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14 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЧЕРВЕНЬ 2015 The Story of Pastor Crocodile Gennadiy and Ukraine’s Abandoned, Victimized Children by JoAnn Myer Valenti, Ph.D. Crocodile Gennadiy was not a film title that would normally draw my attention, but the synopsis in the Tribeca Film Festival listing for the April event in lower Manhattan read “from Ukraine.” Director and writer Steve Hoover had been on a commercial filming assignment when he encountered Gennadiy Mokhnenko—a compli- cated, controversial figure, more akin to a muscle man than a pastor. Mokhnenko has made a name for himself in the industrial, seaside city of Mari- upol by forcibly abducting homeless, drug- addicted kids from the streets during night raids. Adapting his name to a popular children’s cartoon character, “Crocodile Gennadiy” regularly appears at public meetings and on local television and ex- tends his ministry to a nearby women’s prison. In an episode shown from the popular cartoon, an old lady—the villain in the series—proclaims, “Good deeds just buy fame.” Gennadiy’s diocese has indeed criticized him for “craving fame and news attention.” Although accused of illegally grabbing kids off the streets, from under bridges, in sewers, and anywhere else they hole up in drug-addled condition, Gennadiy is hailed by many as a rescuer, a redeemer, and a rehab hero. News reports call Gennadiy a “pilgrim”: a public servant filling in until a legal system can be de- vised to combat the drug problem. “When there is no action from the top, we act from the bottom,” Gennadiy says. “I am sick of kids burying kids while people profit from drugs,” he lamented. With the ongoing invasion of pro-Russian troops, the war-torn country has little in the way of social services or other resources—let alone needed laws in place—to help abandoned children living in the streets and shooting up with pre- scription drugs acquired from pharmacists in- volved in illegal sales. Money for drugs comes from forced sex and child prostitution. The doc- umentary includes a scene of Gennadiy confront- ing a woman at her pharmacy accused by the res- cued kids of being their supplier. She ends up in the women’s prison where film footage includes an interview with her. She buries her head in shame. Gennadiy has kept an archive of video documenting his work; that footage contributes much to the impact of the film. During the question and answer period following the film’s premiere, young filmmaker Hoover is dwarfed by the much larger Gennadiy, who is apologetically quiet as he responds to au- dience questions about how to help his efforts in this dire situation. He reports that local ambu- lances are empty vans with no equipment: there is nothing to assist a rescued child as he or she is rushed to a hospital. “It’s not so easy to watch it [the film], the story of my life, my pain, my joy,” he told the theater audience. The film shows how we are only one step from real tragedy, he said and then quietly wept. In his director’s statement for the press, Hoover writes, “content is more important than cinematics.” He acknowledges the challenges of filming in Ukraine—no one in his crew spoke Rus- sian, for example; Gennadiy speaks throughout the film in broken but understandable English. (I cringed that no one speaks Ukrainian.) The film crew was at one point attacked by a pro-Russian mob. Gennadiy praised the filmmaker for risking his life to tell this story. “This may not be a good place to live, but it’s my country, my city,” Gen- nadiy, who served in the Soviet military for two years, said. “We need support to stop this war,” he told the audience. If the war moves closer, he says, he will send the women and children away and “maybe my sons go to the army.” Evil is not God’s problem, it’s my problem, he says. “We live inside war now.” As Ukraine attempts to move towards the European Union, hopes of continued post-Soviet revitalization may be possible. In the meantime, Gennadiy's Pilgrim Republic rehabilitation center stands as a more enigmatic institution, a home where the extended family—he and his wife have now adopted over 30 of the abandoned children— continues to rehabilitate once lost children, and at the same time prepares them to fight in a war moving closer and closer to the outskirts of their city. “I hope [the film] gives people a reason to research the conflict in Ukraine,” Hoover said. As he edited the film, Mariupol was rumored to be the next target for Putin’s forces. The film has been picked up for North American distribution— watch for it.
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