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Eight years since the scandal, has School 57 gone through a reckoning? The school’s principal has ignored Nastya’s interview requests. But a former teacher shares her disturbing experience.
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Creators & Guests
What is The Adults in the Room?
Nastya Krasilnikova is an investigative journalist who covers sexual violence against women and children. A year and a half ago, former students associated with one of Russia’s most prestigious schools approached her with allegations of serial abuse by teachers. Her investigation has uncovered a network of harm and complicity in a tight-knit circle of Russian intelligentsia.
The story spans many years and multiple countries. It asks what happens when a community refuses to atone for the violence of its leaders. As Russia wages a senseless war in Ukraine, that question couldn’t be more pressing.
For additional materials visit our website: https://adultsintheroom.libolibo.me/
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It's been almost 8 years since the scandal at School 57. Several principals have come and gone in that time. But the majority of the teachers have remained, including Boris Meerson's wife, Lyubov Igorevna. And it's not clear much has changed. I wanted to know whether the school went through a reckoning after Meerson's alleged crimes became known.
Nastya:How do staff protect students from predatory teachers? Is everyone safe? And what is considered safe in that environment? My producer, Nastya, wrote multiple times to the current principal, Anna Vakhneeva, to request an interview. Anna read those messages but never responded.
Nastya:It's like the school still has that Soviet era mentality of a fortress besieged. Like, if it doesn't acknowledge the problem, it doesn't exist. That strategy seems to have served its leaders well for a long time. I've told you about Sergey Mendelevich, the former principal who knew about allegations against one of his staff. He seems to have known about them at least since 2004, 12 years before Meerson finally left.
Nina:The topic of School 57 brings up very strong feelings, very strong feelings.
Nastya:This is Nina, she asked us not to use her real name. Why did you resign?
Nina:I gave birth to a child that was severely allergic to everything on earth. That was the first part. Secondly, I certainly wasn't gonna be working under one roof with a pedophile.
Nastya:At what point did you realize that you were working under one roof with a pedophile?
Nina:I had wonderful students. I was teaching 5th grade. When I started there, I wasn't exactly a young girl anymore. No. I was probably about 28 or 30 years old.
Nina:I can't say anything bad about School 57 because they were wonderful people, absolutely wonderful people. I had a marvellous circle of adults and children and it all worked absolutely wonderfully for the first 2 or 3 years. And there was a little girl in the 5th grade. She had a very discerning way of looking at the world, a very beautiful, very interesting little girl. She had really great parents.
Nina:They were very nice. And then they moved on to the advanced placement classes.
Nastya:We know the girl's name, and we contacted her for comment. She didn't want to talk about her school days, but I think it's important to relate Nina's memory of the girl's experience. Nina says that some years later, when the girl was in the 10th grade, she complained to Nina. She said she was finding her studies difficult because her teacher, Boris Meerson, was behaving strangely.
Nina:And she told me that this man was just sick. I didn't even understand who she was talking about, I mean, whatsoever, but her classmates were arguing over who should be sleeping with him, and I didn't understand that they were serious. I didn't even remotely get that they meant it literally. She gave me this look, and the whole conversation kind of died out.
Nastya:In the end of spring, in 2004, School 57 had prom. The next morning, Nina got a call from the girl's mother.
Nina:And then she called me in a rage just completely incensed. I started trying to figure out what was going on because I couldn't even begin to imagine.
Nastya:Nina told me she found out that 2 schoolgirls, including the girl who felt uncomfortable with Meerson's behavior, had spent the night with 2 teachers. One of those teachers was Boris Meerson. That other former student also declined to speak to me.
Nina:And I was absolutely furious because everything had fallen into place. I spoke with my coworkers. I screamed my head off. I was just sobbing, wailing, blubbering. I don't know what was going on with me because everything just became clear.
Nina:Are you out of your minds? And I was screaming. I was sobbing. I was just saying that we should just remove him. What's the problem with just removing Meerson?
Nina:And then I would go to Mendelevich and talk to him about it. Because what is this? And I was told that there's no point in talking to him at all, that this must mean you have your own issues with men. That's why you're reacting the way you are and that everything is totally fine. Yes. And so I got up the nerve to talk to Mendelevich.
Nina:And, Nastya, I must confess, I'm ashamed to recall it because I think I just got scared. I came to his office, quietly cracked open the door. I have the utmost respect for him. I listened to his speeches at the school board meetings. He really was an authority figure for me.
Nina:And I said, Sergei Lvovich, I'd like to talk to you.
Nastya:Nina told the principal everything she heard from the girl about Meerson's behavior.
Nina:I mean, I believe this girl. I know her. He looked at me, looked at the ceiling, and said, 'This is a teacher. I'm gonna protect him. That's it'.
Nina:This feeling of absolute existential horror, just the absolute horror of realizing that these people are not at all who you think they are. Feeling like the world is crashing down while people you trust are telling you that everything is completely fine.
Nastya:6 months later, Nina resigned from School 57.
