Margarita Gracheva // 188 // Survivor

Transcript

Domestic violence is a severe issue everywhere, but it’s especially bad in Russia. According to Human Rights Watch, as many as 36,000 women and 26,000 children faced daily abuse in their homes in 2013. According to official MVD data, in 2015, around 1,060 people died from domestic violence in Russia. 756 of them were men and 304 were women. Alcoholism is often a factor in this abuse and Russia is one of the biggest drinking nations in the world, taking 26th place by alcohol consumption per capita in 2018.

In January 2017, Russian lawmakers voted 380-3, to decriminalize certain forms of domestic violence. Under the new law, first time offenses that don’t result in “serious bodily harm” could get a fine, up to 15 days arrest, or up to 120 hours of community service. So, if a husband beats his wife for the first time and she isn’t hospitalized, he will just get a fine of about $70 to $300. Research shows that domestic violence is happening in approximately one out of every ten Russian families. Seventy percent of those surveyed reported that they experienced or are are experiencing violence: 80% are women, then children and elderly people. More than 35% of victims do not go to the police due to shame, fear, or mistrust.

Many of us have heard of the #MeToo movement in the US and Russia has something very similar. In July 2016 a Ukrainian activist shared her story of sexual abuse and included a hashtag that in English, would translate to #I am not afraid to say it or #I am not afraid to speak. Her post went viral and allowed many people in Russia and Ukraine to post their own stories of harassment or assault.

In 2019, Russia began a serious debate about domestic violence. Some people are fighting to have the laws change to reduce the high rate of women who are dying as a result of domestic violence, but others are firm in their beliefs that the state shouldn’t be allowed to interfere in family matters.

If domestic abuse isn’t seen as a crime, why would anyone report it? The police aren’t going to do anything and if it’s reported, won’t the abuse just get worse because the abuser knows they can get away with it? This seems like an extremely vicious and dangerous cycle. When a bill was proposed to change the law against domestic violence, it was blocked because it was believed that the word ‘family’ shouldn’t be mentioned. The Russian Orthodox Church even took a stance publicly in December 2019 saying, “It has an obvious anti-family orientation, reducing rights and freedoms of people who have chosen a familial way of life and birth and the raising of children. By unjustly overburdening families and parents, the draft law effectively introduces punishment for family life.” The following day, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (Kee-rill) said, “it’s very dangerous when strangers and other forces invade the closed, intimate family space, and God only knows what this invasion may bring.” In March 2020, Russia’s human rights was quoted as saying that calls to a domestic abuse hotline went from 6,054 to more than 13,000 when the city of Moscow locked down.

There is work happening on the law to combat violence against women and the new draft would include regulations on restraining orders and stalking, which is currently missing from Russian legislation. By Russian law, the bill has to pass three readings before it even hits Vladimir Putin’s desk and he was in favor of the decriminalization in the first place, but there are two women from Putin’s United Russia party that are working on the bill. Alyona Popova (Alee-oh-na Pah-poh-va), a lawyer and activist who helped draft the bill, told a feminist festival that, “We live in a patriarchy. We live in a country where our president says the very word ‘gender’ destroys families.”

She’s saying that Russia’s Justice Ministry is downplaying the scope of the gender element of domestic violence. The Russian Orthodox Church has openly opposed domestic violence bills. Christian groups organized small protests across the country where they were holding up signs that said, “My house is my fortress.” One of the organizers explained that a domestic bill would, “put men off marriage.”

Oksana Pushkina (Ahk-sah-na Push-kin-ah) was elected as a member of President Vladimir Putin’s own party in 2016 and she is campaigning to get the decriminalization law overturned and she wants Russia to pass a specific domestic violence law for the first time. Her list of proposals would include restraining orders which have never existed in Russia, anti-sexual harassment measures and steps to promote gender equality. She gets daily hate mail over this and more than 180 Russian Orthodox Church and family groups have openly addressed Vladimir Putin asking him to block her law, arguing that it’s the work of “foreign agents” and supporters of “radical feminist ideology.”

To many in the church, re-criminalizing doemstic violence would run against their values. In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the family is a “small church,” meaning that state interference in family matters like domestic violence would be viewed as restricting religious rights. Some religious leaders say that domestic violence laws would break up the family unit, leaving Russian children to be adopted by (BRACE YOURSELF, THIS IS THEIR WORD, NOT MINE) “homosexuals.”

Some people seem to be inspired by a 16th Century literary work called Domostroi (Dom-uh-story), meaning Domestic Order, which is a set of guidelines for a happy household edited by a priest who took Ivan the Terrible’s confession. The book advocates hitting children “to save their souls” and harsh discipline for wives and daughters. “If women do not fear men or do not do what their husbands or fathers tell them, then whip them with a lash according to their guilt, though do so privately, not in the public eye.” I am not suggesting that Russians are living according to medieval rules, this may be very outdated, but it’s something that was used as a comparison to some of their belief systems. Elena Kalinina (Kah-lean-in-a), an advertising executive, said that her mother used to tell her to put up with everything her husband wanted. She said, “We have an expression here, ‘If he beats you-he loves you. Twisted logic, yes, but it is still part of our mentality.”

