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For 26 years, Boris Meerson taught history at School 57 in Moscow. He also led class trips abroad. Several former students say he took opportunities to abuse them on those trips.
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Feedback email: adultsintheroom@libolibo.me
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/
For feedback adultsintheroom@libolibo.me
This is a podcast by Libo/Libo
Before we begin, a content warning. This episode contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse. Please take care while listening.
Alexandra:My own story was very long, lasted for, I would say, the minimum of 6 years, but actually even more.
Alexandra:And, during it, I was convinced I'm, the one and only, and I also was technically not a child anymore by the end of the story.
Nastya:This is Alexandra Kuvshinova. She's a social activist who left Russia after the full scale invasion of Ukraine. In my timeline of Boris Meerson's alleged sexual relationships with teenagers, her story is the earliest. That story started in 2000.
Nastya:Boris was 34 at the time. Alexandra was 16. She had just graduated from School 57. That summer, she and other recent graduates joined the school's archaeological expedition to Crimea.
Alexandra:As we considered ourselves to be adult students now that we have graduated, so the status was different.
Alexandra:We could curse. We could drink with teachers. We could smoke without having to hide behind corners. And I spent a month there, a month of August, I think. And at a certain point, Boris invited me to take a walk.
Alexandra:We had, drinks that he brought to the walk and got drunk, and he suggested to have sex. I asked some questions since I had never had sex before. He assured me that everything is gonna be alright, and we had it. The expedition ended soon, and it was an epoch without mobile phones. So, he started calling my landline.
Alexandra:My parents picked up and were quite surprised by an adult voice. I started lying to my parents. And then he suggested a meeting in Moscow, and then it lasted for 6 years.
Nastya:Was it a bad experience?
Alexandra:I mean, whose first sex is a good experience?
Nastya:We know some people who know people.
Alexandra:It was definitely not an experience I would like to relieve, and it was also very awkward because he was very paternal figure that I respected a lot and, couldn't, refuse. But the overlay of context gave me a very clear idea that something is wrong.
Nastya:And did you feel guilty?
Alexandra:Not immediately, but since I asked him if his wife would mind, and he assured me she wouldn't.
Alexandra:But, few of my friends, in the expedition stopped talking to me right away, and it made me think that I maybe should feel guilty. But neither now nor back then have I felt any responsibility for this, really, because in the presence of a teacher figure who suggests and exercises a plan and assures you that the plan is okay. I mean, when you're in a cab, the driver is responsible for driving. When you're with a teacher, the teacher is responsible for making decisions. So my responsibility was probably that I was never good at saying no.
Alexandra:I don't think that I was a part of a decision making process. Of course, I mean, in someone's imagination, I could have said no, but I know I couldn't. It felt like I was invited into an adventure that the very experienced guide told me would be nice. It wasn't really nice, but, it was the one you're supposed to have at a certain point. So it didn't feel like horrible tragedy, but it didn't feel right either.
Nastya:Was it a surprise for you, this suggestion?
Alexandra:Absolutely. Although nobody believes me when I say that, but, again, I never thought of myself as a super attractive person. And I think, partially, this is what affected me not denying the offer together with alcohol and, the beauty of a Crimean summer night.
Nastya:Why did it last for 6 years?
Alexandra:I'm not sure. What I'm sure about is that my every attempt of ending this relationship only was taken as a call for what I now see as, horrible manipulations, lie, threats, stalkering, and, many other ways of not letting me go.
Nastya:It took Alexandra years to come to that perspective on her relationship with Boris. She moved to Sweden and got a master's degree in childhood studies, which helped her understand how the experience affected her. Until that point, she hadn't thought much of it.
Nastya:She was an adult by the end of their relationship and had no clear memory of being groomed as a child. The relatively young Boris that Alexandra describes sounds more cautious than the man I'd hear about from women who knew him later on.
Alexandra:1st, when I left the relationship, I think I haven't thought of him for about 5 years because I was, living a normal life all of a sudden. Then the Swedish perspective made me thinking that I should try to do something, talk to him, explain some stuff that he maybe doesn't understand. So I still thought that he doesn't understand it.
