Speaking to Open Democracy, Egor Panin recalled being outed by his mother at the age of 17 when she read his conversations on the social media platform VKontakte. Soon after this the beatings began, and Panin was prescribed various tablets and injections to make him “a normal person”. He ran away from home in 2015 but was coaxed out of hiding by an officer of Russia’s Investigative Committee posing as a gay man online. Egor was intercepted at a fast-food restaurant, where uniformed officers restrained him and threw him into the back of a black 4×4. When he was released back into his family’s custody he overheard his mother arranging to have him treated in hospital. He ran away twice more but was captured each time, and finally his mother got her wish: Panin was transferred to a psychiatric facility. “There were medics and doctors, and mum’s going on about ‘homosexual tendencies’ and ‘imaginary friends’,” he said. “At first I thought, ‘What the hell?’ And then I realised that’s it, I’m not getting out of here.”