“It looks like a totalitarian sect”: a Russian woman told how she managed to escape from slavery

Elina is from Kazan. She had a mother and a stepfather, but then her mother died, the apartment was left to her stepfather, and the girl found herself homeless.

“At first she started wandering around different shelters,” volunteer Arina from the organization that helped Elina told MK. “But she doesn’t even remember the names of most of the places where she temporarily lived. From somewhere she herself escaped, finding herself in terrible conditions … At some point, she apparently had a young man from whom she gave birth. But she does not want to talk about it … As a result, she ended up in one of the women’s shelters in Nizhny Novgorod with a 4-month-old baby in her arms.

It was there, in November 2022, that Elina saw an ad from an organization that promised to help people solve “problems of any spectrum”, including simply providing housing.

– Elina called there and asked if they could help her with housing? The next day, people came for her in a car and took her with her child to Ryazan, where they settled in a private house, the volunteer continues.

The rules turned out to be such that it was possible to stay there for at least a month. All this time, Elina had to cook food and clean the house, sort of like working out a roof over her head. As a result, a month passed, another, and on the third the girl wanted to leave. But the leadership of the “house” tried to convince her in every possible way that “you can raise a child here.” By the way, they fed more or less normally, because she cooked the food herself, and they gave her food. The child, in her words, was bought baby formula and “pureshki”. At the same time, during the day, communication with the son was limited to his feeding, the rest of the time the child had to be in the room, and no mother was allowed to approach him. In addition, Elina and the baby stayed in the house for the whole day – all the doors in it were locked with a key. She was not paid any money, so in any case she would have nowhere to go with a child in her arms, even if she wanted to run away.

According to Elina, one of the owners of the “house” offered her a way out – the girl had to have a sexual relationship with him and three other men, after which she could be free.

When the baby fell ill at the end of March of this year, it was the key to getting rid of it. On March 30, they were admitted to the hospital. And from there it was already taken away not by mysterious “slave owners”, but by volunteers.

– How did the girl come to you? I ask Arina a question.

“She had a friend with whom she communicated on the social network, and he contacted us with a request to help her,” says Arina. – Apparently, at the moment when she was in the hospital, she had the opportunity to communicate more freely. We took her phone from him and called her back. When they were supposed to be discharged from the hospital – on April 14 – our employee, ahead of those who were supposed to meet Elina, took her with the child and brought her to Moscow to our office. We placed them in one of the shelters in Moscow, convinced her that she needed to try to direct her life in the right direction – to find a job so that she could rent housing, at least a room, and by that time her son could be sent to kindergarten. .. We believe that the girl will still definitely be fine!

– Law enforcement agencies can check there in the institution where they kept Elina?

– When we began to discuss this possibility with her – that, in a good way, she should go to the police, she replied that she did not see any point in this. As she told us, police officers often came to this house with various statements of search or on some other occasions, and at such moments the head of the house showed them the passports of the guests. And, apparently, he explained that they were just workers who were provided with housing here, which is not prohibited by law in our country. Especially if the guests, for example, said that they were here voluntarily. Therefore, if the victim herself says that she sees no point in filing an application, then we are powerless here.

“I think that, of course, this woman should have written a corresponding statement to law enforcement agencies,” Ivan Melnikov, a human rights activist and vice president of the Russian branch of the International Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, commented on this situation to MK. – And not only in order to receive satisfaction for the fact that she and her child were forcibly kept there, but also in order to help other guests of this “house”.

Everything that she describes looks more like some kind of totalitarian sect than a specialized institution that helps people in TJS. Because people who find themselves in specialized institutions can leave them at any time. If here the guests are kept forcibly, then law enforcement agencies need to conduct an inspection. Moreover, it is hypothetically possible to admit a corruption component in this case, given the words of the woman that police officers visit the house from time to time. In this case, the investigative committee of the Russian Federation should carry out the check.

In this whole situation, I see several criminal articles that should be checked: first, this is unlawful imprisonment, Art. 127 of the Criminal Code, the second, given the words of this woman, is coercion to acts of a sexual nature. What happened all this time with the child is also unknown. Considering that the address of this organization is known, then, of course, employees of the RF Investigative Committee should go there, check, talk with each of the guests in order to understand whether they are being held, like this woman, forcibly or not.