Alexandra:And then the the scale came up, and, it absolutely ruined me for a while because it wouldn't be that large if we did something earlier.
Nastya:From Libo Libo, you're listening to The Adults in the Room. My name is Nastya Krasilnikova. This is Episode 4: Animal-like behavior. The scale of Boris' alleged abuse towards children grew quickly.
Nastya:During this investigation, we talked to 8 people who said they were abused by Boris Meerson. You will hear from all of them in this podcast. It's clear that over time, Boris was taking bolder steps.
Yegor:I'm well aware of other cases of abuse in this school. And I know that in those stories, Boris, went out of the way to show the girls that they were special. Nothing like that happened to me.
Nastya:This is Yegor Osipov-Gipsh, another graduate of School 57, who agreed to talk to me about his experience with Boris Meerson. Yegor is 29 years old. He used to be a journalist and media researcher, and now he lives in Amsterdam and studies law. Yegor graduated from School 57 in 2012 from a humanities program. He told me about his first school trip.
Yegor:So for the first trip to non occupied Crimea, we had to deliver presentations about historical events. And to prepare for that, I spent 3 weeks consecutively at the library of foreign literature next to Taganskya subway station in Moscow. I do remember very well that before this trip to Crimea, Boris gathered us in some classroom and gave us a lecture on what can roughly be summarised as the rules of the trip. The rules of the trip were completely cynical because he said you can do everything except for 2 things, which is drink and smoke. And humanity students are usually the first to smoke because they have seen Godard.
Yegor:They have read French literature. They know that all of this comes with a cigarette in hand and preferably Galois before it was removed from the Russian market. I think School number 57 consumed all of it. And then I remember vividly my classmate, Vitya, jokingly says, interrupting Boris, yeah, and there is one more thing you can't do.
Yegor:And as a teenager, you know what the thing is, which is having sex. Right? Drinking, smoking, having sex is something that you don't do at school. And Boris lowers his voice, looks at Vitya and says, that I did not say. From which it follows that if you are able to fuck, you're welcome to, you know.
Yegor:And by able, I mean, not physically able, but, you know, if you have someone to do that with or if you want to, etc. And there was heavy drinking. Yeah, we went to Crimea, we got wasted on the 1st night, of course, and on the second one and on the third. After a certain day, you reach the stage when you feel particularly excited around 2 or 3 in the afternoon because your body has consumed so much alcohol over the days that you don't even need to drink to feel high. And this helps, right, because you have so much to do.
Nastya:Do you remember if you felt safe as a teenager on those trips?
Yegor:Yes. Well, until it became unsafe. It became dangerous when Boris started to abuse me, which was the 2nd semester of 9th grade. So March 2010 on a school trip to Greece.
Nastya:Imagine a group of 14 year old high school students on a trip abroad. They are studying hard, and they are drinking hard. Their head teacher is also drinking, not with children necessarily, but with other grown ups. One of those grown ups is Masha Nemzer, who was helping Boris Meerson chaperone the children.
Yegor:There was, on that school trip, a girl, a woman, a teenager herself, called Masha Nemzer. She was a graduate of the school, and by the time she was studying history at the Moscow State University, and she went with us already on a school trip to Crimea. This is when I met her. So she was 18 only. And I asked my friend Grisha, who was another very popular guy in the class, and I, at the time, thought he was more popular than I am.
Yegor:I asked him, who is that? And Grisha says, oh, that's someone Boris has a fling with. And I did not quite understand what that meant.
Nastya:This is how Rose, Revekka's classmate, remembers Masha's relationship with Boris Meerson.
Rose:Well, so to say he had a wife, and then he had his official mistress among other ladies he was having sex with. Ladies and gentlemen, shall I say. And this other official ladies was Masha Nemzer. She would go with us on every school trip. She would, like, hang out with, him sometimes in his room and stuff like this.
Rose:So it was super obvious.
Nastya:Masha Nemzer was a frequent guest on the school trips as an organizer and also worked at the school as an assistant teacher.
Yegor:I myself had never had sex yet. So any kind of mentioning of the sexual domain was completely surreal to me.
