How I investigated the history of sexual harassment
In late January, Meduza published an investigation into the situation, established in the "League of Schools" - an educational institution for gifted children, whose students told about cases of violence and sexual harassment by the school management: director Sergey Bebchuk and his deputy Nikolai Izyumov (today there is a continuation). We asked the author of the text, journalist Daniil Turovsky, to tell about the course of the investigation, which led to the checks of the Investigative Committee and the fierce public and internal discussion about the limits of acceptable and professional ethics.
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Of course, it is impossible to find such stories on your own; there must be some person who will tell you about the situation from the inside. In the fall of 2016, I found out about a case in a certain “League of Schools”, as if in the nineties there was either one or two cases of sexual harassment. I think we turned on the wave
famous scandal with the 57th school, about which Meduza actively wrote. At that moment we were engaged in some other materials and we forgot about this story for a while, deciding to return to it later. However, soon an acquaintance of a journalist convinced me that it is worth talking to a graduate of the "League of Schools" who is ready to tell a lot of, let's say, socially relevant information. I soon met this girl, she appears in the text of the investigation as Svetlana Bozrova. We talked for about four hours, during which she described this monstrous situation, first in the “X” school, and then in the “League”, where all the same happened for twenty-one years.
It is clear that, listening to this story, I often clutched my head in horror. Yes, we all watched the movie "Spotlight"(telling about the activities of the investigation department in The Boston Globe. - Approx. Ed.)but few people are willing to actually meet with something like that. At the same time, I understood that this investigation could not be built solely on the words of Svetlana Bozrova, since we are talking about serious accusations, and she herself - which is important - was not a victim of sexual harassment. However, she became my guide in this terrible story. She introduced me to Irina Dmitrieva, who led a theater group in the League of Schools. It was Irina who first discovered, quite by chance, that there were two cases of harassment, and initiated an internal investigation.
The first to contact her was Tatyana Karsten, who happened to relate to her in 2014. The fact is that Karsten suddenly left school, and it was extremely unusual: no one had just left the League, it was really a good education and everyone tried to study before graduation. After changing school, Carsten continued to go to the drama school at Liga, and one day, returning home with Dmitrieva, she told about the incident in the bathhouse in Bobrov(this is where many of the reported cases of harassment occurred. - Ed.). After Dmitriev, she learned that this happened with another student, Vera Volyak, and began to guess that these cases could not be isolated. At this point, she connected other graduates, began to personally ring up and invite teachers and students from different years to talk. As a result, a whole group of investigators appeared, about eight people who made up a table of cases that they were able to establish.
There were several cells in the table: the year when it happened, the name of the victim, a description of what happened, the name of the offender (Izyumov or Bebchuk) and the last thing they want to achieve as a result. When some part of the work was done, they realized that they had to go to the administration to Bechchuk and Izyumov. An ultimatum was drawn up, I have this paper: we, such and such, know that for twenty-five years you sexually harassed female students, and demand that you close the school and never again work in the field of education. On the audio recording of this meeting, Bechchuk, in particular, says that everything that allegedly took place after the incident with Vera Volyak is a lie, but then, and this especially shocked me, he adds: “Whatsuch a was? "Later, I heard something similar from non-league Alumni who believe in accusations: many of them thought that kisses, getting under a jacket, sticking their tongues in their mouths did not violate any boundaries. What was that? Is it just some kind of intimate communication with the student? In any case, Bebchuk and Izyumov signed this ultimatum then, and in June 2015 the school closed (and the true reason for this was not officially announced anywhere), and the story seemed to have ended.
However, after a few months, it turned out that Izyumov and Bebchuk continued to work in education. The first, for example, opened an intelligence club, on the site of which it is indicated that he continues the ideas of the "League of Schools". In the context of all this investigation, it was terrifying to read the comments of parents left on this site, in which they lamented that the League had closed and their children did not have time to learn. Bebchuk, in turn, soon went to the school "Intellectual", also began working in the program "Teacher for Russia", and in another project he advised on the methodology of teaching programming. In other words, both violated the ultimatum, and the graduates decided that the time had come to make public the information they had. So this story was at the disposal of our editorial board.
As soon as I met Svetlana Bozrova, I immediately realized that there should be the maximum number of testimonies that I would hear personally. And the next two months were devoted to meetings and the search for some additional evidence. At first I spoke to the authors of the video messages, which were recorded for an internal investigation and contained some amount of what happened in different years at school. Then I began to go over the same pivot table and meet people who were listed in it. Frankly, these were very difficult conversations.
It is difficult for people to talk about it, to talk about this is how to undress in public. Of course, listening to such testimony is not easy. Often these stories were not at all under the record, and I talked to them rather for context. In general, in Russia it is not customary to talk about it, this topic is taboo. Many admitted that they were forced to break the silence of the flashmob # ЯНЕ I'm afraidTesk. Some students of the League then wrote Facebook posts with this hashtag. # I am afraidIt is, perhaps, one of the main public discussions in modern Russia.
