy comes with the phrasing "I was raped." Often the memories of the actual act of violence are repressed and resurface as we work with other issues.
Recently I was contacted by two victims of sexualized violence from Bucha and Irpen - these are so far the only clients who have appeared precisely because of the war. They do not want me to share the details - they are afraid that they will be recognized and they will not be able to have a personal life later. They were found by the Ukrainian military, and from the marks of the beatings, from the torn clothes, they realized that they had been raped. They gave them my contact information. The girls mustered up courage and contacted me: I correspond with one of them via text, she is not ready to show her face yet, and I communicate via video with the second one. They were severely violated. In such difficult cases, of course, it would be better to communicate in person, but in wartime this is not always possible. I don’t work with teenagers and children – personal contact is required here, and I am in Poland.
It helps me that I'm not in Ukraine right now - so I distance from what is happening and find a resource in myself to help people. When it gets hard, my own personal therapy helps - I signed up for free intervisor groups with colleagues from Israel, Poland, France. Earlier I visited such groups once a week, but now I need their support almost every day. There is a widespread belief that psychologists go into the profession to help themselves first of all, and because of this they do not see the person sitting in front of them. These groups help to cope with psychologist’s own experiences and better help their clients. But overall I don't break down, my own trauma is pretty well worked out.
When faced with a dramatic experience, I try to collect myself, not to become sour. Displays of love and kindness cause much more emotions in me. I cry when I hear stories of how people take care of each other, save animals, relatives, strangers. My range of positive emotions is much wider.
Many victims of sexualized violence do not find their way to psychologists. They feel guilt and hatred for themselves, for their bodies. These feelings are familiar to me - I myself went through all these stages of self-acceptance after the rape. I sometimes start a conversation with my clients with this topic - this is probably why the girls from Bucha and Irpen were able to start a dialogue with me. The AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine - note by «Kholod») also contacted me about the Kherson region - there, allegedly, seven girls were kept somewhere to "serve" the Russian military. But so far none of them have called me, and professional instinct tells me that they will not call. It is very difficult to share these things, not everyone dares to do this.
Sometimes the Armed Forces of Ukraine ask me to carefully find out from the victims what the rapist looked like: some special signs in order to find him. But my position is such that a person who has experienced violence and torture cannot be forced to remember the aggressor. Everyone needs to be given the opportunity to experience it as they see fit - and to afford as much time as necessary to live thorugh this. I am very grateful to our military, but I do not satisfy such requests.
The scale of cruelty of the Russian military is very high. I am a healthy person and it is difficult for me to put myself in their place. Also I see my task in helping the Ukrainians now, and not getting into the head of the Russian military. But for myself, I explain such cruelty by the fact that people with a low level of social development in a state of despair do not have the tools to help cope with this feeling - and in this state they are capable of any atrocities. They need to take out their helplessness, despair on something alive, weak, in order to see how it suffers. That's it. They hate themselves, and they project that hatred onto their victims. They drive away thoughts of their own humiliation, fear, helplessness. In a situation of complete impunity many want to assert their power in this way.
There are a lot of gang rapes in this war, I have not yet heard of solitary rapes. Of course, a group dynamic kicks in here: some fear that if they don't step in and become rapists like their comrades, they too will become victims of violence. Many of these people probably have mental illness.
Unfortunately, there have been enough wars in the world, and we can already imagine what kind of injuries this one will lead to. The society will be in the triangle "victim - aggressor - rescuer". The aggression of the military has been legalized all this time, after the war it will need to be dealt with, cases of domestic violence may become more frequent. I also understand that there will be a large number of people with witness trauma - this is the trauma of a person who saw violence and could not prevent it. Sometimes such a person experiences even greater fear than the victim herself – the victim can shut off, and the observer feels responsibility for the victim, for the safety of his loved ones, for his life. After that, the observer may have problems with sex.
A separate big topic is a whole generation of children of the war, it touched them all, one way or another. My Israeli colleagues often say that adults can no longer be saved from the consequences, but you can work with children. We need to tell them about the boundaries of the body, about the boundaries of responsibility - our boundaries are now being violated in every sense. But I try to talk about the positive aspects as well: about the mobilization and personal growth of each person. Even four-year-olds can already be given tasks, such as finding a safe place to hide. The level of solidarity between citizens will remain at a high level for a long time.
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