Nastya:Yegor tells me he and Masha became friends.
Yegor:And so that was throughout the spirit between the trip to Crimea and the trip to Greece. And so then we go on a trip to Greece. We are much more grown up than 5 months ago. And I am texting with Masha, and we are planning to do something. It's unclear to me what.
Yegor:Then it becomes clear to me that we are planning, an encounter with the purpose of having sex. That day was Boris's birthday. That criminal was turning well, he's from 1966 so he was 44. And of course, I'm nervous the entire day. For the first time, there is an evening when we don't have, presentations to do.
Yegor:So we sit on the balcony and drink wine, eat cheese, and my friends read Jack Kerouac. And I just look at them because they have no idea what's about to happen to me. I do as Masha says, I come downstairs after the bedtime and she brings me upstairs to room number 1. And we get into the room and something is wrong. There is stuff that doesn't belong to Masha And I know above all that Masha lives with girls, with my classmates who are females. And there is a bag that doesn't belong to Masha.
Yegor:Then I see boots that's certainly not Masha's. Then I already see Boris's stuff, and I realize it's his stuff. And I'm like, Masha, shall we do it in the bathroom? Which is hilarious because if I knew what and how to do in the bathroom, right, I had no idea.
Yegor:And she says, no, I want us to fuck on the bed. Then we get onto the bed and we start kissing. And, we take off the cloths... we undress each other. But I'm so uncomfortable about this whole setting. Basically understand that I'm in Boris' room and why on earth is that the case? That I feel just physically unpleasant, like her kissing is too powerful.
Yegor:It's always too wet, too cold, too strange. I don't... And above all, I don't like her. Right? I'm not physically attracted to Masha. That's just not the case.
Yegor:And then after some time, it becomes evident to me that I'm so out of place that I will not get hard. So I just tell her 'look this is not going to happen', and I move a bit away from her thinking well, this is a very fucked up first time, but I'm glad it's over. And right at that moment Boris opens the balcony door. I didn't even know there was a balcony. He opens the balcony door, comes in, looks at me.
Yegor:So he clearly was there all the time watching. Right? That's what he did on that balcony.
Yegor:So Boris stepped in from the balcony and threw towel my way, for me to cover myself, but it was so small. It was more of an evil joke. Then he gave me whiskey. Then he tried to have some conversation. I didn't really take part in it.
Yegor:And then rather quickly he moved on to slapping Masha who just as I remained naked all this time, on her ass. Then he put her on her fours in front of me and began fucking her from behind. So it all happened very quickly and it was really out of this world and very scary.
Yegor:All of this going faster and louder, and I remember shaking and I remember wanting to throw up. It didn't last long, but it felt like it did. I tried leaving, but he didn't let me go. He insisted that I have one more whiskey instead and then one more.
Yegor:And only when I said for the 3rd time that I'd like to leave, you took me by the hand and said, you won't tell anyone, will you? I said that I wouldn't. I came down to my room and, I remember cuddling myself into my sleeping classmate's arms, without waking him up and falling asleep.
Revekka:He was teaching me for 2 years in 9th 10th grade, and I had nothing with him. I perceived him solely as a teacher until that trip.
Nastya:In the summer between 10th 11th grade, Revekka Gershovich was 16 years old. It was her school trip to Crimea.
Revekka:We went to Crimea. And in Crimea, we went to excavations. And there, Masha started trying to kind of seduce me. So I was curious about women. I was generally a teenager, which means a lot of hormones everywhere, and they're driving your behavior.
Revekka:So she started trying to seduce me, and I was interested. I was curious, but I wasn't, like, that obsessed with that.
Nastya:Revekka also started getting attention from Boris Meerson.
Revekka:And I was very thrown off by it. I was very confused about it. I could not, like, kind of process it. I remember distinctly when that started happening. So I burnt my shoulders, as I usually did in summer when I was a dumb teenager and didn't know that you need to apply sunscreen on.