It may be difficult to understand why any government would allow and enable domestic abuse. Vladimir Putin is putting an emphasis on traditionalism, accompanied by a promoted culture of masculinity. In a country where victims of domestic violence rarely seek help, it’s also just as rare that a case of it would grab people’s attention, but this story captivated a nation.

When it comes to Russian culture, the women will often add an A to their last names when they get married. So, the woman will often take her husband’s last name and and an A, but the husband doesn’t do this. The A is meant to indicate that the woman is married and it’s a way of showing respect to her husband and his family. In this case, we will be discussing Margarita Gracheva (Gruh-chay-va) and Dmitry Grachev.

Margarita and Dmitry had met at school, and they began dating after college. They had been married for 5 years and at the time of the attack, their sons were ages 3 and 4. At the beginning, they were very happy, but Dmitry did tend to get angry over trivial things and he swore he would kill her if she was every unfaithful. For Margarita, there was a distinct and sudden shift that she noticed in her husband’s behavior in 2017. He began accusing her of having an affair with a colleague named Alexander after she began working in the advertising section of the newspaper. He made the accusation after following the two of them to the cinema, where they took their children, and he saw a text message exchanged between Margarita and Alexander. Up until this point, Dmitry hadn’t been violent with his wife, but she said, “Sometimes I had the feeling that he was not quite normal....I just wanted him to be normal, we had been living together, we have two kids.”

Dmitry had a degree, but he could only find work driving a forklift and he became resentful of his wife’s career. Once that jealousy took over, he became cold and withdrawn. Margarita told him that she felt they should end things because it just wasn’t working out, but he wouldn’t listen to her. She filed for a divorce and brought him the papers and he was furious.

The physical abuse began with Dmitry beating his wife and he was fined 10,000 roubles (roo-bles) which is $150 US dollars. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment and one night, the kids woke up to the sounds of their mother being beaten. In the month prior to the attack, Dmitry led Margarita into the forest, held a knife to her throat, and threatened her life. He kept saying, “Admit it! Are you cheating on me or not?” Margarita went to the police, told them about his aggressive behavior, and she said she was sure they would do something to help her, but they did nothing. She said, “The police in this country don’t take us seriously.” The police officer told her, “You and he will make up soon. It’s nothing serious.”

Margarita said, “I wrote a statement and the desk officer said they would get back to me in 20 days. I pointed out that by then he might well have tried to kill me 20 times over.” The desk officer explained that women often made complaints, but would withdraw them later, which just created more paperwork, “So what is the point of getting involved?” It wasn’t even a criminal case because the police cited the absence of a crime and restraining orders are non-existent. Since she hadn’t been physically hurt, there was nothing they could do. They closed the case in the beginning of December and 5 days later, Dmitry attacked her.

Before the attack, Dmitry demanded that his wife take a lie detector test and she agreed, but he carried out the heinous attack anyways. It happened on December 11th, 2011, after they dropped the kids off at daycare. Dmitry was in a fit of jealous rage when he drove his wife to a deserted spot in a forest. He tied her hands with bandages and he said, “Put your hands on the tree stump!” Margarita was screaming and crying, just begging him to stop, but he told her to look away and he started to hit her with an axe. He hit her in the legs a few times, then he started chopping off her fingers, this was a form of torture as he demanded that she confess to cheating.

Dmitry hacked Margarita’s wrists more than 10 times before chopping off her hands. After the attack, he brought her to the hospital. Blood was gushing everywhere and he handed the doctors a box that contained his wife’s right hand, then he turned himself into the police. They were able to find her left hand in the forest, but it was in several bits with the bones broken in 8 places. The right hand that was in the box was unsaveble because Dmitry had crushed it with the axe, but Margarita’s left hand had been preserved in the snow. The surgery was highly-complex and in total, Margarita had endured 40 blows.

The surgeon said he and his team began surgery at 6:50 PM and they finished the operation at 3:50 AM. It took a total of three operations, but they were able to reattach her left hand. People from all over the world began donating money and raised the $65,000 needed for Margarita to get a bionic right hand and she also had skin and vein transplants.

Dmitry did confess to cutting his wife’s hands off and he was found guilty on three counts: inflicting grave injury and threatening to commit murder and kidnapping, He kidnapped her by misleading her and taking her to a private place where he held her against her will. He intimidated her and demanded that she admit to being unfaithful. Dmitry was ordered to pay more than 2 million rubles (Roo-bles) $30,060 US dollars in compensation for moral damage. Margarita had requested 8 million rubles or $120,000 US dollars and this obviously didn’t include the money spent on her treatment and buying artificial limbs.

