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From the Research Diaries: Edvard Gogilashvili
Research work is often accompanied by difficult moments and doubts. Perhaps one of the more difficult moments for me has been overcoming the emotions that emerged during the transcription and translation of the interviews of the victims. Some stories from the lives of the victims of intra-family sexual abuse seemed to me unfathomable. Yet I believe in the stories of the victims despite how shocking their stories seem; it is important to find trust. The traumatic and painful experiences of the victims brought out negative emotions in me: anger, despair, protest, etc. It certainly took time to process the information and experiences of people in need.
After a few months I met with more victims to deepen some aspects of the interviews that were already completed or to fill out the tests that were analyzed in the quantitative part. These meetings made me reflect on the hardships and difficulties of life that the victims face every day: some of them can not contain the pain and in moments of tension they self-harm with a knife, another for their choice of lifestyle is subjected to aggression from society, another cannot escape from the pattern of sexual exploitation. There are many people conditioned by culture who do not want to throw away the cover of secrecy and are forced to bear the pain in their heart silently and to continue living sacrificing themselves. The awareness of society regarding this phenomenon and other socio-cultural factors greatly influence the victims who have to go on with their lives after the tragic event of sexual abuse.
In order to have a general view of the social situation in Georgia and to draw attention to some serious dates concerning sexual exploitation of people, I thought it appropriate to share with the readers the following article, which describes the phenomenon of sex trafficking as a problem now international.
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