Mysterious child torture trial begins (Czech Republic)

[Jeff]

This one sounds very strange...

Trial in mysterious child torture case begins in Czech Republic

Jun 17, 2008, 14:15 GMT

Prague - A Czech court Tuesday began untangling a bizarre child torture case that shocked the Czech Republic much the same as the Fritzl dungeon sex abuse case shook Austria.

The County Court in the city of Brno opened an expected six-week marathon of horrifying testimony by defendants, witnesses and experts.

It all came to light in early May 2007 when a new father in the Czech town of Kurim, 200 kilometres south-east of Prague, was tuning in his baby video monitor.

What he observed on his television screen left him dumbstruck. He saw a seven-year-old neighbour's son, Ondrej, lying naked and tied up in a dark closet in the house next door.

The police locked up Ondrej's 31-year-old mother Klara Mauerova and placed his older brother Jakub and stepsister Anicka in a children's home.

Anicka, a teddy-bear-clutching, shy 13-year-old, fled the care home. Before long Mauerova family acquaintances acknowledged that the girl is actually a 33-year-old woman, a music composer named Barbora Skrlova.

She emerged eight months later in Norway, where she had posed as another 13-year-old - this time as a Czech boy named Adam.

The court is now to make sense of the bewildering case that has horrified Czechs much as the Fritzl case in Austria where a father held his daughter in a dungeon and raped her shocked people there.

Six people, including the boy's mother and Skrlova, face between eight to 12 years in prison for allegedly torturing Ondrej and Jakub, now aged 8 and 10.

The defendants allegedly belonged to a sect led by Skrlova's father, earlier reports based on police sources said.

A state attorney told the court Tuesday that the boys were subjected to brutal physical and psychological torture for nearly a year.

The defendants were allegedly beating the brothers, locking them up in cages or even cutting them and burning them with cigarettes.

In the weeks preceding the trial both Mauerova and Skrlova began putting the blame on each other in media interviews.

The boys' mother said she was brainwashed into torturing her sons by a doctor who sent her instructions via cell phone text messages. The police later found that the phone number belonged to Mauerova's older sister Katerina, who had been Skrlova's roommate.

Mauerova also claimed that she had been duped into believing that Anicka was an abused orphan from Norway. She ended up caring for and adopting the bogus girl.

'Terrible things have happened. I realize it and can't understand how I could have allowed it,' CTK news agency cited a crying Mauerova as saying before the court.

Skrlova, who claims innocence, said that she had been also tortured by the Mauerova sisters. 'I think they wanted to ... sell me to evil men who do ugly things to children,' Mlada Fronta Dnes daily cited her as saying earlier this year.

Which story the court finds more plausible should be clear in late July at the very earliest.

link

[marmot]

'Terrible things have happened ... I think they wanted to ... sell me to evil men who do ugly things to children.'

link

[MWB]

What a crazy story! I had to read it twice to make all the connections. Insane!

Is this some crazy pedo ring all over again?

[stefano]

Crazy story indeed


Skrlova as Adam


Skrlova


As Anicka

On Friday, a woman under the name of Barbora Skrlova walked into the Czech embassy in Denmark. Accompanied by her father and lawyer, she asked for a Czech passport and presented samples of her hair and saliva for DNA testing. The 32-year old woman claimed to be a 13-year-old girl named Anicka, who police have been looking for since she disappeared from a children's home over a month ago.

In early May, an eight-year-old boy was found by chance bound and naked in a broom cupboard. He, his brother, and their 13-year-old adopted sister, Anicka, were taken to a children's home. Since then, their single mother Klara Mauerova and her sister Katerina, have been in custody on child abuse charges.

But this investigation has been overshadowed by another linked mysterious case. The 13-year old Anicka, who was legally adopted earlier this year, turned out to have no identity. There were no official records of her having ever existed. A few days later, the girl disappeared off the face of the earth. After someone recognised her as 32-year old Barbora Skrlova, DNA tests confirmed that the little girl was in fact an adult woman.