Revekka:I was sitting and complaining about it, about, like, it hurting and stuff. And Meerson said, oh, I have a
Revekka:magic cream that will soothe it, it will make it much better. I brought it from Israel. Come to my room and I'll give it to you or I'll apply it on you or something like that. So I came into his room and then he indeed, like, started applying the cream on my shoulders and then he started touching my breast, and I was and then he started calling me a beast. Then my reaction was just like, what what what?
Revekka:It is happening? Okay. Maybe it's okay? Maybe he doesn't mean anything? I am probably reading into it.
Revekka:There is nothing wrong with that. It's fine. And then I left and outside there was like Masha Nemzer and, like some friend of hers. And they were like laughing and like vaguely I heard something, like they were discussing that I just came into his room, etc. And I kind of, like, went back just being completely confused and shaken.
Nastya:Both Boris and Masha continued their attempts to seduce Revekka.
Revekka:They're like those people who are my teachers, who are trying to conceal from each other that they both like me. And then Masha said, hey, come to, like, a certain location which was quite reclusive. So I came there and she started kissing me, and then suddenly, Meerson comes in. And he's like, wow, you guys, how could you? And, like, now I know.
Revekka:And he made it sound like we were doing something bad. And I think he it was supposed to mean that, like, oh, you did something bad. You're vulnerable now. Blah blah blah. But I didn't feel bad about it.
Revekka:Like, I had no qualms with, you know, being bi or lesbian or anything. But I think he was trying to play into it, misjudging, like, who I was or, like, how I perceived it. And he was trying to use that to, like, put me in a vulnerable position, but the fact was that I was just, like, really confused. But said, like, hey, we need to go to... he didn't need to do that, basically. Like, he could have just come up to me and to her and said, like, let's go have sex together, and I would have gone because he was, like, such an authority figure in my head that I would have just done what he said.
Revekka:And then for some reason we went to the sea because the sea was right there nearby, and he was having sex with Masha on the beach. And I just, like, didn't wanna be there.
Nastya:After they came back from the trip to Crimea, Boris Meerson allegedly continued abusing Rebekka. She says that it was very confusing for her to have a teacher who also became her lover. Boris changed his behavior with Revekka in class.
Revekka:I remember I came once to my history lesson a bit late, which is like, yeah, you probably should tell something to a person about it. But he told in front of the whole class that I should be sent to the stables and whipped. At some point, he started, like, telling me that I should go to... there was, like, a nearby hotel where you rent rooms by the hour, and we would go there and have sex there in the in those rooms. And then he would, like, yell at me that I need to get dressed faster. So basically, it would be like, you know, sex, etc.
Revekka:And then, like, I would be like, hey, can we have a hug? And he would be like, nah, get get out of here. But also, like, initially in the relationship, like, when this whole Crimea thing was happening, I was still a virgin, so we didn't have any penetrative sex. And, like, my separate horror story was how I lost my virginity.
Nastya:Revekka says that Boris invited her to his country house which we call a dacha in Russian.
Revekka:His country house is a shed. When I came in soon after, he tied me up and he started flogging me. I was terrified of that and he untied me soon after, I don't know how long I was tied up there, but he untied me and he started getting me drunk, because clearly I was having a lot of doubts at that point about whether I actually want to lose my virginity. He started telling me a bunch of stories that were also supposed to condition me to be more amenable. He started telling me a story about how one of his students, how he told her to sleep with another teacher and she... and the teacher refused to, and how it was very humiliating.
Revekka:The main moral of the story was that if a man doesn't want to have sex with you this is the worst thing that can happen to you, but on the other hand if somebody is ready to take your virginity that is the main honor. It was when I was like very very very drunk and again open to the idea of losing my virginity, he put me on the floor, on a splinter filled wooden floor nearby the fireplace, because that was the only source of heat in this house, and then he started pushing in. It was very very painful. And on top of that I had a ton of splinters in both my knees and in the palms of my arms, of my hands. It felt awful and I just wanted him to already do it and be done and I don't remember anything after that.