Dmitry said he regretted what he had done, and it was “a very big mistake.” He apologized to his ex-wife and children. The psychiatric examination found that he had a personality disorder, but he was of sound mind when he committed the crime. According to the detectives, Dmitry had been planning the crime for two weeks. He bought plastic clamps and an axe in a building material store, and he bought various sizes of bandages and some antiseptic from a pharmacy and these items were all waiting in his car. He had also previously looked around the forest to find a secluded spot.

When Dmitry testified, he said, “In the beginning of October, it all started in the family, when a cold distance set in. Fights, conflict.” He became increasingly suspicious and Margarita told him she wouldn’t accept his irrational behavior, she wanted a divorce. She had to ask him for a ride that December morning to get the kids to daycare. He said, “I’m not trying to justify what I did. I understand what I did. But in the moment, when I realized the family was destroyed, I felt that life for me was over.”

He was convicted in 2018. Margarita was hoping for a life sentence because that would keep her and the kids safe, but that’s not what happened. He received 14 years in jail, but he could serve as little as six years. Margarita believes that the only reason he got such a long sentence was due to all the media attention.

Before the attack, Margarita would have shied away from the limelight, but she knows that it serves a purpose. She said, “If knowing my face means more awareness of women’s suffering, then so be it.” Margarita told The Washington Post, “How many cases have there been since mine; how many women have been killed? And the government just sits, frozen, unable to do anything.” Margarita’s lawyers told her that if she didn’t go on National TV, Dmitry would be out in 3-5 years, they knew it was crucial to get the public’s attention.

Mari Davtyan (Dav-tee-an), a prominent human rights lawyer who represented Margarita, said the case has, “helped the government understand that we are not dealing with violence in the right way.”

The European Court of Human Rights said Russia failed to combat domestic violence and they were ordered to compensate 4 women who were brutally attacked, including Margarita. The court told Russia to make urgent changes to stop future attacks. It said domestic violence against women was happening on a “staggering scale” and Russia had breached two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The court said Margarita’s case showed how Russia’s laws meant authorities didn’t spot domestic abuse until it escalated to cause physical injuries. Many men believe it is their authority to beat their wife and kids. If you believe this law should be changed, your seen as an enemy of Russia or an enemy of families. This is seen as crazy western beliefs that instead of creating and uniting families, gives instructions to destroy them. A woman explained that if a husband hits his wife, she most likely deserves it and if he beats her, it helps her to come to her senses. When Margarita went on a talk show after the attack, the TV host asked if there was something she could have done to prevent this? The whole interview was full of victim blaming.

Some of Margarita’s friends said they were shocked because they saw her and Dmitry as “close and loving.” Margarita’s coworker said, “she’s really open, but she didn’t tell me antyhing was wrong.” Other friends say that she was preparing to divorce her husband and she had gone to the police about his behavior, but they had only talked to him. A family friend said Dmitry once told Margarita, “I’ll kill you. If need be, I’ll go to jail.”

Margarita said she is afraid of what will happen when Dmitry is released from jail because he told her that once he’s free, he will kill her. She’s worried that Russia won’t have laws in place to protect her. She said, “There was love, but then this person, in just seconds, turned into a sadist and maniac. So I want to show that domestic violence is not just in dysfunctional families, where there is drinking and cheating, no.”

Margarita did write a book about her experience, called ‘Happy Without Hands.’ When she got her new hand, she said, “I was so happy when I could make coffee again and to turn pages in a book. Such small things, which you don’t pay attention to in normal life.” She now uses the hashtag “TransformerMom on Instagram.

Now days, she gets about 2-3 letters a week from women begging for help. She is an outspoken advocate for domestic violence protection, and she said her only advice for women facing similar situations is to “run away. Look for a way out because the police won’t help.” Margarita is determined to forge ahead with her new life and with a new purpose. She landed a high-profile job, got remarried and her two sons are doing great as well. She has a show that is specifically about women who have suffered physical abuse from their partners or have endured some type of mistreatment and she allows them to tell their stories.

It gives women a voice, it provides real help, and some of them are able to leave their abusive situation and get to a shelter. Restraining orders are non-existent and there are virtually no legal means for women to keep their violent partners out of their homes. In 2017, Russia deemed domestic violence that doesn’t involve a broken bone, a misdemeanor. It’s basically equivalent to getting a traffic ticket. Statistics on domestic violence in Russia are not easy to gather, but in 2019, a team at St. Petersburg University claimed that 3-quarters of Russian women will experience domestic violence from a partner at some point in their lives and the Covid-19 pandemic only made things worse.

After the women tell their story on Margarita’s show, they are then offered advice or counseling by a selection of lawyers, psychologists and audience members. She says, “The goal of the program is to help—not just to talk to but to help with real action.”

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