We Believe You

Based on the WHO data (2016), one out of every five girls and one of every thir­teen boys have been sex­u­al­ly abused as chil­dren. There­fore, child­hood sex­u­al­ized vio­lence con­cerns every­one — those who have chil­dren, friends, loved ones, and family.

Let’s change the sit­u­a­tion togeth­er! Let’s learn how to lis­ten, believe, and sup­port survivors!

We Believe You

No mat­ter how inde­pen­dent we see our chil­dren, we, adults, are respon­si­ble for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren and teenagers in cas­es of sex­u­al­ized abuse, harass­ment, or vio­lence.

We need to teach chil­dren how to react and behave prop­er­ly in these situations.

We are the platform for education, psychological support and media initiatives, focused on the minimalization of children and teenager sexual harassments and abuse. To achieve this we do the following:

Teach par­ents how to lis­ten and pro­tect children

Gath­er experts, and speak about the problem

Sup­port peo­ple who suf­fered sex­u­al harass­ments or abuse 

What is the problem?

Chil­dren are most exposed vic­tims; it is easy to intim­i­date, deceive and manip­u­late them. Con­trary to the wide­spread notion that pedophiles are those “scary strangers from the streets”, up to 80–90% of sex­u­al abus­es against chil­dren and teenagers is per­pe­trat­ed by fam­i­ly mem­bers and oth­er peo­ple in their clos­est cir­cle. In the absolute major­i­ty of cas­es, sex­u­al abuse is per­pet­u­at­ed by men; in the rest of the cas­es it is women who act as abusers. Who does that? Peo­ple around you, who act and look like as any­one else, step-fathers, broth­ers, uncles, fathers, fam­i­ly friends, chil­dren from the neigh­bor­hood or from the school, train­ers, teach­ers, baby-sitters. 

It is always us, adults, who car­ry the respon­si­bil­i­ty for sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren and teenagers. We have to be atten­tive and care­ful. We can and we must teach chil­dren how to react to these sit­u­a­tions. This is the rea­son why all of us have to know what sex­u­al abuse is and how to pre­vent it. 

Chil­dren can­not be blamed for the abus­es they suf­fer through. We will nev­er sup­port the inap­pro­pri­ate dis­course that is often applied to chil­dren and teenagers and that tells them they were the ones “to pro­voke the abuser”. It is only the abusers who should be blamed; it is them who cross bound­aries, con­fuse and exploit oth­ers.  Accord­ing to the sta­tis­tics from 2016 pro­vid­ed by WHO, every 5th girl and every 13th boy has been a vic­tim of sex­u­al abuse.

It means that this prob­lem con­cerns every­body who has chil­dren, loved ones, friends. Let’s change the sit­u­a­tion togeth­er. Let’s teach, lis­ten, trust and support.

How to help?

The sur­vivors of the abuse often feel shame and fear, they often expe­ri­ence doubts. They feel (and right­ly so) that soci­ety and their own fam­i­ly might not be ready to talk about sex­u­al abuse. They feel the pres­sure from peo­ple around them that man­i­fests itself in phras­es like “Noth­ing hap­pened”, “This is not abuse”, “Let’s for­get about it. It hap­pened a long time ago and does not mat­ter any­more”, “You have sur­vived and this what’s impor­tant. Why ruin a person’s life”. Even par­ents are often not ready to hear about abuse because they too are afraid and do not know what to do. Con­se­quent­ly, they avoid deal­ing with the issue. We do not live in a cul­ture that would encour­age us to seek help from a spe­cial­ist in this cas­es. More­over, there are not enough com­pe­tent spe­cial­ists avail­able. Today, this is how things are in the place we live in.

It’s high time we changed it! Let’s admit that there is a prob­lem of sex­u­al abuse against chil­dren and teenagers in Rus­sia. Let’s lis­ten to those who had to go through it and let’s sup­port them. Let’s start talk­ing about per­son­al bound­aries, bod­ies, healthy rela­tion­ships, sex­u­al abuse. Let’s come up with pos­si­ble solu­tions togeth­er! How do we pro­vide edu­ca­tion for par­ents, chil­dren, teach­ers and how do we reduce the abus­es the most help­less have to suffer?

We con­stant­ly receive let­ters from those who went through sex­u­al abuse as chil­dren. Par­ents, who want to know what to do, also con­tact us. Each new request means work for our psy­chol­o­gists. Each new edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al means work for experts. The amount of work we do cor­re­lates direct­ly with the sup­port our organ­i­sa­tion gets.

АНО «Тебе поверят»


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