Darya Ageny was 18 when she stabbed a stranger. It was June 2018, and the aspiring artist was returning to her hostel in the Russian resort town of Tuapse, where she'd arrived from Moscow for a summer job at a children's camp. A drunk man began trailing her and shouting lewd comments, and she quickened her pace. When he grabbed her by the arm, she cried out. "I began screaming," she said during an interview in Moscow this week. "I'm sure someone heard me, but no one came to help." The man pushed her against a wall and thrust his hand down her pants, and she said she reached into her handbag for a pocketknife she used to sharpen pencils and flailed it until he gave up and left. She gathered up her possessions, which were left strewn over the ground, and was escorted home by a group of teenagers she soon encountered. They examined the blade she had used and tossed it into a nearby stream. "That had a very negative impact on my case," Ageny said. The knife was later fished out by investigators looking into charges that leave the teenager facing up to 10 years in jail for inflicting grievous bodily harm.
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