When I first began to understand everything that was happening, I could not even imagine how voluminous this story would be. Frankly, I still can not believe that we are talking about so many episodes of harassment and violence. I met with all the victims personally, I talked with everyone for a long time and thoroughly, I had to literally pull out many details and discuss what had happened in a circle many times. Once again, all these were completely different people — someone of 1993, someone of 2006 — who didn’t have any reason to unite for the sake of revenge on someone. It is necessary to have the utmost courage to make such statements, to expose oneself, to literally bare oneself, to tell about this. When I listened to them, I realized that everything was really so - you just understand it during a conversation.
I understood that Izyumov and Bechchuk should definitely talk. I was able to find Izyumov by looking at the schedule of his lectures, and I came to one of them without warning. At first, he invited me home, then he began to refute everything, but most of the refutations sound strange and clearly indicate that he has shifted the norms of permissible. When I read him a table with accusations - for example, that he put one of the pupils on his knees, put his tongue in his mouth, and climbed under his jacket - he said something like, “Oh, well, she’s my little delicate flower” . If you deny everything, why do you say such things? He also mentioned that he still kept some photoshoots of students. Or, for example, in an interview with MK, such a terrible detail surfaced: it turned out that every day he welcomed the pupils with a kiss. Every day, each of the hundreds of students met Izyumov. At some point I was horrified when I tried to calculate how many people went through this? Bechchuk's search did not end with anything: he changed the address, did not answer calls and SMS, and even now doesn’t communicate with anyone, unless he gave only some evidence during the pre-investigation check. But not yet made any public statements.
We in the editorial office did not doubt that this investigation is socially important information. People who can give their children to Izyumov’s circle, those whose children study in Intellectual should know that there are similar charges from two dozen victims. It is very important that parents and society as a whole understand that there is such a problem, you need to talk about it and solve it immediately.
Of course, we very carefully approached the preparation of such material, the text itself was written in several stages. Only the collection of information took about two months. As soon as the text was written, it was independently viewed by several people in the editorial office on the subject of how convincingly it was built. After we showed the text to lawyers to check how neatly written. Naturally, as we wrote on Facebook, we believe in the first place to people, and we are confident that people who are publicly exposed, there is no need to lie. Especially when there are more than twenty people, they do not know each other and at the same time tell identical stories.
We understood that this investigation would definitely have a continuation, we were ready for the fact that people would refuse to believe - we ourselves were so shocked by the revealed details that at first they were distrustful. Realizing that the story can not be limited to this, at the end of the material we left the mail address to which people could send their stories of sexual harassment. And it still receives messages not only about the "League", but also from other schools, for example, in Vladivostok or Nizhny Novgorod, and soon I will deal with the analysis of these letters.
It is interesting that when the text came out, one of the victims wrote to us that at first she sent Izyumov a letter with words of support. There is some part of graduates who does not believe so far. This story has two sides, which makes it particularly difficult. We are talking about a really good education and a unique school with extremely interesting teachers, and therefore it is impossible to believe that all this has some kind of bad side and sexual overtones. We even received an appeal from graduates who are striving to protect the good name of the "League of Schools".
It’s not quite clear to me why they don’t believe their classmates, but in general I can understand the principle of such protection. This is largely due to the special atmosphere that prevailed in the school. Local teachers and the psychologist confirmed that during their studies it did not seem strange to them that Izyumov was kissing girls entering the classroom, or that Bechchuk was going to the bathhouse with them. It was presented as if, being in every sense closer to the teacher, you receive the most exclusive and complete education. It sounds crazy, but they believed it.
Even now, all graduates are definitely opposed to the initiation of a criminal case, everyone understands what a Russian prison is. All they want is that Bebchuk and Izyumov never again work with children and generally in education.
As for the internal discussion of the possible compromise of our investigation, here I have two thoughts. First, I generally try not to read Facebook comments, because otherwise you can go crazy. And secondly, the story connected with the joint business of Bebchuk and the brother of one of the victims, in fact, has nothing to do with the text of the investigation. She does not negate the fact that twenty students frankly told about what happened to them.
Many accusations were made to the specific language in which the material was written, in the sense that we mention too many explicit details. But I am sure that it is important to arm the reader with the maximum number of details of what is happening, so that he really understands and feels the situation. And yes, for this it is necessary to describe what happened to the hero in the most specific and straightforward way, no matter how unpleasant this reading may be. This story raised a rather important topic, I suddenly began to hear opinions, they say, maybe kisses and hugs - this is not sexual violence? It seems to us that there cannot be two opinions here and it is very important to speak out on this topic unequivocally.
