Louder Than Silence (eBook)

Vesta Spivakovsky (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
550 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-1102-4 (ISBN)

Infos

This heart-wrenching story by Vesta Spivakovsky has come to be the first documentary evidence of Parental Alienation in Russia. It is an open and compelling portrayal of parental child abduction that took place in this complex and multi-faceted country. As a foreign reader, this story is of interest for its agonizing drama, trials, and tribulations. In a subtle and captivating way, the author depicts modern Russia's complex and sometimes corrupt political, social, and public life. Moreover, there is constant suspense throughout 'Louder than Silence' about what will happen to the mother and her daughter.

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This story is a mixture of judicial arbitrariness, blind spots in the law, slanderous dramatizations, and unfair accusations. It is a conflict that has gone beyond the boundaries of one family and linked the fate of hundreds of people across the country and beyond. This is a story that has been long overdue to be told and a subject that desperately needs to be addressed. The author of the book - Vesta Spivakovsky - a journalist, columnist, television and radio host - faced a problem that became a very real disaster, but remains invisible to most citizens of the country. In 2010, her ex-husband took upon himself to forever alienate her from her daughter. This book is not just an authorial confession. Its task is to bring the problem of family kidnapping and PAS (Parental Alienation Syndrome) into the field of public discussion. It is dedicated to parents who are in a similar situation but do not despair and do not give up. And also to all those who care about it at the legislative, social, and personal level. "e;Family kidnapping"e; in Russia not only shown a considerable hole in the legislation but became a full-on disaster, invisible to most citizens of the country. The lack of reaction of the legislation forced Vesta to make public, her personal tragedy in order to again force the government to pay attention to the lack of existing legal mechanisms in resolving family conflicts. According to international human rights organizations in Russia, between forty-seven and fifty-five thousand minor children disappear every year. "e;Family kidnapping"e; in Russia is still not regulated at the legislative level and is discouraged as a topic of discussion in the current political environment.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 10

Back in St. Petersburg, I did not waste a moment. I rushed to the first law office I saw. I took a kind of juridical dictation from a weird lady; I put together a complaint and ran to file it in the district court. I ran to the local child protective services. Then to the police investigation department. Then to the phone company to get a printout of calls I made to Wide Balk throughout the summer. To the crisis services for domestic violence victims, the NGOs, to the offices of city council members. I have yet to learn to hold back tears, and at times, I barely believe the words that come out of my mouth.

‘My child has been stolen from me, and they are hiding her from me.’

All I get in response is sympathy, and I move on, from one office to another, idealistically supposing that I am just knocking on the wrong doors. Every day I consistently visit official organizations. I learn to write complaints and affidavits, and I learn this new language of war – dry and bureaucratic. The language you need to address a bureaucrat if you want to be heard.

Finally, I acquire my first ally, a lawyer named Sasha Smirnoff. He frequently cooperated with a local crisis center for women who had been victimized by spousal violence. I first learned of this center from a random flyer I had taken from the elevator of a friend’s apartment complex. At the moment, I was boarding that particular elevator, and I thought that it had never crossed my mind that I would ever need the services of such a place. Somehow, I found myself immediately dialing their number. Sasha waited for me in his office and impressed me thoroughly. Young and ambitious, he got to the very essence of the situation and asked exact questions. We spoke for a couple of hours, and for the first time, I could breathe out and calm down a little.

‘Do you have a copy of your family court complaint?’

‘No.’ Like most ordinary people, I had never been to court until then and knew nothing of procedural formalities. My complaint was full of procedural errors. It was handwritten; I did not make a sufficient number of copies and did not attach my child’s birth certificate. The lawyer I initially consulted was too busy with her manicure and did not find the time to warn me of these issues. That is why the district court judge issued an order directing me to correct those deficiencies and hence halting the case’s advancement.

The same night Sasha sent me the corrected text of the complaint that I took to court the following day. On the way, I made some copies of all the required documents and paid the filing fee.

‘There is good news, Sasha told me. At the end of the week, I need to be in Stavropol so that I can accompany you on a visit to Novorossiysk on the way back.’

I was overjoyed. Sasha said that his contacts in the local child protective services would help to put this nightmare to an end.

‘They are the most influential piece in the whole puzzle,’ he explained. ‘In any child custody dispute, they are entitled to the last word. When you let them know that your husband and mother-in-law kidnapped the child and are hiding her from you, the child protective services will file for an order to transfer physical custody to the mother pending final determination’. Sasha also has a daughter, and even though his marriage was unhappy, he confessed that doing something like this to his child would never have occurred to him.