Revekka:Like, I know that eventually I lost my virginity. I know that he probably, you know, did all the normal things that people do during vaginal penetrative sex, but I have no recollection of it. I think it was just too bad, too painful. And then he gave me more to drink. I was very sad. And barely any time afterwards he brought me to his room onto the bed and forced me to suck his dick and to choke on it, and it was completely awful. I already had trauma with penises because Mark was forcing me to do the same thing.
Revekka:So when Meerson did the same thing, it just was awful. And I obviously didn't sleep. I was in this house. I felt completely helpless and empty, and I was just physically shaking the whole night. And I was walking around this splinter filled, dusty, cold, musky apartment, and I didn't know what to do.
Revekka:And I felt so stuck because, you know, I came by train. Train doesn't work. I can't get out of that place. The only way back home is by in my teacher's car. And every time when I think on this memory even now, I felt like I had an encounter with the Dementor. I feel like my soul has been sucked out.
Revekka:I remember this musky smell and the leaves, and I just felt so profoundly alone. And then I came back to Moscow, to my apartment. After that, like, we started having those all of those excursions into hotel rooms.
Nastya:What are those excursions after your classes?
Revekka:Yeah. It would happen after my classes and sometimes even during my classes, he would tell me to, like, skip a class and I would go there or something. We had sex at school. We had sex in the memorial cabinet, in the memorial office. You know, like, where the the school's museum with all the victims of the 2nd World War were listed and stuff.
Revekka:And, like, I remember I was lying there on the table and he was having sex with me and I was doing the, you know, disassociation as usual. That's, like, awful. Instead of, like, being present in any way. We also had sex in what is called каморка. It was, like, kind of a shed inside our classroom. We also had sex outside, generally, and we had sex outside in Israel, on the beach there.
Revekka:So he was, like, generally, I think he had, like, this kink of doing it in public places. He also had sex in his own apartment.
Yegor:So for the rest of the trip, what would happen is that Boris would issue invitations, quote unquote, saying, well, come over tonight. Why don't you pass by? Why don't you see us? I never came. Right?
Yegor:I was terrified of that, and I did not respond to that at all. Then we returned to Moscow and several, but don't know, weeks or days later, Masha, to her unfortunate luck, sent me a message saying, hey, Boris wants us to meet. We met at a disgusting cafe next to the Kievskaya railway station Moscow. It was called Муму and we gathered there and Boris looked me in the eyes and said 'what happened in Greece was the first and unfortunate circumstance that happened between me and Masha'. And I was like, okay.
Yegor:And then he goes on to say, and we can either forget it as a scary dream or we can repeat it. There is this common trope of people asking, well, why didn't you flee? Why didn't you fight back? Well, when I was in Greece, who exactly would I flee to and where to? I was on a school trip.
Yegor:And who would I fight back? A man who is 15 centimeters taller than I and weighs 25 kilograms more? What's the question there? But when we were at a cafe in Moscow there is no direct threat, right? It's a theoretical question.
Yegor:But then, of course, the person is in such position of authority that if you say no, it is evident to you that your school progress will suffer. Your also self esteem will suffer because this is about being a cool kid. And if you say no, you're not cool anymore, right? And so I said yes. And since then we met for the next, well basically until my graduation in the 11th grade.
Yegor:So 2 roughly 2 years later, 2 years 3 months in different locations including Boris's apartment, which was additionally uncanny because there was stuff of his son, who was my classmate, at the school. We also met at the school when there were no people there.
Nastya:Here is a voice clip Yegor sent me a few weeks ago describing more vividly his encounters with Boris Merson and Masha Nemzer.
Yegor:And so I said yes. And, saying yes meant, in retrospective,
Yegor:that I said yes to numerous occasions of having sex that I didn't wanna have and that disgusted me deeply and which I did under the, threat of Boris's authority, basically, and of potential action that he could that he could take. Almost
Yegor:morbid was the one time when we fucked out in the forest close to suburban train tracks, on the outskirts of Moscow and suburban railroads are really
Yegor:the place you don't want to be, in Russia.
