When authorities responded, they took Masha away to live in an orphanage. When she was 4, Masha says, her mother stabbed her in the back of her neck during a drinking binge. She doesn't remember her father, and says her mother was an alcoholic. Masha was born in a small, industrial city in southern Russia. 'He took away five years of my life that I could never get back.'
'It's like he stole my childhood,' the young girl, Masha, said.