Every visit to a government office brought me renewed hope. In Novorossiysk, Sasha and I visited the wrong address and found ourselves in the office of the forensic psychiatric service named “Dialogue.” The interior of the office reminded me of an old aristocratic home from a classic Russian novel. The St. Petersburg bureaucrats never had more than a few minutes to spare for each visitor, but here things were different. The visitors were few, and each got a lot of individual attention. The employees asked about details and reacted to problems like human beings, not bureaucrats. I saw a glimmer of hope that the employees of child protective services would treat me equally well.

‘Dialogue’ staff told us that child protective service was on the street of Heroic Paratroopers across the Southern market and so we went there. People were doing their grocery shopping. In the yard, laundries were hung on the lines. I paid attention to the asphalted playground and swings, on which cats were sun tanning. The lawyer and I entered a private apartment on the first floor of a nine-story residential building. Sasha helped me explain the situation to the staff members. I constantly broke down sobbing, still refusing to believe that it was happening.

‘You are from St. Petersburg?’ the receptionist asked, ‘Fill out this form and go straight to the directress.’

The directress glimpsed at my last name and raised her eyebrows in surprise.

‘Protsenko? Your husband’s last name is Protsenko?’

I nodded. The directress left the office and returned with a file folder. Sasha and I sat in silence. We hoped that day we would get the opportunity to see Eksusha and, with the support of the Child Protective Services ( CPS), take her home to St. Petersburg.

‘We have already had a case opened regarding your child,’ the directress announced, shuffling through her paperwork. ‘Your husband was here and asked for help.’

An awkward pause ensued. No one had expected such a turn of events. What kind of help could my husband want from the CPS? I am the one who filed a complaint and not him. He is the one who is hiding the child from me, not the other way around. It was very confusing. I looked at the CPS employees and still saw them as guardian angels who could help me regain my trampled motherhood.

‘And what kind of help did my husband ask you for?’ I finally broke the awkward silence. The directress put her nose into the paperwork. She began quoting aloud: ‘My wife …Name … and …Surname…abandoned the child on such and such date… thus damaging our daughter’s psychological wellbeing. She was also engaged in predatory sexual conduct towards the child’. The directress yawned, stopped reading, and looked at me with concern. So this is the way things are? Did Roman decide to make a monster out of me to get sole custody of Eksusha? Or to blackmail me in the very place where I would go for help? In any event, my husband confidently accused me of things that had nothing to do with me. For the first time, the accusation was made verbally at the police station and then, in the written form, at the CPS office. Sasha quickly took charge of the situation.

‘We would like to take a ride to the addresses mentioned in the Protsenko affidavit so that the mother could see her daughter,’ he said confidently.

The directress immediately called the inspector and told us to wait in the hallway.

Two hours of doing nothing felt like torture. I came out onto the porch several times just to be doing something. Eksusha must be here, very near me. The first address was on Volgogradskaya street. That was the residence of Roman’s grandmother. She opened the door, showed her displeasure, and refused to say where Eksusha was. The second address, at Novorossiya Republic street, proved to be uninhabited. There were no other addresses in Roman’s affidavit. Then I took the trump card out of my sleeve and gave up the last known address – the country house in Wide Balk. The child protective services inspector, indifferent as hell, decided to call Roman on his cell phone number.

‘Roman Borisovich, this is inspector … Can you tell me where you are? At work? And where is your daughter? (Pause). The thing is, we have a planned visiting schedule for all families with open cases, and we would like to inspect the living conditions of the child Eksusha Protsenko’. She judiciously left out the part about me standing next to her. I immediately forgave her indifference.

We left the city and turned onto a curvy one-lane road going up the hill. We dumped the car behind the gates. The door of the house was shut. There were no vacationers in the homes nearby. Nelly, the neighbor, decided to throw one of her tantrums but, having glimpsed a uniformed police officer, calmed down surprisingly quickly.

My heart winced and then rushed to beat quickly. Despite the locked doors and boarded-up windows, I felt that my daughter was there. With a dog’s sense of smell, I smelled her and lost it. I circled the house, sniffing and straining to hear. Then I hid under the staircase to be out of sight of “hostilely inclined relatives,” as the child protective services inspector instructed me. The team silently spread around the garden plot as if preparing to storm the house in the ringing September silence. Finally, the inspector knocked on the metal door. I heard Eksusha’s shuffled squeak as if someone placed a hand over her mouth.

Something twitched in my body, and I had to gather all of my strength to restrain myself from climbing through the window. To preserve my focus, I kept staring at Sasha, the child protective services inspectors, and the police officers. I could not break the law in front of all these people. ‘Just hold on, you only have a little more to withstand, and everything will be resolved. It seemed logical to me that the authorities would see that my husband’s relatives have gone crazy. They will force...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.11.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Familie / Erziehung
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-1102-9 / 1667811029
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-1102-4 / 9781667811024