Ola Karavchenko’s small apartment is filled with copies of her new fairy tale book for children, which she is currently packing and shipping. However, beneath the surface of these stories lies clues to the difficulties she has faced over the past decade. Ola reveals that she faced persecution and found solace in drawing pictures and writing while staying at home to avoid unpleasant experiences outside.
Currently, she is awaiting the verdict of Roman Zdorov’s retrial, during which numerous accusations were made against her. Ola admits to feeling tense, but is trying to remain calm while focusing on her work. She also knows that her testimony at the trial will be written about in its summary.
Ola’s diary holds a significant date for her – the start of the defamation trial she filed against Zdorov’s defense attorney Mirom Halevi and the producers of “Shadow of the Shadow” for things they said about her. She is also suing her ex-partner Adir Habani, who accused her of murder in the series. Ola is determined to fight for justice and refuses to let the allegations against her go unanswered.
In the upcoming trial, Ola will have to address accusations against her one by one. For example, Adir interpreted a post she made after attacking someone as code for Tair Rada’s murder. Ola is frustrated by the repetitive questions from those who don’t understand or have knowledge about mental illness and past trauma. She is saving all of that for the libel trial.
Ola is also awaiting a decision in the appeal she filed to have Adir Habani stand trial for his crimes against her. She expresses her determination to face trial and to fight against Adir, who she says is a manipulator and has been ruining her life for two decades.
Overall, Ola is fighting for her own justice and the truth while trying to cope with the trauma and challenges she has faced.
These days, the small apartment where she lives is full of copies of the new book she wrote, which she is packing and shipping. These are fairy tales for children. But if you read carefully and peel back their layers, you find clues to what she has been going through in the last ten years.
“The persecution was still there and right before I left the country, I ran away more, I left the house less because of the street which was very unpleasant for me to say the least. I sat at home, drew pictures and also started writing,” Ola Karavchenko said in an interview with the evening news at Khan 11.
Although she is trying to focus on her life, right now, they are in a sense on hold. She is also counting down to Thursday, to the verdict in Roman Zdorov’s retrial, a trial during which quite a few accusations were made against her.
“There is obviously a lot of tension,” she says. “I’m trying to relax, trying to do my job, and I’m waiting like everyone else. I know things will also be written there about all the allegations that Yorom Halevi brought there and I’m waiting to see what will happen. I gave evidence for four days. I’m an unimportant witness in this case, and they’ll still write something about me A summary and this is very significant. Although the prosecutor’s office determined there that I am not guilty. We’ll see what happens.”
And the testimony she gave, it turns out, still haunts her. “The experience was shocking. Yarom Halevi is an animal, he is bad. This man shouts, humiliates, curses, he is terrible. They touch very, very sensitive places in my soul. It’s not that I am guilty of anything, but still the way in which the defense attorney interrogates a witness, especially in the case This one, especially specifically this defense attorney. It’s not sitting over a cup of coffee and talking about it, it’s repeated attacks.”
“It was crazy, it was unusual, he literally put me on trial for murder inside someone else’s murder trial,” she continues. “It was terrible, in my personal sense it was traumatic. I’m six months later, I still had all kinds of nightmares and in my memory I hear his vivid voice right here in my ear, so nauseating. His dream is that I will collapse on the witness stand. He probably didn’t expect me to walk out of there with my head held high and say, ‘This is it, we’re done.'”
In her diary there is a date, more significant, even than Zadorov’s verdict. Immediately after Passover, the hearings will begin in the defamation trial, in which she is suing Zadorov’s defense attorney, Mirom Halevi, and the producers of “Shadow of the Shadow” for things they said after the broadcast of the series that presented the suspicions against her for millions. First and foremost from her ex-partner Adir Habani.
“If I’m mentally challenged, that doesn’t mean you can rape me or destroy me or try to treat me like a murderer,” she said. “I have respect for myself, and I know that I am right, and I know that the truth is with me, and I know that it is forbidden, it is forbidden to do such a thing to a human being. Adir took something with an infrastructure, with all my imaginary paintings, the false thoughts I had, my mental illness.”
“He used it and now I have to live with it and people use it to humiliate me, use it as accusations,” she continues. “The fact that he destroyed me, that he said I murdered Tair Zachrona for Barakah is one of the cruelest things he could do to me.”