Yegor:We fucked in hotels you rent per hour, we fucked in Masha's father's apartment
Yegor:at Shchyolkovskaya subway station, we fucked elsewhere in the city. And wherever I would try leaving,
Yegor:Boris would tell me, oh, well, if your feelings are so lofty,
Yegor:you can try, but why would you? And my explanation was that I now have a girlfriend, which he clearly knew of because she was my classmate. He started telling me
Yegor:that I'd rather bring my girlfriend in. That I didn't do. But it was a system that was made to suck you in an organism that was there to to consume you. So it all started with these 2 people stealing my sex away from me. Right? They continued using me just for that, to spice up their arousal.
Yegor:The meetings often involved around them, having intercourse and me in a kind of auxiliary role having oral sex with one or both of them, both active and passive.
Yegor:And this all was a situation of two profoundly unhappy people engaging in some animal-like behavior to escape their lives and making me assist them by offering parts of my body basically. They never cared about me as a person which I understood sharply when Masha bought a dildo and these two morons called it with my name. And it made sense, I think, that they needed an extra stimulant.
Yegor:Of course, Boris had an urge
Yegor:to fuck underage students, mostly girls. But after a certain time, he could only fuck underage students because no adult woman would enjoy the kind of sex he could offer. So we happened to be the unfortunate survivors not only of an evil man, but also of an extremely unconfident man who was trying hard to hide his insecurity.
Nastya:Why didn't you flee? Why didn't you fight back? Those are the questions that survivors of sexual and domestic abuse in Russia get all the time. For me, it is painful to imagine what a person who has been violated must feel when he or she hears that question. It's even asked of people who survived that sexual abuse when they were children.
Nastya:I'll try to answer that question anyway. A school is a tight knit community, and that's especially true of an elite institution like School 57. You trust your teachers. You admire them. Maybe you even develop a crush on them.
Nastya:That was a case for Alice. She asked us not to use her real name. She told me that when she was in the 11th grade, her teacher, Boris Meerson, invited her to a bar to have a drink with him.
Alice:Of course, I was like, wow, great. I felt that wow, Meerson's a crush. So I was pretty happy about this during this time. We had, like, beer or something like this. So, we met maybe 2 times to drink.
Alice:It was like continuation of the grooming, like saying how smart I am. And first, like, sexual violence happened during, like, after celebration of the new year at school. So it's, like, December 2014. It's, like, really hard to describe because it doesn't seem as violence in terms that I was, like, pretty okay with having sex with him. But at the same time, everything he did with me, just, like, my body, it's kind of felt as, like, violence because it was just some physical actions, like, in a harsh manner.
Alice:I think it I was kinda injured during this process of sexual violence. And afterwards, we met with Meerson several times in different hotels in Moscow, and at the same time, in different buildings of the school.
Nastya:Alice told me that now she understands she was carefully groomed by Boris Meerson. Being a student, she sometimes felt looks from him that she describes as sexual. She said Boris knew that she and her friends were drinking and smoking at parties, but never told their parents. So Alice said, sharing a secret with a teacher creates kind of intimacy. Anna, another graduate of School 57, reached out to me when her friend Yegor told her about my investigation.
Nastya:She asked us to only use her first name, but she told me that she had been eager to talk about her experience for many years. Anna told me that she found Boris to be a very charismatic and even extraordinary teacher, but she also remembers hearing rumors about Meerson having sex with students and getting a certain kind of attention from him.
Anna:I never felt completely comfortable, even as a school girl. Like, I remember I'd sometimes notice strange looks when I was at school. And I
Anna:used to tell myself, oh, you're imagining things. It's nothing. Stop thinking about it. And I remember other kinds of suggestive things happening. Like, a typical situation would be, say, it's one of our 11th grade trips.
Anna:I'm walking down the corridor at night to get some water and run into Boris Markovich. And he says something to me. He says something like, well, if you can't sleep, come over if you want. My room's here.
Nastya:Anna also told me that after her graduation, Boris invited her and her classmates to his dacha where they played strip poker. She felt very uncomfortable being naked in front of her teacher. The next day, Boris was insisting on spending time alone with her, but she managed to decline his proposition. When Anna was 18, a university student, she went to Greece with some ex classmates to accompany Boris Meerson and School 57 students on their yearly trip. And that is when, as she recalls, Boris became very persistent.
