A look behind the scenes of my Atlantic story on rape in Ukraine

How I went back and forth with my editor.

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

I have a story out today in The Atlantic. I thought I’d give you a peek behind the scenes of how the lede that was published evolved in the editing process. (Lede = opening to a piece of journalism. Sometimes “lead.”) I did two different drafts before we started editing toward the final piece. This was how I began the second draft — the one we worked from.

The area around the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv is strewn with leafless trees, charred tanks and dead bodies. In Malaya Rohan, a village about 15 miles east of Kharkiv, Russians have bombed and terrorized residents since March. In their wake, they’ve left shattered roof beams, discarded gas masks and twists of metal that once were part of farming equipment. But beyond the obvious damage, there is a kind of devastation that took place in that village that no one can see.

On March 13, a Russian soldier repeatedly raped a 31-year-old woman at gunpoint, beating and slapping her all the while. He also sliced her face with a knife and hit her on the head with a book. Human Rights Watch documented the details:

The soldier made the woman perform oral sex, among other acts of sexualized violence, after the man, who later revealed that he’s just 20 years old, had forced his way into a school where the woman and a few dozen other women and girls were hiding, HRW reports.

“The whole time, he held the gun near my temple or put it into my face,” she said. The soldier shot twice at the ceiling, and, she told HRW, “He said it was to give me more ‘motivation.’” 

When the seemingly endless attack was finally over, the soldier told the woman his name, his age and declared himself Russian. Perversely, he also brazenly said that she “reminded him of a girl he went to school with.”

Before leaving, he took a piece of her hair, which he’d cut with a knife, as a souvenir.