On Friday, Barbora Skrlova finally turned up in Denmark. In an exclusive interview for the Czech daily Lidove Noviny she explained that she first "invented" little Anicka at a scout camp. Since she found it difficult to get used to the life of an adult, she often escaped by being with children and sometimes pretending to be a child herself. Barbora Skrlova says she met Ondrej and Jakub Mauer - who later became her adopted brothers - at one of the scout camps and they became best friends. She already knew their aunt Katerina, as they had worked together in a children's home in the Moravian town of Brno. In the interview, she speaks about both her adult self and 13-year old Anicka in the third person and her behaviour shifts between that of a child and that of an adult.

"I never had a problem managing both lives - that of Anicka and that of Barunka. Now that Anicka no longer exists, it is much harder for me. I'll see what the people will do with me. I do not trust people and feel no need to make any contact with them - only with those who I know well."

When asked whom she misses in Brno, she mentions Katerina and Klara Mauerova, little Jakub but not little Ondra. Upon the question why, she says she finds it a shame that he did not tell the truth. "He said that he was locked up for a year and God knows what else. But I know that it simply wasn't like that," she tells the paper.

After she escaped from the children's home, Barbora Skrlova hid in the forest before she took a train to her relatives in Denmark.

"As far as the Klokanek children's home is concerned, the staff failed in many areas. When I got there, they said that I look like a nine-year-old but when it all happened, they started claiming that they suspected that I was much older. They also never admitted that they allowed me and Jakub to watch television. Jakub watched the news twice. When I heard in the news that Klara would be in prison for eight years, I decided to leave."

Psychiatrists have been sceptical. While some say Barbora Skrlova needs to undergo psychiatric therapy, others believe that her two identities are part of a master plan to influence the child abuse investigation. Barbora Skrlova does not intend to return to the Czech Republic. She says she fears the reaction of the media and the general public.

According to a number of press reports, little Ondrej's whole family was involved in something called the Grail Movement, variously described as a new religious movement or a cult. Police have even indicated that the Czech chapter of this international group was involved in both Anicka's disappearance and Ondrej's abuse. A member of the Grail Movement has confirmed there was contact with the family, but denies involvement in any wrongdoing.

[Searcher08]

A search for The Grail Movement brings up this

http://www.grailmessage.com/ABD_Page.htm

High weirdness

[Lurquacious]

Here’s an article with more details from a year ago: Chance discovery of abused child reveals bizarre Czech grail cult. It includes this on the International Grail Movement:

The Grail Movement follows the teachings of Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, a German also known as Abd-ru-shin, who from 1923-38 wrote the Grail Message, which depicts man as a being whose spirit can return to its source in heaven by performing good deeds on Earth. It claims to have at least 10,000 followers worldwide, including several hundred in Britain.

"We broke with the people involved in this 11 years ago, after they added to the Grail Message with their own imaginings and fantasies," said Artur Zaplukal, spokesman of the Grail Movement in the Czech Republic, where it has about 1,500 followers. "I sent them a letter telling them they were no longer part of the Grail Movement."

I did a little Googling on the Grail Movement a few weeks ago but couldn’t remember why. This article in the Prague Post reminded me: Sect Leader Accused of Slavery. This is the only source I’ve found so far that makes the link between the two cases, though they’re very close geographically and in time.

Roughly 20 years ago, [Jiri] Adam assumed the position of a sect spiritual leader, naming his wife as “queen.” The couple lived with five other women who gave all their pensions to Adam in exchange for spiritual meetings and alleged healing powers.

In 2000, Adam had his followers sign all their property over to him and forced the women into hard labor on at least two of his properties in and around Brno. Among other manual tasks, the women worked as bricklayers, building a luxurious home for Adam and paved roads in his vineyards.

Artur Zaplukal appears here too, as Artur Zatloukal. He’s keeping busy issuing disclaimers:

“The teachings of the Grail Movement concentrate on the effort to become a better independent human being,” said Artur Zatloukal, leader of the Grail Movement in the Czech Republic, who is quick to distance the group from Adam’s activities.

“We believe that each person is responsible for his or her own actions and thus any sectarian tendencies go against our teachings,” he said.

