Like all the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, Trabzon Armenians received an official order of deportation in June 1915. However, the Vali of Trabzon, Djemal Azmi, made an
“exemption” for Armenian women in the later stages of pregnancy and for children, when the parents so desired.” Approximately three thousand children (girls up to 15 years old and boys up to 10) and several dozen women remained in the city. Those Armenians were placed in special institutions, subjected to neglect, starvation, murder, and institutionalized rape. Sexual violence was a tool to foster submission and terror, humiliation, self-hate, and stigmatization. After four
years, all male children disappeared, and the girls who mainly survived did so in Turkish households, to which they were given as gifts or sold to serve as servants or sex slaves.

Anna Aleksanyan earned her Ph.D. at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (History Department), Clark University. Her work explores gendered aspects of the
Armenian genocide in the experiences of its victimized females (1914-1918).