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Personal story: How Yaroslav survived a terrible betrayal and avenged the criminals

Yaroslav met a guy on a popular forum for gay men. After several days of chatting, they decided to see each other, and Yaroslav’s new acquaintance insisted on meeting at his place. 

On the day of the meeting, Yaroslav withdrew 900,000 rubles ($9630) from the bank — a down payment for his mortgage, and put it all in his backpack.

When the men met, Yaroslav immediately noticed how uninhabited the apartment was: there were no clothes or shoes anywhere, all the shelves were empty. But the man quickly distracted Yaroslav, and they went to his room. 

Yaroslav recalls further events with horror. He heard someone come into the apartment, his new acquaintance jumped up and ran away while three people walked in, introducing themselves as police officers. 

“One of them began to shove his ID and a gun in my face, even though I didn’t resist and couldn’t speak from shock. They said that my new acquaintance was a minor, threatened me with a prison sentence, said that journalists and Tesak’s [a known neo-nazi] admirers were waiting for me downstairs. Then they started hitting me. It hurt both mentally and physically, and all my thoughts were only about the money in the bag.”  

The “policemen” extorted money from Yaroslav for an hour before his backpack was discovered. Then they threatened to kill him. Eventually, he was released. 

Yaroslav immediately went to the police station. He wasn’t taken seriously there: several departments laughed at his predicament. The police checked the apartment, found that the owner rented it out by the day, and that was the end of their “investigation.”

“I realized that I needed help, and the only organization that picked up the phone and immediately started helping was Coming Out. Their lawyers accompanied me throughout the whole process, organized the viewing of CCTV footage and a meeting with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.” 

Six months later, the criminals were found, and together with Coming Out’s lawyer, Yaroslav was able to sue them for the full amount and moral compensation. The criminals were sentenced to six months in a pre-trial detention center. 

“I want to sincerely thank Coming Out for existing. You defend the human right to be yourself and our right to love.”

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