Let's Talk About Rape — Empowering survivors, changing the narrative

Girls like this don’t need to be beaten, girls like this need to be re-educated. Girls like this are worse than the army. Girls like this need to be broken.

olena

Survivor of wartime rape and torture from Ukraine

For the past ten years, I have been living on the border—mental, intellectual, and physical—a place that simultaneously destroys and builds, tears apart and heals, supports and betrays. This border is a space of tension, silence, and waiting, watching me from the inside as if trying to understand my strength. For eight years of war, the border literally ran through my garden—a “tape” dividing Ukraine from an unlawful entity. The trench dividing my life is not only geographical; it also cuts through my family table, separating my civic choice from the beliefs of my numerous family members.

These years have been full of travel—dozens of cities, many countries, hundreds of hours spent alone at borders. I like to think I survived this steppe because I carried within me my Amage—a strength that kept me moving forward. It is the story of a girl who has survived more than many think is possible, and who is learning to accept her scars. It’s the story of a woman who, despite many failures, has achieved a lot. A woman who never carried a child in her womb but carries two broken ribs—and the pain she feels comes not from them, but from a sense of responsibility. This responsibility forces her to act in ways that seem reckless to others but are necessary for her.

It is also the story of loss. I lost loved ones, a home, and my native language, but I found friends, a new reality, and a sisterly language that became mine. It’s the story of a girl who no longer remembers who she was before the war and who knows that things will never be the same again. There is much work to be done, but this girl rolls up her sleeves and gets to work.

Let’s Talk About Rape® is a collaborative, therapeutic project empowering survivors to reclaim their narratives. Through self-portraiture using a shutter release cable, participants set their own agenda as a tool for healing.

Olena, Bucha, Ukraine, 2024

It is the story of a girl who has survived more than many think is possible, and who is learning to accept her scars. It’s the story of a woman who, despite many failures, has achieved a lot.

olena

Today, at the edge of youth, I head to my border, holding several kilograms of iron in my hands to defend our home. Though sources on the customs and rituals of our ancestors are scarce, I have read that in spring they would cleanse and regenerate their bodies through practices that would later be called fasting. This included eating young shoots, drawing strength from the earth, from spring, absorbing its vitality into every cell. Near the occupied towns of Yasynuvata and Volnovakha stretches the Velykoanadolski Forest, one of the largest artificial forests in the world. In the middle, near the museum of the forestry school, stand stone statues of warrior women, monumental figures erected by ancient nomadic tribes. Around them grow alders, hawthorns, sloes, and oaks.

Today, I release my deep anger through iron, shoulder to shoulder with others, breathing in unison, fighting to reclaim space for the tenderness that has been taken from us. The crowns of trees at the border line have been scorched for the tenth spring, as if someone on this side of the earth has not yet learned to draw and, out of exhaustion and frustration, has been stabbing sharpened pencils into the sky with burned graphite. Maybe not this spring, maybe not the next, but February will end, the trees will bud, and I will visit my steppe warrior women. I will find sloe and eat it, drawing strength from the earth that always remembers.

I don’t remember the summer of 2018 very well. Because those who held me didn’t let go for a moment, they didn’t hit hard, but almost non-stop. Some episodes have blurred in my memory, others have mixed with years of nightmares. They constantly asked: “Do you love Russia? Do you love Putin? Do you love Ukraine? Do you love Aksyonov? Do you love Yatsenyuk? Do you love Crimea? Do you love Poroshenko?” And it went on in a loop, dozens of times. With every answer, one of them would strike me in the face or in the ear. Not hard, but methodically. It didn’t matter if I answered “yes,” “no,” or “I don’t know.” No answer was right.

Olena, Bucha, Ukraine, 2024

When one of them got tired of delivering blows, the other would start pushing his fingers into my ears, nostrils, and throat. Sometimes he would rummage first in his own pants, sometimes in my shorts.

I don’t remember most of the details too well, but I vividly remember the smell of saliva. It is as rotten as it was four years ago on Svobody Square. Each of the men would loudly inhale air into his throat and spit rotten mucus into our faces. They aimed at our eyes and mouths. They made very similar movements, as if it were a well-rehearsed performance. Some would pull our hair or hoods to tilt our heads and spit more precisely.

During the interrogation, one of these illegal border guards, who kept turning my passport over in his hands, suddenly stood up sharply and said: “Ah, so we’re local. Why are you a traitor, then?”.

Then he switched with the previous one and began delivering harder blows to my stomach. I struggled to catch my breath, my legs buckled beneath me, he would lift me up, strike again, and every time repeat: “You betrayed your family. You betrayed your homeland. Get up, get up. Bad girl. You betrayed your own.”

At the beginning of the interrogations that hot summer of 2018, when I still had some assertiveness and cheek, I said: “Fight the army, not girls like me.” Several unbearably long hours full of violence and humiliation passed. I tried to guess what exactly they had arrested me for: maybe for my activism or for actions on behalf of prisoners. I kept repeating to myself: “What do they want? Why me? How will I recover from this? If they rape me, I won’t survive it.”

olena

At one point, one of them hit me too hard. The other stopped him, started touching me, and added: “Girls like this don’t need to be beaten, girls like this need to be re-educated. Girls like this are worse than the army. Girls like this need to be broken.” After the interrogation, one of them opened the door and said: “You can go left. I don’t know what’s there. But you can also go right.” I went through the night and Syvash. I didn’t know why they let me go. I’m not afraid of the dark. But I’m afraid that I won’t notice the details when my eyes can’t grasp the space. I’m afraid of my own inattention. Inattention to something specific.

That kind of attention healed under stretch marks, under the scar from the cut on my stomach. I know that I am sensitive to people, their voices, and traumas, but everything has its limits. It’s more about dark spots, or bright spots in the darkness – a bit like a cataract, a veil in front of the eye. Where it burns, you stop seeing.

At first, I walked very slowly. My brain played a very nasty game with me, convincing me that I should quietly say goodbye to everyone and thank them for life, throwing scenes from movies at me: if they shoot me in the head, if they shoot me in the chest. When it dawned on me that no one was following me, that I had walked far enough – I started to run slowly. I moved clumsily, like a newborn calf, because I was thirsty and exhausted.

I ran to our border guards, tried to tell them what happened, but they interrupted me, saying that it was my own fault for “going there.” I knew it was my responsibility, but not my fault. But I stayed silent. For several years.

I had to go a long way, to give myself support. I think I’m managing more or less.