MOSCOW, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Reports that teenagers were brutalized at a convent in the Vladimir region will be fully investigated, the Russian Orthodox Church promised Thursday.
The Prosecutor General's Office and Children's Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov have already announced investigations, RIA Novosti reported.
Hegumen Savva, a church spokesman, said a representative has been dispatched to the convent and the church is examining testimony from girls who described teenagers who were beaten with belts and denied food and sleep. The girls also said nuns imposed grotesque punishments like forcing children to eat salt or to bow hundreds of times.
The Svyato-Bogolyubsky Monastery in the Vladimir region was investigated last year with inconclusive results.
One teenager, identified only by her first name, Ksenia, told Izvestia that she and two other teens changed their stories last year because of "cowardice." She said they are now once again telling the truth.
"We realized that we let down many other children by lying to the patriarch's commission last year," she said.
The city of Vladimir, capital of the region with the same name, is about 125 miles east of Moscow.
