"Woman plus..." OZONE Center for Children Victims of Violence

"Ozone" - Center for Children Victims of Violence

by Anna Vasilyeva

For two years now, a rehabilitation center for children who have fallen victims to cruelty and violence has been operating in Moscow. Tamara Y. Safonova, Executive Director of the center, is a specialist with ten year's experience dealing with young victims of violence. So I asked her and other OZONE Center specialists to share their experiences dealing with abused children with readers of "Woman Plus..." quarterly.

Sociological research from the past decade demonstrates that acts of violence aimed at children has become increasingly open, cynical and deliberate. Psychological stress, social depravity or excessive efforts required to sustain their social status make some parents feel that their children are something alien to them. Moreover, they apprehend them to be obstacles on their way to success. As the result, a child is mistreated: his or her needs are systematically neglected, including basic needs in food, clothes, housing, health care, etc. More and more cases of direct physical abuse emerge.

"Parents used to 'punish' their children always. However, regular discipline never implied unmotivated executions when a child would have no idea of why he/she was being beaten. The higher the level of parents' education, the lower their inclination towards physical discipline of their children used to be. Today we face a situation which is utterly different. Parents seem to beat their children irrespective of any variables: educational level, outlooks, family income, social standing... Parents beat their own children not to discipline them; rather they do it without any reasonable intention - simply to 'let vapors out' in a mode of punishment which is absolutely cruel and irrational."*

Most cases in OZONE Center are immature victims of violent rape. Any case of this type severely injures a child's mind. Unfortunately, cases of sexual violations with children as victims are far more frequent in our society than it is usually conceived. Some surveys demonstrate that immature girls' first sexual experience is associated with a violent rape as often as in every eleventh or twelfth case. At least 3% of girl students of 7-9th grades of public schools confess rape attempts. Other anonymous surveys indicate that, in the population of schoolchildren under 18, one girl out of four and one boy out of six experience molestation.

Experts believe the visible increase in rape rates to be just an above-the-surface part of the latent growth of cases which stay unreported to police departments. This suggestion seems to be the only one to explain the sheer mismatch between rates of the above-quoted surveys and official statistics: 2,500 criminal cases of immature girls' violent rape.

OZONE turn-up data indicate that in past months there was a sudden upsurge in occurence of such cases. Specialists of the Center explain this fact with the recent national economic crisis, which falls in the mainstream of biological studies: under uncontrollable external pressures, human body would produce testosterone - a hormone that makes a person high with it unreasonably aggressive in every sense, including sexual.

The most specific problem, however, is the one of child molestation in family. Journalists seem too shy to write about it, neither do official statistics offer some reasonable data on such violations. However, the only fact that OZONE Center alone filed 13 suits on such cases is rather eloquent. Cases of sexual molestation, as well as those of physical abuse, are not limited to traditionally depraved families; they happen in quite prosperous families as well. OZONE Center specialists laid before me a number of ugly examples of "new Russian" families where fathers used to use their own children for carnivorous purposes of getting some sexual satisfaction. In such cases, a mother would usually begin to see a rival in her daughter and compete with her to possess the "beloved husband and father of the family". However, even at court, she would do everything she can to help her filthy spouse escape criminal persecution.

Especially hard to detect are cases where children are drawn in their parents filthy schemes as if on their own. In this case an adult molester would not literally force a child into the obscenity; he would simply exploit his authority and a child's readiness to believe and obey him to fulfill his desires. And the boy or the girl would keep silence, as they are sure that any disclosure of "family secrets" may result in the ruined affection.

Any act of sexual violence leaves an everlasting trace in a child's mental and physical composition. A child would often feel guilty and inferior in the company of his/her mates. Moreover, nightmares and obsessions may evolve. Sometimes a child may even believe that his/her body is the "vessel of evil": then he or she will put on so many clothes as possible, refuse to undress at a school gymnasium and a physician's office, and so forth. Molested children may become either too shy and scary or too aggressive. At school, they are usually in conflict with teachers and classmates alike. Their future prospects are also unhappy, for they are at higher risk of alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide attempts than their "normal" counterparts. Even on having grown up, children with the rape in their past record are often unable to get rid of grave consequences of their trauma.

Lack of public control over what happens in families result in high rates of unreported sexual crimes. Both victims and their close relatives prefer to cover any facts of this sort and "never make public fun of household's garbage", as the Russian saying goes. As the result, home rapists feel free to do whatever their fantasies may dictate.

For this reason, the Center pays special attention to discover and investigate any case of child molestation. The Center employees with special training regularly visit public schools and kindergartens with lectures and seminars to make teachers and facilitators learn to recognize children with characteristic features of having been molested and train them to provide first psychological aid to such children. The Center publishes and disseminates educational materials and plans to print and display in hallways of educational facilities posters with the information on how to avoid being raped and where to turn up in cases of cruelty or molestation.

The Center upholds a hot-line telephone for children. Relatives of the molested are also welcome to use it. By the way, the most frequent channel for a child to become the OZONE Center's patient is through a call on behalf of his/her mother, grandmother or some other close relative. Trustees and educators are also helpful sometimes.

The Center is staffed with 22 specialists: social educators, children gynecologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, lawyers and others. In joint effort, they work out an individual rehabilitation program for each child admitted to the center.

Usually, a patient would visit the Center on an individual schedule: few times a week for an hour or two each time. During these visits, psychologists would involve children in a kind of game therapy to "work through" their cases and help their young patients to get rid of fears and complexes induced by their unfortunate experience. Physical and herb therapy are other helpful methods. Rehabilitation effectiveness largely depends on adults' behavior: they must do their best to encircle their troubled child in a friendly and easy environment.

A patients really needs to feel "at home" while at home. Unfortunately, parents and relatives are often in need of psychological assistance themselves after their child's molestation. For this reason, the Center provides services to family members as well. .

Legal support of clients is as important for the Center as psychological assistance to them is. OZONE will readily provide you with a lawyer's consultation; moreover, if your case goes as far as the lawsuit, the Center will provide you with social facilitator's services as well, to help your child in interrogations and so forth.
In this country (and it is no secret): "... in her further encounters with the police and a gynecologist, a raped child feels more of a victim than she did with the rapist. Investigation procedures are at least as painful as the act of rape itself, as police protocols are a variety of violent sex all in themselves. In most nations, it would be reasonably enough to ask a girl just once about who, when, where and why had raped her and leave her alone till the time comes to remedy the criminal (sometimes, however, a girl would not even need to stand before the court). In this nation, however, a raped girl is the one whom the police and the court make feel guilty for what have happened. First, investigators and next the jury do everything they can to make her repeat it all over again and feel ashamed of what has happened, as if the victim is the only cause of all troubles."*
Russian legal practices do not imply that an offended person may require a lawyer. This problem is also curable with the assistance of OZONE Center specialists. They readily attend at police interrogations and in court. Some time ago it used to drive cops mad. By now, however, the Center's lawyers have found some legal approaches to make them keep silent in their presence.
To conclude with, all the services furnished by the Center are free, for it is financed from various government and public sources, including grants of Western charitable funds. Unfortunately, the crisis has affected the Center as badly as any other non-profit organization. OZONE office stays unfinished because of frozen bank accounts. Notwithstanding, specialists keep on doing their job. You would not believe: their faces are as happy and alight, as if no crisis have happened. Or, maybe, they are merely made of some other substance than we are? Is there any other explanation to how they manage to make whole those boys and girls who have encountered the Evil so early?

OZONE Center: (095) 265-0118.

* This and following quotations are borrowed from the review, Children and Youth Standing in Russia: Problems, Policies, Charity, 1998, International Youth Fund, Moscow