Anna:I was more of a romantic girl. I wanted to fall in love and stuff like that. But all these new experiences and the attention from this adult person must have left an impression on me somehow. And as soon as I got to Greece, literally from day one, within the first few hours probably of my stay there, he began flirting with me.
Nastya:During this trip to Greece, Anna lost her virginity to Boris Meerson. Brace yourself, dear listener, because this is very hard to listen to.
Anna:Well, anyway, the next part is a bit humiliating. He asked if I wanted to smoke beforehand. I think I said no. And after that, he just undressed me, and he laid me on my stomach. And what happens next is just oh, God.
Anna:It was just horrible because it hurt like hell, just horrible, terrible pain. It just hurt so, so bad.
Anna:But the fact that it hurt so much kind of went along with the fear I felt. Because, like, we're in a hostel.
Anna:And there's children and school kids on the other side of the wall. So I can't, I absolutely mustn't make a peep. I just need to bear it till it's over. Well, not till it's over, but the main thing is that I mustn't scream because there's kids everywhere.
Anna:And that would be so embarrassing, for him especially, and in general. And I remember the sensation, lying on my stomach, and there's this pillow in front of me. And I keep shoving this pillow in my mouth to keep from screaming. So anyway, at some point, I just can't stand it anymore. And I'm like, Boris Markovich, please, can we stop?
Anna:And then he responds with this mega weird, really cynical line. He's like, what, you're not even gonna let me cum?
Anna:And I was like, I'm so sorry. I just... When I think about it, I laugh. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's a defense mechanism, me laughing. Because it's not like I like this story.
Anna:And when people go on Facebook and talk about how girls are just jumping their teachers themselves, and how we know that Boris Markovich is a very decent man who would never do such things, I just think about that moment. And I think, I mean, there are all sorts of abuses committed by teachers. Sometimes, there are full blown relationships in schools, like between teachers and female students. And I don't think that's right at all. Also, I know that there's sometimes some sort of actual romantic connection there, but there was nothing romantic in what happened to me.
Anna:There was none of the, like, I'm gonna be your boyfriend, you're gonna be my girlfriend, we're in love. The entire idea was, I want to fuck little schoolgirls and graduates too.
Nastya:Anna told me that she feels lucky that Boris lost his interest in her after this trip. And also, that her first sexual experience might have been why she couldn't have sex for several years after.
Anna:But still for years, up until about 2017, I could barely have sex at all. I had vaginismus, and in general, when I tried to have sex, I was in a lot of pain. And that kind of begs the question of whether that's connected to that experience or just something else. No one can say for sure. But I think that to some extent, well, when I think about my attitude towards sex and things, I think that if I had any insecurities or fears around it then, as a teen, then this experience definitely preserved them for years years.
Nastya:In many cases, the survivors in this episode only found the strength to tell their stories after years of recovery from their trauma, usually with a lot of help from therapists and supportive friends and partners. But that journey to recovery was derailed one day in 2016. That's when stories of abuse by Boris Meerson first became public.
Yegor:This is something that traumatized me much more than the abuse.
Nastya:For Yegor, the scandal that followed damaged him in ways he couldn't have anticipated.
Yegor:So abuse plants the seed of self destruction in you. And then you decide to speak up. You want to get rid of it. You know the abuser is an abhorrent person, and you know that the board was covering him for years. But you hope that the public, including its core of supposedly well educated people, will be on the right side.
Yegor:But you face something else.
Nastya:More on the next episode. The Adults in the Room is produced by Libo Libo Studio. All episodes are out now, so you can play the next one right away. This podcast has a website where you can find additional visual materials collected throughout our investigation and feedback contacts. The link is in the description box.
Nastya:The show is hosted, reported, and written by me, Nastya Krasilnikova. A huge thank you to my colleagues, researcher and fact checker, Vica Lobanova. Producers and editors, Nastya Medvedeva, Sam Colbert, and Dasha Cherkudinova, composer and sound designer, Ildar Fattakhov, and the head of Libo Libo, Lika Kremer. 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. Thank you for listening.