After Denmark, the “13-year-old girl” turned up as a bald 13-year-old boy in Norway: Woman Arrested in Norway for Impersonating Teen

Prague Radio had this to say in January:

Woman posing as child may have fallen victim to strange sect
[14-01-2008 15:03 UTC] By Daniela Lazarová

Who is Barbora Škrlová? The mysterious case of the Czech woman charged with identity fraud after posing as a 12-year old girl in the Czech Republic and a 13-year old boy in Norway has shocked and baffled the nation. Czech investigators are slowly piecing together the picture of her life and there are serious indications that she was a victim of a sect whose members made a profit from child-abuse films.

The strange case first surfaced when Barbora Škrlová was found living with a woman who tortured her two young boys. Škrlová, then living in the family under the guise of their 12-year-old sister Anika, was put in a children’s home where she duped social workers into believing they were dealing with a stricken, abused child. Anika fled the home and disappeared for many months surfacing unexpectedly in Norway last week where she had been living and attending school under the guise of a 13-year-old boy.

Is this strange figure - at the centre of a frightening child-abuse case - a criminal or a victim? Teachers and social workers who knew her in the Czech Republic and Norway say she appeared withdrawn, unbalanced and may herself have a history of abuse. Marie Vodiková head of the Czech Fund for Children in Need says it seems that she was most likely abused as a child and then turned into an obedient puppet by a sect which may have made a profit from making and selling child-abuse films.

There is at least one direct piece of evidence to support this theory – the torture of one of her alleged brothers was documented day and night by a professional camera system. Both boys showed signs of abuse – cigarette burns in their genital regions and numerous welts and bruises. The children said they had been tortured by several members and “friends” of the family.

The family lived in an expensive villa and Škrlová’s escape to Denmark and then Norway –as well as her life there – was not only well-planned but very expensive. So where did the money come from? And how many people are actually involved?

Various witnesses are now coming forward. Škrlová’s teacher in Norway says she decided to contact the Norwegian police after the alleged 13-year-old boy painted a picture showing seven children all bruised and bleeding and each with a number. Škrlová had labeled herself as the seventh. The media both in Prague and Oslo are now speculating on who the other children may be and how far the web of evil extends.

Škrlová’s biological father who is believed to be the head of this strange sect once led a religious group called The Ants which splintered off from the Holy Grail Movement centred in Europe. Czech experts on religious sects say that whatever is going on in this terrifying community, it is unchartered territory because there is no known sect in Europe involved in child identity fraud. What is particularly worrisome is that this strange case came to light by pure accident when a neighbour of one of the abused boys got a glimpse of him bound and naked in a closet – on his own baby monitoring device. Experts now say there could be many more abused children out there and unless the police can get to the bottom of this mystery they may wait for help in vain.

[marmot]

Absolutely Fascinating!

Life certainly is stranger than fiction.

Thanks, Lurq, for posting your research.

[marmot]

Abused boys 'had skin hacked off and eaten by relatives'

Published Date: 20 June 2008
By Allan Hall

A COURT has heard a horrifying tale of human cannibalism involving an eight-year-old boy who was tortured and partially skinned.
Klara Mauerova – a member of a sinister religious cult – wept as she admitted torturing her son Ondrej and his ten-year-old brother, Jakub. It is alleged pieces of their flesh were hacked off to be eaten by their relatives.

The two boys told how their mother and other relatives had stubbed out cigarettes on their bare skin, whipped them with belts and tried to drown them.

The court in the Czech Republic heard the family sexually abused the boys and made them cut themselves with knives. The boys said they were kept in cages or handcuffed to tables and made to stand for days in their own urine.

The abuse was discovered when a man in the city of Brno installed a TV monitor to keep watch on his newborn baby. It picked up a signal from an identical monitor next door showing one of the victims beaten, naked and chained in a cellar.

Mauerova is understood to have installed the monitor so she could watch her victims suffering from her kitchen.

Police were called, and the boy and his brother, as well as what appeared to be a 13-year-old girl, were freed.

