Not lowering hands

Many know the story of Margarita Gracheva, whom her husband chopped off. But few people know that since the tragedy and still, lawyers help her for free and they have almost won

Help the consortium of female NGOs help

"The victim is suffering for one and a shame for everyone."
Leonid Andreev "Judas Okariot"

Mastomskov Serpukhov, cafe "Ile Patio" in a shopping center on the outskirts of the city. Margarita is in a quick step and apologizes that she was late. “I sat in the registry office for an hour and a half, finally tried to get documents about divorce,” she smiles. I wanted to divorce two years ago, but my husband was against it. After the beatings and threats on December 11, 2017, he took Margarita to the forest and chopped off her arms with his ax.

Margarita is 26 years old, but she still has a children's smile. “Now I will turn off the sound on the phone so that no one interferes with us,” she says with her left hand (because the prosthesis, which is not clicked on the screen), takes the phone. The hand, which the ex -husband cut into several parts and which the doctors miraculously managed to sew. And this is not a plot from a horror movie.

Not a horror movie

“He was not going to kill me - he told me. He said that I would stay alive, but I will never be able to stroke my children again. He thought out everything. I bought harnesses and an ax in advance, found out how much you could keep these bundles, then brought me to the hospital and gave up the police. He also said that I should behave quietly and wait for him from prison, otherwise he would return and cut off his hands to all my relatives. ”

Margarita Photo: Anna Ivantsova for TD

Margarita is calm, says quickly and confidently - she has repeatedly given an interview. I’m trying to understand if she saw at least some prerequisites for violence when she was married. "No. Nothing. This is worse, because there was nothing at all - he never beat me, did not humiliate me. He did not drink, did not smoke, went in for sports, worked. It all started only when I was going to divorce him. We were very different, he stopped paying attention to me and the children. We became strangers, lived just like neighbors, and I decided to file for divorce. ”

Then it all began - it was in October. At first there were constant quarrels and accusations of infidelity, then he broke her passport, and beat her at night. She asked him to move out and changed the castles, he died for a while. But they continued to intersect because of the children-the boys had to be taken to kindergarten, the car remained with him. And in November, he dragged her into his car by force, took her into the forest and threatened it with a knife. After that, Margarita filed an application with the police, but the district police officer called her only after three weeks. But even then did nothing.

All this time she lived in fear - she gave the number of his car to friends and colleagues, called back with her mother in the morning and evening, warned at work what to do if she was not at nine in the morning. Early on the morning of December 11, they took the children to the garden and he offered to give her to work. Instead, he drove to the forest. The ax and burners had been lying in his trunk for ten days.

Protection

While he chopped off her hands, bandaging them with bundles and putting them on a stump, she was conscious. It lasted about an hour. Just imagine. But you cannot - this is impossible to imagine. And another half an hour in the car, while he was taking her to the hospital. Still in consciousness. I look at her smiling face and try to imagine. This is worse than any horror movie.

It is painful from stories about deadly diseases and genetic breakdowns, it is unbearably painful from injustice - nature and life. But this is another, it is incomprehensible.

Margarita Photo: Anna Ivantsova for TD

In the hospital, Margarita managed to dictate a mother’s phone - and only then turned off. Three days after the tragedy, her mother came to the transfer to Andrei Malakhova, and there was a defender of women's rights Alena Popova, who told her about the consortium of female non -governmental associations. The consortium includes dozens of organizations that help women who have survived domestic violence. One of their projects of the consortium is the Center for Protection of the victims of domestic violence. The lawyer Marie Davtyan, the head of the center, personally undertook to defend the interests of Margarita in the courts.

“I don’t know what I would do without them,” Margarita smiles again. - They are conducting all court cases in my process, and there are a lot of them. This is the administrative - beatings and divorce. And the case with that district police officer, who did nothing with my statement about the threats, but so far it stands still because he disappeared somewhere. Well, the most basic is the deprivation of the ex -husband of parental rights. There were five meetings in this case, I was not at anyone, I did not want to see him, everyone was done by Marie Davtyan and Oksana Rusyan. ”

It was very important for lawyers to ensure that Dmitry Grachev was deprived of his parental rights before the sentence. He had four mitigating circumstances, he knew about them and counted on them: a confession, two minor children, the first criminal record and active cooperation with the investigation. Thanks to the efforts of the lawyers, Grachev was deprived of parental rights, so the children ceased to be a mitigating circumstance.

“Even thanks to Marie Davtyan, we managed to prove the fact of abduction, this also increased his term,” says Margarita. - As a result, he received fourteen years of colony of strict regime - this is good, because initially he was threatened with a maximum of eight years. We also asked for eight million rubles of compensation for moral damage, but the court awarded only two million. ”

Margarita, of course, is afraid of the moment when he will be released - and after two -thirds, if he pays compensation, he may go out at parole. “I thought about moving and, perhaps, I will do it, but later. While I have been having five years to live calmly: I have to finish with operations and rehabilitation, go to work and generally recover. ”

Margarita Photo: Anna Ivantsova for TD

Margarita constantly travels to St. Petersburg for rehabilitation: they knead, stretch, stimulate the current and train the left brush-assembled from the parts, she still does not obey the hostess and hurts all the time. And there is another operation ahead - you need to move the thumb.

