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After his alleged relationships with Sara and Revekka, Mark Gondelman worked on a PhD at New York University. The two women contacted the university administrators to tell their stories.
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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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Hello. My name is Sara Bezrukavnikova, and I'm writing today because it has come to my attention that a student of yours, Mark Gondelman, is being accused of harassment by multiple people.
Nastya:This is a letter that Sara Bezrukavnikova sent to administrators at New York University in February of 2021. At the time, Sara had lived in the US for 8 years, and Mark was getting his PhD at NYU.
Sara:I wanted to share my part of the story in those accusations. Mark and I started dating, quote unquote, when I was 12 and he was 23. We were together for over a year until I broke it off. Many things were deeply wrong with that relationship. Starting from the fact that he convinced me to have sex, which, even though it was as consensual as sex between a 12 year old and a 23 year old can be, I was not ready for. And ending with the fact that he would manipulate and guilt trip me into staying with him every time I would try to leave.
Sara:The emotional manipulation and control did not stop there. Throughout our relationship, he fed into my teenage insecurities, got jealous when I would spend too much time with friends, and caused a rift in my relationship with my family. I lost a few years of my childhood to him and never saw him suffer any repercussions for that.
Nastya:Sara was writing to NYU's Title IX office. Title IX refers to legislation passed in the United States in the 1970s to prevent sex based discrimination in schools. These days, it counts sexual abuse and harassment as forms of discrimination. It requires federally funded universities to hire a Title IX coordinator who will investigate and respond to complaints against students and staff. Sara was hopeful that her complaints would be investigated.
Sara:The physical acts of it happened in Israel and Russia. In both of those countries, the age of consent is 16. So technically, while not under the American jurisdiction, he still very much committed a crime that he has not been brought to justice for. Despite the fact that I consider what happened to me traumatic, the main reason I'm writing today is that I found out that after our so called relationship ended, Mark dated another underage person and assaulted and physically, and knowing him emotionally, abused several other women who had the misfortune of coming into close contact with him. I do not want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.
Sara:I do not want this man to have chance at a life that he thinks he deserves. I'm writing in hopes that the people in charge of his career have strong enough evidence of his character to prevent him from gaining more power in his chosen field, knowing the likelihood of him abusing that power eventually. I'm happy to provide more evidence needed to bring Mark to justice. Respectfully, Sara.
Nastya:From Libo Libo, you're listening to The Adults in the Room. My name is Nastya Krasilnikova. This is Episode 7: Institutional Betrayal.
Nastya:Sara says that after she wrote to NYU's Title IX office, she got a response pretty quickly.
Sara:They said, 'Well, 'Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We would like to further discuss this with you'. And we met over Zoom, talked for an hour. You know, they were it was two HR ladies. They were both very sympathetic.
Sara:They asked me a bunch of very, you know, polite and considering questions, and they expressed their condolences for my terrible experience. And they asked me about my career plans. Basically, we, like, you know, had this, like, beautiful, like, heart to heart thing. They were like, 'We're collecting evidence. We don't really know what to do'.
Sara:I was like, 'Yep. I mean, no problem. Let me know if I can provide any further information'. At the end of that conversation, they were like, 'Well, one thing we can definitely do is to reach out to him and to make, you know, sure that you get closure by talking to him or something'. I was like, 'Oh, yeah.
Sara:Maybe not, but, you know, thanks for the offer, I guess'. And then I hung up, and I was like, wait a second. That really, like, that didn't feel right at all! And so I emailed them being like, 'Hey. I just wanna reiterate, under no circumstances do I want Mark to contact me.
Sara:I'm not sure if you heard me. He's a pedophile. I was a child. I feel like there's some sort of miscommunication'. And they were like, 'Okay.
Sara:Yeah. No problem. If you don't want us to contact him, we won't contact him'. I was, 'Great. Fantastic.
Sara:Okay. Great. So close that option'. Like, let's see what else you do. And they were like, 'Well, you know, sit tight.
Sara:We'll investigate and get back to you with further steps'. Again, empty words, just water. Nothing.
Nastya:I've read this chain of emails. It took Title IX employees 4 months to get back to Sara. That email said, 'The matter we discussed has been appropriately addressed and documented by the university and is being closed'. Revekka also wrote to Title IX at NYU and told them her story.
Revekka:And then all we received from them was that, 'We can't really do anything about it because it's not under our jurisdiction because it didn't happen on campus'. They, like, wrote me a follow-up email later, like, later on saying, 'We decided that the case is closed'. And I was like, 'What do you mean it's closed? Like, does it mean that you addressed it somehow?' And they were like, nah.
Revekka:It's just closed. That's just our protocol. I was like, cool. Doesn't sound particularly helpful, but I get it. It's not under your jurisdiction.
Nastya:Title IX employees did everything by the book. NYU's Title IX reporting guidelines state that the university must dismiss allegations of incidents that didn't occur within an NYU educational program or activity, or that didn't happen in the United States. Revekka and Sarah were not participating in educational activities at NYU, and the alleged abuse by Mark Gondelman didn't happen on American soil. Nevertheless, that decision felt unjust.
