On the Street: Kids Struggle to Survive in Russia
On the Street: Kids Struggle to Survive in Russia
By Charlene Israel
CWNews
CWNews.com –In Russia dysfunctional families and the lack of a social safety net has put thousands of children on the street.
In the city of Perm there are street kids everywhere. They’re on the streets because they are trying to escape physical abuse at home or an orphanage.
But even on the streets they have plenty of problems. Their parents were violent, and so are they. Their parents get drunk, the children sniff glue.
In winter the children live in sewers and basements, and in summer under bushes and on store roofs. Their families don’t care, and the government is too poor to help.
With no one to help them, these children have no hope for a future.
But in 1996, Christina and Jared Markoff, the daughter and son of a Christian missionary, moved to Perm and decided to help.
Christina and Jared call their operation Love’s Bridge. They do street outreach, such as giving away food and clothing to these children. They’ve opened two shelters-one for kids to live in fulltime, and a ‘day shelter’ for kids still on the streets.
At the day shelter the street kids can clean up, get a meal, and play games.
Jared remembered, "When I was little, 4 or 5 years old, my dad used to read us Bible stories as we went to sleep. He mostly read to us from the Gospels, the things Jesus did and His works. Those things stick with me and I remember them a lot when I do this work."
The children tell horrific stories of living on the streets. They’ve been beaten, raped, and kidnapped.
Many have resorted to prostitution to survive. They’ve experienced more evil and hatred than most people can imagine.
Slava lived on the streets for five years; he was kidnapped by some men for a week and forced to perform sex acts, which the men photographed and sold to the porn industry. Today, he can talk about it, but barely. Instead, he prefers to talk of his future. Now he lives at the fulltime shelter and goes to school. Considering what’s he’s been through, he appears to be doing well.
But Sasha isn’t doing as well. He’s addicted to sniffing glue, and he’s currently at a psychiatric hospital, where’s he’s undergoing treatment for his addiction.
Christina goes to visit him, and give him food. After two tries she’s finally allowed to see him, but only under the watchful eye of the head doctor.
Sasha tries to be tough, but breaks down in tears, and begs Christina to take him away from the hospital. Russians consider addiction a mental illness, and treatment includes incarceration and heavy doses of drugs.
Christina told us, "If they act up, sometimes they’re tied to their bed for up to three days at a time. When we talked to the nurse, she said that they’re given shots up to three times a day. And she said, if they ever act up or do what they’re not supposed to do, they’re given even stronger shots."
She added, "We’ve met children who’ve been here up to 11 times, so that shows the treatment does not work, like the doctors here would hope."
There are homeless children everywhere, but the problem has been especially severe in Russia over the past 15 years. Communism’s collapse led to chaos, but there are other explanations as well.
Christina explained, "We know that more alcohol is drunk per head in Russia than in any other country in the world. So the uniqueness [of the problem here] is that the amount of strong alcohol drunk does contribute to the break down of the family structure, more so than in other countries." She added, "So you have more families breaking up. And, I think it’s more in the culture [here] to hit your children when they’re errant."
Christina and Jared’s work is difficult and demands patience, love and courage. It’s not work for the squeamish. On a regular basis they deal with violence and suicide.
And they deal with the heartbreak of seeing kids end up buried in Perm’s enormous cemetery.
Today, some former street kids are looking for the grave of an old friend named Masha who was barely 12 when she was found dead in a sewer five years ago.
She may have been murdered. After hours of searching, her old friends find her grave.
Jared told us, "Masha was found dead by the police when she was 11 years old. She was in one of Perm’s sewers. They just took her out of the sewer and threw her to the side, and her body lay there all night. And when her mother heard about it, she said, ‘Thank God that girl is dead’."
Jared said further, "We’ve been able to save several hundred kids from the streets, but I would say about 8 of the children I know personally have died."
Jared and Christina are Christians. They do introduce the street kids to Jesus Christ, but they don’t proselytize. So, the kids don’t have to become Christians to receive help from Love’s Bridge.
Both Christina and Jared say their mission is love, service, and prayer, and they know that God is with them.
Jared said, "I’ve experienced many of ‘the little miracles’. He added, "The main miracle is that God has never let us down, we’ve never come to the point where we’ve had to turn a child away, close a center, or give up our work and leave."
Go to the Love’s Bridge Web site.
