01.06.2017

Our dear friend and a great woman Maria Mokhova, former Director of The Sisters Centre (the centre for psychological and legal support for rape victims)” has died today after an extended illness.

Russian philanthropist Mitya Aleshkovsky wrote, “All her life Maria helped women and children who survived violence, throughout her whole life she had been fighting for their right to protection and justice. In such cases, people usually write that death of their dear one is an irreplaceable loss, but this is both true and not true at the same time. Thanks to Maria, hundreds of activists who will continue her work have appeared in Russia. But without her, this world will never be the same again. In our last conversation she wanted and hoped to live so much. And she cried, perfectly aware of her doom. And two days before Maria, her husband died. It is difficult to imagine how hard it is for their children now…”

The Sisters Centre was founded in 1994. Mokhova became head of the centre in 1995. The organisation was one of the first of this kind in the territory of the former USSR. Since 2015, after the adoption of the “foreign agents law” in Russia, the centre has been existing on private donations only.

Maria was saving people, was saving this unique centre, which after the adoption of the law “on foreign agents” was left without funding, again and again passing these circles of hell of bureaucratic indifference. The centre survived despite all the bureaucratic hindrances… Thanks to Maria. Thanks to her will and patience. And the centre is developing – it goes on helping people and leading public awareness campaigns. Because of such people as Maria, and thanks to Maria’s daily work, not even work, but pain, that our society has finally begun raising the issue of violence and discussing how to resist it…

At the end of last year, Maria Mokhova was diagnosed with cancer. Fundraising was organised.