At that time police did not realise that the "girl", who had been formally adopted, was in fact 34-year-old Barbora Skrlova – one of the children's torturers. She ran away to Norway but was found this year by Czech police, who brought her back to face trial.

Her "brother", Ondrej, had been locked and chained in the cellar by his mother for months. He had been gagged so he could not scream, and beaten as well. It later emerged Jakub had also been abused.

Mauerova has admitted abusing her children, but she said she had been manipulated by her sisters, Katerina and Skrlova.

All three of them had been part of a cult called the Grail Movement, which claims to have hundreds of followers in Britain as well as tens of thousands of others worldwide.

The court has heard claims the abuse of the boys was co- ordinated by a man known as the "Doctor", who sent mobile phone text messages to the Mauerova sisters telling them how to abuse the two boys.

The trial continues.

[compared2what?]

There's a Grail Movement of America and a Grail Foundation of America, as well as what appear to be a few other supported organizations -- hard to tell, because they have no $$, and thus don't file 990s.

I've looked at them before, though I can't remember in what context. I also don't remember whether I established for 100% certain that the Danielle Oboriah who, along with her husband Emmanuel Oboriah, runs the GM of A, is the same Danielle Oboriah who runs the Black Political Caucus in Charlotte, North Carolina. But it looks like it. I have to refresh my memory -- ie, do all the research again. As I recall, he worked for the Bank of America, it looked like. He (or someone of the same name) also led the 8 pm Sexuality and Sensuality Panel in Chelsea for The Newlife Expo here in NYC in 2007, I note with interest.

They appear to have ties to Utah, though they live in NC. But it's more than a little confusing, and took me a while to sort out, if I ever did in fact succeed in sorting it out, last time I looked. "Oboriah" is, I think, not an uncommon Nigerian last name.

I'll round up the names of the other board members tomorrow, if anyone cares. The Foundation has about half a million in assets, and the GM of A has more than a million. Both appear to be into real estate. And the Foundation has....you know, I don't know what they have. I only looked quickly at the 2007 return, but what they appear to have is a situation where they pay only about $12,000 in salaries and wages annually, which suggests not a very large or active organization. Except that all their program expenses (which are supposed to be the too-virtuous-to-tax part of the picture) are for things like "support of crossbearers for building & temple -- use of office space" and "creation and maintenance of website to spread grail message." And those add up to just over $100,000.

Which might mean anything. It kinda depends on what crossbearers do, and how many of them do it. If anyone feels like going over to Guidestar, which I am too tired to do right now, I think I remember noting that the Grail Movement of America -- which has a mailing address in Illinois, though the Oboriahs seem to live in Charleston, and the org. seems to operate in Utah -- listed a grant or a note payable or some other type of liability or expenditure to something like "crossbears." That might be interesting. From a federal tax perspective.

But I digress. My point about the salarie/wages and program expenses is....you know. There are some analogous organizations that help keep the bottom line healthy by relying on a volunteer or very poorly paid labor force composed of their own members, whom they also house and feed.

If anyone does feel like looking, the GM of A is the Oboriah one. And...the Grail Foundation of America's mailing address is in Binghamton, NY, but other than the above I didn't retain much info from the one return I looked at, and barely did more than glance at the board members' names.

Sorry this is so half-assed. Basically, I was skimming the dox, saw Danielle Oboriah's name, had a dim recollection of having looked at her before, and went off to see if Teh Google could help me refresh my memory wrt why. Which it didn't, But I only spent about ten minutes looking, max. So there's probably plenty of stuff to find.

Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing that they listed each other as affiliates. Which they are definitely supposed to do if they are affiliates. Especially if one is giving and/or loaning money to "crossbears" at the other.Though that is all potentially contingent on many annoying technicalities.

Anyway: guidestar.org. Knock yourselves out, if you feel like it.

[American Dream]

http://www.praguepost.com/articles/2008 ... emerge.php

Details of shocking abuse emerge
Mother of tortured boys admits guilt on stand

By Ondřej Bouda
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 25th, 2008 issue


Barbora Škrlová, 33, has been at the heart of the Brno sect's case as a child impersonator and now claims to have been a victim herself.