Sara:And then I was so fucking pissed. I was angry. I just... I couldn't believe that's how little personal evidence can matter without a legal case. Because to me, there's also a common sense aspect of the situation from the NYU HR standpoint. Right?
Sara:Like, academia is a pretty tight and kind of closed off community. Therefore, your reputation is just has a lot of weight. So when you're discarding, just truly just throwing in the trash the evidence of actual fucking rape of one of your stuff, you are therefore taking on a massive liability. That's the main aspect of it. Like, you don't know what's gonna happen, and you're not protecting yourself, and you're not protecting others.
Sara:You're putting future students who are smart and driven and want to study philosophy and just wanna do something they're passionate about. You're saying their lives don't matter.
Nastya:Mark Gondelman got his PhD in Jewish studies in 2022. After he graduated, Mark got a job as a research assistant at Goethe University in Frankfurt. He's since taught a seminar on Jewish thought. As you might remember from episode 1, I traveled last summer to Frankfurt to look for Mark.
Nastya:So now I'm looking for the equal opportunities office here in, Goethe University. Before confronting Mark at that conference, I visited Goethe University's Title IX office equivalent, the Equal Opportunities Office.
Nastya:The guard in the information center, he doesn't know. He's never heard of the equal opportunities office here in in the university, but he directed me somewhere. So I'm trying... I'm trying to find it.
Nastya:The sticker on the door of the office said, 'Every day is an equality day'. I introduced myself and explained that I was an independent journalist with disturbing information about one of the university's employees. A friendly woman heard me out and gave me the email of her colleague who handles these cases. I emailed that person the same day. Then I was off to the conference where I knew Mark would be presenting.
Nastya:I'm not very comfortable with, trying to find a man who is not willing to talk to me, and I'm not very comfortable with invading this academic conference. And, but then I think, well, the only thing I wanna do is ask him questions. The only thing I wanna do is just try and hold him accountable.
Nastya:So and I think about that he was not... He probably was not uncomfortable with doing what he was doing with underage girls. So why should I be uncomfortable with what I am doing?
Nastya:As you might remember, I overcame my discomfort and walked up to Mark when he came outside for a break. When he turned and ran back into the building, the guards blocked me from entering. And that's the last contact I've had with Mark Gondelman. As a journalist who covers violence against women and children, I often feel desperate. I see my sources trying to get justice, but the systems they rely on in different parts of the world fail them again and again.
Nastya:I've tried with my producer, whose name is also Nastya, to get a comment from the Title IX employees at New York University. We have sent emails, we've called, and we've even asked our colleague who was visiting New York to try getting answers face to face. I desperately wanted to know how NYU's Title IX coordinators make their decisions and why it took them 4 months to respond to this case. But we never got a reply. It turns out complaints made to Title IX offices are confidential for all parties involved.
Nastya:The US Department of Education requires that universities protect the identities of both complainants, alleged victims, and respondents, alleged perpetrators. But we also ask to talk to to someone from the office about the decision making process in general. We got no answer. I never heard back from Goethe University's equal opportunities office either. I followed up a couple months later and, again, got no reply.
Nastya:Maybe this sounds naive, but I was shocked by this whole experience. I've never been to the US, but I've always watched it closely. This is the country where the #MeToo movement was born. #MeToo affected Russia as well. Many women have come forward with their stories of gender based violence.
Nastya:But in the US, free speech really means something. I've never experienced that kind of freedom as a journalist in Russia. So the decision by NYU's Title IX office to close Revekka's and Sara's cases was disheartening to me. Maybe my judgment was clouded by the illusion that the West really cares about women's rights, and that words like every day is an equality day mean something. I don't have that illusion anymore.
Nastya:On one hand, I get it. If Title IX regulations say NYU doesn't have jurisdiction, then they don't have jurisdiction. It's a complicated case with abuse in one country and both perpetrator and victims now in another. But I think there is something else going on here. For an alleged sex offender to fall through the cracks like this and for institutions to feel so little need to answer for it, something has to go wrong.
Nastya:I'm thinking back to the way I felt on that visit to go to university, uncomfortable. I'd been hearing stories of horrible sexual abuse, and still, I felt uneasy about disturbing some university conference to ask questions about it. And I was only visiting the campus for the day. What if you worked there? What if Mark was your colleague?
Nastya:And what if you'd never met Sara or Revekka? What would you do if you heard a story about Mark's behavior? Maybe nothing. And that's how even an institution of well meaning people can perpetuate harm.
Jennifer Freyd:Institutional betrayal, not always, but usually involves the combination of individual decisions as well as institutional policies and cultures.
Nastya:This is Jennifer Fryed. She has a PhD in the psychology of sexual abuse, and she runs the Center For Institutional Courage. She coined the term 'institutional betrayal'. She explains how it works.
