Abai: The Village Where The Boy Was Systematically Raped. Ofeliya Zhakayeva — documentary photographer, videographer

In 2018, the whole of Kazakhstan was shocked by the story of a raped boy in Abay, a small village in the south of the republic. High school students raped a little boy in a school toilet. For a long time the situation was silenced - the school director, the head of the police and the doctor in the hospital were relatives of each other. This story became known only thanks to the dedication of the boy's grandmother and the courage of a local journalist. Later, she shook the whole country. After that, almost all the media wrote about this, the president spoke out, the ombudsman for the rights of the child was even removed. Three years later, I went there to see if life had changed in the village, where such terrible events had taken place. It turned out that everything remained practically the same: poverty, corruption and lawlessness. Some of those involved in the tragedy were not even punished.