Nina:Because this was a place where my definition of good and evil did not apply. The fact that you could treat kids this way, well, I shot out of there like a cork from a bottle. I can't say I did anything. All I can say is that I saw stormy skies, and I ran for the hills. I was convinced that it had stopped then, that Mendelevich, after he sent me away had put an end to it.
Nina:I couldn't even imagine it was still going on. I was sure that the story was finished with the conversation we had.
Nastya:From Libo Libo studio, you're listening to The Adults in the Room. My name is Nastya Krasilnikova. This is Episode 10: What Happens Next. As we know, the story wasn't finished, and it still isn't finished. The alleged victims of Boris Meerson and the other men in this series are still waiting for justice.
Nastya:I asked Rose, Alice, Revekka, Alexandra, and Yegor what they believe Meerson deserves. This is Rose.
Rose:I don't know what he deserves, to be honest. I certainly don't think he deserves going to prison in Russia, but I believe that nobody deserves going to prison in Russia. It's a very difficult question. I think he definitely deserved everything that happened to him. I think he deserves more than that.
Rose:But I can't put my finger to a precise thing that I wanna happen to him or whatever.
Nastya:And this is Alice.
Alice:Of course, I want Boris Meerson in the next life, if we can arrange the case of next life for Meerson, I want him being, like, very ugly slug. Actually, I like slugs. I do not want this for him. I want him to understand the guilt, but we already discussed it with you.
Alice:I think it's impossible. So I think it's important to put him in jail. I also had conversation with, like, my parents. I mean, they, of course, they felt that it's their guilt not to understand what's going on. I do not feel it in this way because Meerson, during, like, meetings for parents, he was kinda good in making impression of being, like, responsible adult.
Alice:So maybe it wasn't so obvious for parents what's going on inside school. Anyhow, I still very, like, angry to all persons being, like, 'yeah, of course, Meerson was bad, but school is good'. I know it's not good. Like, this atmosphere of, like, possible ciolence, nonresponsibility and very, very damageful things, it was in every cell of the school. And, yeah, that's what I really hate, the fact that many teachers stayed at school now as I continue to teach.
Nastya:Revekka lives in Boston with her husband. While I worked on this investigation, she got a job at MIT. She starts in July.
Revekka:I mean, I know about some of those men, like Meerson, for instance, that he continued doing what he was doing after he left. Like, yes, he has less opportunity to do what he was doing, but he still does it. So, like, I'm not okay with him being out and potentially doing it. The same goes for Mark. Mark has even more opportunities to do what he used to be doing, and I am completely not fine with it.
Revekka:So yeah. And I'm not even talking about Seryozha.
Nastya:Seryozha is Sergey Arkhipov from the previous episode.
Revekka:Seryozha is like nothing changed for him. And the guy is fucking maniac. Like, I don't think.. He's continuing to do what he used to be doing. So that's one thing. And I tried different ways to get, especially Mark and Meerson, I don't know, put in prison, etcetera.
Revekka:I anticipate now that people would be asking me, like, 'oh, but are you not sorry to break their lives? Do you really think they deserve it?' Oh, I think they deserve it. I will be celebrating the day when I break their lives. Another moment, I'm sure that, among, like, Russians, not only Russians, people who are now abroad in academia and who might be listening to this podcast and who will be saying that, 'Oh, that's not an issue.
Revekka:She didn't really have a trauma. She's just a bitch'. Well, among those people, there will be people who are abusing girls. And even if they don't feel from this podcast that it's not good to abuse girls, they will at least feel that they might end up in a similar podcast themselves. And I think it's great.
Revekka:They should feel that.
Nastya:Alexandra's views on Meerson have changed over the years.
Alexandra:We always talked about how we didn't want him in Russian prison, and I think this was a mistake too.
Nastya:Do you think it's fair that he, right now, is living his almost normal, I think, life here in Israel?
Alexandra:Hard to say. I don't think he's living his normal life. His normal life was 25 pairs of eyes, watching him speak and, following him. And I think it's the main thing that life has taken from him.
Alexandra:Also, it's hard for me to talk about fairness because I can't think of any usage for this term here because the only thing, being fair for him to be abused as a child in 10 different lives or dozens of different lives, because fairness is balance. So in our discourse, we only wanted him isolated from children, and, we had this idea that nobody deserves Russian prison. But meanwhile, we didn't know that he is harassing new people every year. Of course, if we had, I would probably never say that Russian prison is not a tool. It isolates.
Nastya:Here is Yegor.
Yegor:I think what we should have done is that we should not have gone to the school board at all. We should have gone to the police with all those 14 testimonies. Right? And I also want to mention that none of those people except for me and Rivka came out. Right?
Yegor:This made me very angry back in 2016. And, of course, I cannot demand such things from people. But, you know, if 14 people would have stood up and said, 'we are those children', it would have been a different story. I think we were very kind to Boris, unfortunately. There is the logic prevalent in Russian Intelligentsia that you better you know, putting someone into Russian jail is an impossible thing to do, which is based on the fact that Russian prisons are torture factories, which is true, but so are prisons and some democracies as well.
Yegor:Prisons in the United States and the United Kingdom are no exception to torture at a lesser scale. I have only one thing to say about this, is that those circumstances are used by the abuser against the victim. They are adults and they know what country they're committing their crimes in, especially serial molesters and serial abusers. So this should not be a burden on the victims.
