73-year-old man abuses 11-year-old girl

Here is one more disgusting scandal. I want to throw up. This time the perpetrator of the sexual abuse was a 73-year-old man. The victim was an 11-year-old girl. 

The case is ongoing, but without any progress. Whereas the child has medical reports, the defendant is a guy who is one of the prominent people in a town near Istanbul. He is rich, influential; he has political contacts. He owns gas stations. He has money and, as you would guess, he has solutions. 

Many people accept him as he is; these kinds of “flaws” are tolerated because he is rich. I wonder how many other small girls he has molested. This time he abused S., the 11-year-old daughter of a woman from Moldova who was tending his garden. This abuse went on for a year, first between the trees and then in his office. Finally the girl told her mother and they went to the police. The case has been ongoing for four years. Several lawyers have given up defending them. 

Now, women’s associations are dealing with the case. I will also follow up. When sexual abuse cases are highlighted, made more visible, I believe more concrete results are achieved. But it has to be mentioned, written, shed light on over and over again. 

I interviewed the victim, S. She told me that she was born in Moldova. She moved to Turkey with her mother and her little brother when she was 8 years old. She is now 16. For the last two years, she has not been attending school because she has been traumatized. She told me she is constantly fainting, remembering those incidents and crying. She is on medication. She is a very unhappy girl now, whereas she told me she was not like this before the abuse. 

She said, “I was 11. He is very rich, everybody knows him. My mother was a gardener working for him. There was a small house in the garden, we lived there. He was 73, the age of my grandfather. When he came over, he would send my mother somewhere else and would touch me between the trees. I was disgusted, I was pushing his hands away, but he went on. I couldn’t say anything to anyone for my mother to keep her job.

He was threatening me anyway. Then later he took me in his office for me to serve tea. He had a small room at the back. When people left, he would take me to that room. I tried to resist but he is a huge man; I was not strong enough. We had nobody; we did not even have a house. I could not escape him. This went on for a year. He once took a saw and threatened to cut my little brother’s throat. I finally told my mother. She was devastated. We decided not to keep quiet so that he does not do the same to others. Then we went to the police.”

Now she is 16 and nothing has happened. Nobody was supporting them at the beginning. They would hire a lawyer, but after the guy talked to them, the lawyers all disappeared. Now, they are working with Selin Nakipoğlu and women’s associations are supporting them. The mother has remarried and her husband is also supporting. S. told me she was ashamed that she was abused by a man the age of her grandfather but then she started thinking, “He should be ashamed. What he did was disgusting.” 

This man is a pervert and he has to pay for what he has done, she is thinking. He should learn that he should not have done this and be punished, so that other perverts should draw a lesson and think, “I would end up like him.” This is so because little girls are desperate. When such an incident occurs, the worlds of little girls are shattered. The same thing happened to S. She is begging, “Please don’t touch little girls; leave them alone.”