The lawyer for the actors of the Young Theater filed a complaint with the court against the inaction of the police, who do not register statements from victims accusing the theaterʼs artistic director Andriy Bilous of harassment.
Theater actress Victoria Romashko told Babel about this.
The complaint was filed with the Shevchenkivsky District Court. According to Romashko, the actresses filed three reports of Bilous committing a criminal offense, the first two on January 30. But the police have not yet registered them.
Babel sent a request to the Kyiv Main Police Department, but at the time of publication of the news had not yet received a response.
Whatʼs happening at Karpenko-Kary University and the Young Theater
In late January, a student at Karpenko-Kary University Sofia Sapozhnik accused her teacher Andriy Bilous of harassment. She first posted an anonymous video with the accusations on January 21, and a few days later revealed her identity.
According to her, Bilous sent her intimate photos of other female students and asked her to send similar ones, "motivating it by saying that everyone had already done it."
Later, other students of the director began to share similar stories. Actor and university graduate Valeriy Filipenko, who was one of the first to start distributing the video with the story of Sapozhnik, noted that this had long been known among the "theater bubble", but everyone was silent. He called for the distribution of an anonymous form that could be filled out by all those affected by Bilousʼs actions.
Karpenko-Kary University informed on January 23 that it had filed a complaint with the police, asking law enforcement officers to “verify the disseminated information and provide it with a legal assessment”. On January 27, it became known that Bilous had been suspended from work at the university.
Accusations against other cultural figures
Against the backdrop of the story with Bilous, accusations began to be made against other theater figures. For example, actor and teacher at Karpenko-Kary University Yuriy Vysotsky was accused of unethical behavior and violence against students.
Oleksandr Balaban, a director and lecturer at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts (KNUKiM), was also accused of harassment and bullying; he has already been suspended from work.
And on February 3, a graduate of KNUKiM told how rector Mykhailo Poplavsky suggested that she play billiards and, if she lost, pay either with a kiss or money.
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