A Russian woman who was mauled by a bear while she was fighting it to save her son’s life has revealed she fears she will never be loved again because the attack has left her too ‘ugly’.
Marina Fokina, 36, used an axe to fight off the bear that rampaged through a tent she shared with one of her sons during a family camping holiday in a Siberian national park two years ago.
But while she saved her son, the bear caused severe damage to her face, and has left her scarred for life.
Mauled: Marina Fokina, 36, pictured before and after the attack, was left severely disfigured after she fought off a bear that attacked her and her son during a camping trip
The widowed mother-of-two says she screamed at the bear: ‘Eat me but don’t touch my child.’
She was attacked on a camping trip with one of her sons, her sister and her nephew in Yergaki National Park, in the Western Sayan Mountains of Siberia.
She recalled: ‘I woke up suddenly because of some noise and saw the tent collapsing on me. I only had time to think “it must be a tree falling”.
‘Then I understood there was no wind. It wasn’t a tree but a beast. It bit me. I felt how my bones broke, I heard them crack.’
She lost consciousness but came too to hear her son Denis, then six, screaming, and so she shouted at the bear: ‘Come on, eat me! But don’t touch my baby!’
The bear lunged at her again, sinking its teeth into her back.
‘It was dark, I lost consciousness again. Next I knew, I woke up again and heard my son’s voice: “It hurts!”.
Marina said: ‘I was in shock, and thought – wrongly – the bear had bitten off my son’s feet.
Before the attack: Marina, left and her sister, right pose with their sons in the national park just hours before the bear attack
Injured: She says she has been left ‘looking like a drunkard’ and that her boyfriend dumped her when she came home from hospital because she was ‘too ugly’
Shocking: Marina’s back after the attack, during which she also suffered an open fracture on her collarbone, and a broken leg
‘It was dark, my ripped face was all in blood. And only one thought was in me – how he would live now, my son?
‘I felt such a hatred to this bear, that I decided to kill it. I remembered the night there was an axe stuck in a log. Somehow I crawled out of the tent, grabbed it with my broken arm.
‘And then the bear lunged at me for the last time, grabbing my leg and the axe fell.
The two women then grabbed their children and ran. As she fled in an adrenaline rush, her son in her hands, she was unaware of the extreme severity of her facial and leg wounds.
Doctors were ‘shocked’ at the damage done, as her face was ripped to shreds. Her lower jaw was hanging loose, with nerve damage, her upper jaw seriously deformed.
There was an open fracture of her collarbone, and her leg broken by the bite.
Her son escaped without serious injury, as did her sister and her child.
Memories: Marina is pictured years before the attacks holding one of her children
A month the attack, Marina she got home to Sayanogorsk, Republic of Khakassia, she was ditched by her boyfriend because of her looks, and now claims she is too ‘ugly’ for a man to look at her.
‘My life fell to pieces when I got back from the hospital,’ said Marina.
‘I was alive, which of course was the only thing that mattered to me then – but I looked like a drunkard with a lopsided face and weird looking lips.
‘My husband had died a year before the accident.
‘Right before the bear attack I met a man who won my heart by being so caring for me, and loving me.
‘Now he couldn’t stand the sight of my face and left without saying a word a month after I got back from hospital.
‘I don’t blame him, or the doctors.
‘The medics did all they could, and as for him – look at me, who would want to be next to such an ugly person?’
Marina made an emotional video appeal to win the free plastic surgery in a Russian TV show, but lost the vote.
‘This was my only chance to do something with my face,’ she told The Siberian Times, explaining her earnings running a children’s play facility are insufficient to pay for the plastic surgery she craves.
Marina was attacked on a camping trip with one of her sons, her sister and her nephew in Yergaki National Park, in the Western Sayan Mountains of Siberia
‘All the money I earn I use to raise my two children. My face has 29 plates sewn into it, it is more or less symmetrical and it doesn’t ache too badly.
‘It is a pity my upper jaw was so badly broken that all my teeth fell out.
‘But it’s okay, I can still live with prosthetic teeth, work, and sometimes even enjoy life.
‘It just hurts me that my face is so ugly that no man likes to look at it.’
She said sadly: ‘With my appearance I am rejected for all other jobs.
‘What I earn is just about enough to make sure my children are well fed and dressed.
‘Of course, sometimes it hits me badly that I will never be beautiful again.
‘I am a woman, I want to have men smiling at me. I want to have a family – but there will never be a man wanting to even look at me.
‘I feel shy and uneasy being outdoors, so I am not going anywhere much.
‘My only dream now is that one day I get back home and my children run to me and say: ‘You are so beautiful, Mum.’