Nastya:One of the concepts that I found out about during this investigation is DARVO. It is an acronym coined by Jennifer Freyd, the psychologist who told me about institutional betrayal.
Jennifer:DARVO is an acronym. So the D stands for deny. The A stands for attack, and it's usually attack credibility. And the RVO stands for reverse victim and offender. And it's a tactic that somebody can use when they've been accused of something.
Jennifer:They can deny it happened. They can attack the credibility of the person making the accusations saying, 'oh, you just are doing this for, money', or, 'oh, you have mental health problems. You're a liar. Your memory is messed up'. But the really powerful part is reverse victim and offender because what they can do is say, 'Hey.
Jennifer:I'm the victim of your accusation. You're hurting my reputation. You're hurting me, and you are the bad person for making this accusation'.
Nastya:This pattern reminded me of my conversation with Boris Meerson so much that I wanted to scream when I first heard of it.
Jennifer:DARVO, you know, originally, we thought of it as, between 2 people, but, of course, it can happen from the institution too. And it happens all the time. So that, yeah, the person who was truly victimized, who had the courage to say something about it, then gets further victimized by being attacked and basically treated like they're they are the problem.
Nastya:And this is exactly what happened with Revekka and Yegor in 2016 during the scandal. What I cannot stop thinking about at the end of this investigation is the bravery of my characters. For years, they were told that the abuse they suffered was a form of love or a form of freedom. But they grew up into beautiful accomplished adults who took control of their lives. They tried to tell the world their stories and hold the alleged perpetrators accountable.
Nastya:As Sara beautifully put it:
Sara:I think one common threat that I've seen in a lot of these stories is that people who perpetrate that kind of violence over women and children, or who try to do sort of sketchy shit on the down low, they have this narrative of there being a version of truth that, as a participant, you should hold on to, that there is a certain version of events that makes this make sense. And I have... Having this knowledge and having this lesson, I think, is helpful in thinking about these experiences because because when you find yourself separating reality into different strands and into different stories, and you start picking and choosing the version of the story that works best for you, that's where you're going wrong. And that is when you should take a pause and stop and think about what is really happening.
Nastya:Alice told me that her recovery wasn't just about understanding what really happened, but also about finally sharing that experience with other people.
Alice:4 years ago, I cannot imagine myself saying about this experience to anybody. And now I can say it calmly, and I hope that after projects like this, more people will be able to share this experience, maybe not in public space, but even share with, like, persons around you. Because life without possibility of even, like, saying, pronouncing your experience, it's a lot of pressure inside when you are unable to say something, to share.
Nastya:I do not know if this investigation will change things, but I certainly hope it does. In covering gender based violence in an authoritarian country, my capacity is limited. I can only collect stories, check facts, and publish. What anyone does with that information is out of my hands. Yet, I still hope for a world where the well-being of women and children is a priority, where institutions care for those who rely on them, where powerful people admit to their mistakes, and where justice is possible.
Nastya:Russia is falling deeper into darkness every day. Its leaders think they can solve their problems through violence. I do not agree. And this investigation is one way of loudly saying so. And just one other small thing from Jennifer Freyd.
Jennifer:The only way change happens is people keep trying and keep trying and keep trying, and it can be very discouraging, and it can take time. There's no guarantee it will work, but change does happen. And when you look at the history of civil rights movements, they take time and, you know, lots of setbacks, you know, make a little progress, get a step back. One of the things I've learned is you never know when something you do that seems like it had no effect, seems hopeless, but you actually planted a seed that maybe 15 years later will blossom.
Nastya:The Adults in the Room is produced by Libo Libo studio. This podcast has a website where you can find additional visual materials collected throughout our investigation and contact information for feedback. If you'd like to support us, please subscribe to Libo Libo+ on Apple Podcasts. Your monthly donations make our investigations possible. You can find all the links in the description box.
Nastya:This show is hosted, reported, and written by me, Nastya Krasilnikova. Huge thank you to my colleagues that took part in this project, researcher and fact checker, Vica Lobanova, producers and editors, Nastya Medvedeva, Lika Kremer, Sam Colbert, and Dasha Cherkudinova. Translator, Anya Formozova. Composer and sound designer, Ildar Fattakhov. Legal support provided by Michael Sfard and Alon Sapir from Michael Sfard Law Office, and Sergey Markov, managing partner of the law firm Markov and Madaminov.
Nastya:Voice overs by Sam Colbert, Valerie Kipnis, Ildar Fattakhov, Lynne Echenburg, Semyon Sheshenin, and Anya Migdal. Art is made by Ruslana Mirzaaliva. Website by Non-Objective Studio. Special thanks to Polina Agarkova, Ksenia Krasilnikova, Anna Chessova, and Artyom Efimov. I also want to thank my fitness coach, Irina Paliy, my psychotherapist, Vladislav Chupeev, and a French singer, Barbara Previ.
Nastya:Thank you for listening. If you are impressed, leave us a comment on the podcast platform you use. Bye.