She also knows that all those she accuses will try to prove in every possible way that they were telling the truth, that is, that she is the murderer of Tair Rada. “The path to justice is a path of fire. I don’t have peace yet and I won’t get peace if I run away. When I decided on this lawsuit it was very difficult for me, because these are very strong people and these are people who have no mercy. I would not forgive myself if I ran away and I didn’t have Peace if I knew that I had the opportunity to pay them back, to make them answer to me. If I hadn’t filed the lawsuit, I think I would never have been able to live in peace with myself.”
“I don’t want to see Adir, on the contrary because I’m mentally ill because I have hallucinations I see him in many places. I want to fight him. I want him to take responsibility. His tongue is slippery and he plays with everyone and I’m sure he enjoys it very much. I need To fight him because he still continues to hurt me. Both from the inside and from the environment, that they simply became his messengers and they don’t even understand it.”
During the hearings of the lawsuit, she will be forced to deal with the allegations against her one by one. It will surely come up there, the possibility that the more it is examined the more probable it becomes, that the pieces of her hair found at the scene belong to Adir Habani, apparently in accordance with his testimony a decade ago, that Ola wore his clothes at the time of the murder of Tair Rada. “You can’t link it to me. Enough, you can’t link it to me,” she replies. “I know I wasn’t there and what they found there will be dealt with within the legal system.”
Another example of a common allegation against Ola, is the same alert that Adir Havani sent to the police following a post published by Ola, two days after she attacked a man she was in contact with at the time, Shimon Shukron. Adir interpreted the words “Aven Topaz” as code for Tair Rada, and the words “I want to play” as an intention to hurt, as in his opinion, Tair was murdered.
“I’m really tired of being involved in this,” she says. “I’m tired of all kinds of repetitive questions from people who don’t understand anything. I save that for a libel trial. I don’t talk about it, although I would sometimes like to answer people and say ‘enough, there is an answer to this thing, I just don’t say it'” .
“I’m already in a different place today and as far as I’m concerned not to humble myself and know what I want and what I don’t agree with, it’s more important than some other person… I just can’t explain and I also don’t want to explain to thousands of people who have no idea about mental illness, Not in a violent relationship. They don’t know the details enough, I just don’t intend to do it. It’s not going to happen, that’s what the libel trial is for, and there I’ll talk about everything.”
Zadorov – the decision Listen to “Another Day”
One more wait is for a decision that is getting delayed, in the appeal she filed that Adir Habani is not standing trial for crimes he committed against her. Although in some of them, he himself fully admitted in interviews with the media. “I have to face trial. What choice do I have? I live with the things he did to me to this day. The traumas caused by the things he did to me, I live with them to this day with the consequences of it. It hasn’t gone away, my way of dealing with these traumas is Fight against him, don’t give up. And I can’t give in.”
“This man is a manipulator from the age of zero,” she continues. “He spins everyone around his little finger, I know him. He really thinks he is the smartest person in the world. He used to call himself ‘Master of Puppets’ who has strings and controls people. For 20 years this person has been raving about my life and destroying Me. I’m 40 years old today, that’s half of my life. Half of my life I’m dying to meet him in court. I’m dying to confront him, I want him to be in an interrogation room. I want him to answer difficult questions that he won’t be able to avoid.”
And there are other wars that, due to the need to be focused, she saves for another time. For example, against one of the activists for Zadorov’s release, who worked in one of the mental health hospitals where Ola was hospitalized, and according to an inspection by the Ministry of Health, removed medical documents related to her from the place and used them. For example, against quite a few writers on the net who turn over and over again her life and present her every day as a murderer.
“I can tell you, before the book came out, they already took the name of the book, distorted it, added some letters and found another proof. I’m not afraid it will happen for sure. I’m afraid people will buy it to despise it or not want to buy it for children theirs because it’s about me. I have no way to fight it, you understand? It doesn’t help, they’ll just bring something new or won’t listen or won’t believe.”
“Suddenly the world falls on you, your whole life changes in one day for the worse, very much for the worse. But it’s crazy. Maybe a normal person would know what to do with this and go straight to a lawyer, find him representation. But I’m not normal, I got into the situation straight away Psychotic. My mental illness produces hallucinations and paranoia. Then all of a sudden it becomes real. I think I’m God’s joke. I asked my psychiatrist, ‘Is what they say about me on TV real?’. So she told me that this time it’s not me who’s crazy.”