Jennifer Freyd:You know, it could be a whole group of people whose individual decisions are coming together and interacting and connecting in complicated ways with the institutional culture and the policies, and so on. So it's not usually a very simple matter to say, 'Oh, there's just one bad person who's doing this'. It's usually this mixture of things. There's a phrase that's used sometimes to describe when you've got a lot of things coming together to make something much worse, which is 'the perfect storm'. So with institutional betrayal, you might have somebody who has ill intent, who actually is motivated to cover up a crime.
Jennifer Freyd:And you might have somebody else who doesn't have ill intent, but they have their own motivation to not rock the boat, not upset things. And you put those two together, and that can create a much worse situation than if you just had one alone. Now, why do people not wanna upset the way things are? That is that is so pervasive. That is so common.
Jennifer Freyd:And that's because, in large part, when you upset the way things are, it tends to be costly. So if I'm in an organization that's doing something it shouldn't do, even if I'm not a direct victim, but I see it's going on, and I ring the alarm, I'm a whistleblower, I say, this isn't right. I'm at great risk of suffering some kind of retaliation, some kind of negative consequence. Perhaps I will be fired for my job, or I will be shunned and ostracized for doing that. Because when I when I raise those issues, I am threatening the existing power structure.
Jennifer Freyd:And the systems in power, whether they're individuals or whole systems, are in power at heart because they know how to stay in power. And how do you stay in power? You suppress when people try to change, take away your power. So so if you question the behavior, you're essentially provoking the power structure, and it tends to bite back.
Nastya:Jennifer also said something that made me think about School 57 as an institution and as a community.
Jennifer Freyd:You know, we are wired up to want to belong. So one person can hurt us, and one person can betray us because, you know, if you have somebody like a parent, or a spouse, or a best friend, who you trust to be on your side, and have your interests at heart, and they do something that harms you, that's a betrayal, and that's very costly. But when you magnify that by a whole group, like maybe everybody in your family, or everybody in your workplace, or everybody in your school, they're all agreeing to sort of mistreat you, that's very threatening to your existence, right? So, what adds to it besides that is that we have, we have a tendency as humans to feel a kind of love and connection for organizations we're in. So not always, not everybody, but it is fairly common that somebody will feel like a what what psychologists call an attachment.
Jennifer Freyd:And we have something, well, you know, wealth research called the attachment system that will motivate us to connect to people, especially people who provide us with some kind of resource. And that system is part of our survival.
Nastya:To tell you the truth, when I heard about this concept of institutional betrayal, I felt relieved. I now had a name for a phenomenon I'd been trying to describe for years. For many Russians, institutional betrayal is very familiar because a state is an institution as well, and it fails its citizens by putting them in jail for expressing their opinions, by killing its government's political opponents in front of the whole world, and by refusing to let its people call a war a war. Sara, Rebecca, Yegor, and many others from the School 57 community grew up surrounded by dissidents or people from dissident families. Their youth was spent while Russia was slowly falling back into dictatorship.
Nastya:They knew their country had betrayed them, so they moved elsewhere. They were still hopeful that outside Russia, they could hold their abusers accountable, and they tried. Even though it was painful. They told their stories and fought for justice. That took courage, and they counted on the institution they engaged to show that same courage.
Jennifer Freyd:And so we don't have, you know, a lot of mechanisms to protect us from institutions right now. That's why I have been promoting this idea of institutional courage, which is, things to, sort of demand of our institutions that do require courage, that will make the institutions much safer for those of us who interact with them. I think we can change institutions.
Nastya:Revekka and Sara tried to stop Mark Gondelman's academic career through Title IX. Yegor spent months of his life trying to hold Boris Meerson accountable in Israel. And they did it not for themselves, but for those who still might suffer from the actions of their alleged abusers. What would change if Boris Meerson was prosecuted?
Yegor:Well, first of all, it would help to prevent, you know, further damage. He's still very much capable of abusing other children. And the second thing would be just the general contribution to the pot of justice in the world. And the third, it's something very complex for me, especially now in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But after the scandal, I promised myself to have not to do anything with, you know, let's broadly call it Russian Creative Industries or whatever, not to work in Russian language, not to take any part in any projects related to Russia.
Yegor:And I'm not talking the state, right? I'm talking the opposition as well. But if you still speak of what this particular story could do to Russian society or to whatever will come in place of the Russian Federation is the example that you can go against, quote, unquote, your own kind for the purpose of justice. Right? This is what Rivka and I did, and I think that could be very useful for people who will try to deal with the aftermath of what will happen to Russia after after the war.
Nastya:Changing our institutions requires average people to challenge them. Like Alexei Navalny, who stood up to my homeland's government and was killed for it. And like Yegor, Sara, and Revekka, who refused to stay silent about the trauma they endured as children and were traumatized all over again by the people closest to them, but never gave up. I was inspired by their courage. In the next episode, I'm going to Yokneam, a town in Israel where Boris Meerson lives.
Nastya: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. The show is hosted, reported, and written by me, Nastya Krasilnikova.
Nastya:A huge thank you to my colleagues, researcher and fact checker, Vica Lobanova, producers and editors, Nastya Medvedeva, Sam Colbert, and Dasha Chercudinova, 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.