The right hand hurts - phantom pains. Thanks to the programs of Malakhov (and there were several of them, including with the participation of Margarita), it was possible to collect six million rubles and order a bio -onic prosthesis on them. It captures the signals from the muscles of the hand and bends, fades by order of the brain. But he has only eight types of capture, while the human brush has more than a hundred. “In the end, I can do something right, something-left, but both are about equally imperfect,” Margarita laughs and carefully takes the coffee cup.

Mom-transformer

Most of all Margarita dreamed of going back to the wheel and learn how to tie her hair in the tail. The first one succeeded - it drives the car again, however, now only the machine is - it is inconvenient to constantly switch the speed lever. But the tail cannot yet be tied. “This is terrible, you have to walk with her hair loose all the time, and they interfere,” Margarita shakes his beautiful head and smiles broadly. - In general, I have curly hair, and I struggle with them all the time. Therefore, the first thing I just needed to learn to keep a curling iron. And an ergotherapist in St. Petersburg, thanks to her a lot, taught me to tie a curling iron with an elastic band to her hand. ”

Margarita cannot yet: he can’t wash the dishes (the dishwasher saves), cannot fasten the buttons to the children and tie the laces (the boys had to quickly become independent, and now they do all this themselves), cannot write with a pen (they can print on the keyboard). A year after the tragedy, she lived with her mother with her children, but in November last year she returned to her apartment. “It was very important for me to understand if I could live alone and cope with everything and what I can do.”

It turned out that she may have a lot. Now Margarita lives with his sons and a Bengal cat, he takes her children to the garden and takes away from there, travels for shopping. He does different household chores, cooks coffee in a Turk, washes the children with his left hand, unfastening it from the right prosthesis - it cannot be wetted.

Margarita Photo: Anna Ivantsova for TD

I recently took up diving and dreams of returning to work. Previously, she was the head of the advertising department in a local newspaper and wants to continue to do something similar-advertising or marketing. She has the first group of disability, unlimited, (“Yes, I don’t have to go to the commission every year and prove that my hands have not grown again,” Margarita laughs) - this imposes some restrictions on the search for work, but she does not despair. He really wants to work again and earn: a disability pension (18 thousand rubles) and benefits for children (1200 rubles each) - you will not really turn up for this money.

Now Dima 6, Danila 5. They adore mother's prosthesis and joke about her: "Mom-transformer." They do not know what happened - they were told that their mother had an accident. “In the future, I will tell them everything, but I don’t know yet when and how,” says Margarita. “I know for sure that this should come from me and that they should know the truth.” They don’t even ask about their father now - they know that mom and dad have parted, and have long been accustomed to his absence. ”

To consult how and when to tell her sons the truth, Margarita went to a child psychologist. But she did not go to the adult. She says she does not need. “I had neither depression, nor something like that,” she says cheerfully. - For these two years, I cried only three times: one of them - when I could not get on my birthday to Dima on December 14, three days after the tragedy. He was then performed 5. And what is the point of crying? You can’t return your hands anymore and what was, you can’t change. We must live the present and look into the future. ”

"I do not put a cross"

Recently, Margarita took a photo shoot in a black open outfit and with bright makeup. There are clearly visible prosthesis, a sewn arm, and scars from an ax on the hip. But this is still the same beautiful young girl. Photos caused a flurry of comments on social networks and attracted the attention of the media. Many were scandalous - in the spirit of "I would have chopped off my hands such a whore." I ask Margarita how such a reaction is.

“I am absolutely calm,” she replies. - I have long wanted to star from this photographer, even before the tragedy, and now recently gathered. I don’t care what these people write, not a single living person told me personally anything bad, on the contrary, everyone supports me. Their opinion is important to me, and the opinion of anonymous people in social networks is absolutely indifferent. And I know that not all men are like that. "

To Grachev, Margarita had no serious relationship (they got married at the age of 18), and after the tragedy, she had yet paused her personal life. “I do not put a cross on men and will not judge all of them by one specific. Just as I will never judge the nation by one of its representatives. I want a family and I want to give birth to a daughter, but all this later. "

Margarita Photo: Anna Ivantsova for TD

The story of Margarita brought her some fame, but she says that this did not greatly change her life. “Before that, I was quite active, everywhere and participated in everything, organized everything, now just a slightly different level. Perhaps all this activity helped me not fall into despondency, - Margarita shrugs and laughs. - Don't know. But I perceive my fame as a mission: many women write to me, share the most terrible stories and ask for advice, and I answer all if possible. I'm glad to help than I can. At the same time, I refuse many media outlets - I was called in the “Battle of psychics”, and in “Fashionable sentence”, and even in “Let's get married”. But this is too much. I am ready to talk about violence against women and about the rights of disabled people, but I do not want to participate in this. Yes, at first we starred in Malakhov, because my mother and I immediately wanted to attract maximum attention to this matter so that he could not be hung out, as is often the case, and so that he would not get off with a small term. ”

Now Margarita and her mother are preparing a book - about the tragedy, about life with disabilities, about the people who helped her. It should go out in the fall. The working name was “live without hands”, but Margarita says that it will change: “The media is overturning a lot, but I wanted to write the truth. The main thing, maybe my experience will help someone else. ”

Margarita already takes a wallet from the backpack with the usual movement of bionic fingers, and a card from the wallet.

Please arrange a regular donation in favor of the consortium of women's non -governmental associations so that he will continue to provide lawyers for the victims of domestic violence for free. While in our country there is no law on domestic violence, all that remains is to deal with its consequences. And lawyers help this a lot.

It is impossible to imagine what Margarita survived. But, thank God, there were and remain specialists who help her. Let's help them together.