On Tuesday, June 17, the trial of six people accused of torturing two boys, Ondřej, age 8, and Jakub, 10, began in Brno. Among the accused in one of the most twisted and complicated cases of child abuse in Czech history are the boys’ mother, Klára Mauerová, and their aunt Kateřina Mauerová. Four of the women’s friends also allegedly participated in the abuse: Barbora Škrlová (who’s made a series of headlines for impersonating children), her brother Jan, Hana Bašová and Jan Turek.

As the prosecution read its opening statement depicting the details of the abuse, those filling the courtroom were shocked by the details of the case.
“This is one of the worst cases I have seen in my life,” said Prague child psychiatrist Jan Nejezchleba in a phone interview later. “The boys are likely to be scarred for the rest of their lives and be in constant need of psychiatric attention.”

The accused are members of a Brno religious sect headed by Barbora Škrlová’s father, Josef Škrla. The sect loosely followed the teachings of the Grail Movement, a group founded in Germany in the late 1940s. The Brno sect was apparently attempting to have Škrlová “reborn” with a new identity as a 13-year-old named Anička, who would be adopted by Klára Mauerová. However, when Mauerová’s two sons did not get along with their new sister, they had to be “re-educated,” and the abuse began.
During the trial, Mauerová claimed that she was simply following orders. “I was controlled through text messages and e-mails sent by an Azerbaijani doctor called Andrej Zejnalov. He gave me advice on how to bring up my boys properly,” she said according to a court transcript. However, Interpol failed to locate the mysterious doctor. Authorities believe that he is likely a persona of the sect leader Škrla, who is currently being sought by police and thought to be in hiding abroad.

Pattern of abuse

The boys are believed to have been tortured for a year. Starting in the summer 2006, Mauerová, who lived with her two sons in a Brno flat, allegedly beat Ondřej and Jakub on a daily basis using various implements including a metal belt buckle. She also locked them in closets in order to prevent them from seeking help from the outside world.

The worst episode of torture is believed to have taken place in August 2006, when the boys were told they were going to a “correctional facility.” At a borrowed house in Veverská Bítýška near Brno, Mauerová and her sister kept the boys in dog kennels.

“Mommy would come and burn me with cigarettes as I was kneeling in the cage,” said Ondřej in a statement read by the judge. “There was no toilet so I wet my pants. Then she punished me for that. I was given clean clothes only three days later.”

The boys were not allowed to talk, and any transgression earned them punishment in the form of cigarette burns, hours of beating or cutting with knives and forks.

“Sometimes the accused would force the boys to burn each other or themselves,” said state attorney Zuzana Zámoravcová in her opening statement.

In one particular incident, Jakub was forced to pretend he was dead in order to convince Ondřej that he’d given him poisoned water. A grave was dug for Jakub and he was made to lie in it for several hours.

It was at this house that Škrlová allegedly joined in tormenting the boys, complaining about their treatment of her in order to have them punished. She also allegedly tried to drown them.

According to the prosecution, at one point, Mauerová refused an order from Škrla to feed the boys pieces of their own flesh, so “help” was sent in the form of Turek, Jan Škrla and Bašová, who carried out the order themselves. “The scar, where the flesh was cut out, was covered in burns so that its true identity would be disguised,” said Zámoravcová.

After the summer when the boys returned to school, Jakub was regularly locked up in dark closets at Paprsek, a Brno after-school center, where his aunt worked as a teacher.

As for Ondřej, during the school year, he was tied up naked in a closet in a rented house in Kuřim, near Brno. He was often kept hungry as punishment, forced to use a bucket as a toilet and was abused on a daily basis. Mauerová and her sister kept a close eye on him with a baby monitoring camera.

In March 2007, the sect succeeded in obtaining the new identity for Škrlová after misleading a judge as well as child welfare officials about her true identity.

Two months later, the group’s activities were finally discovered. On May 7, a neighbor bought a baby monitor for his newborn that was similar to the model used by Mauerová. As he tried to set it up, he accidentally tuned into images of Ondřej tied up on the floor. The neighbor alerted police, who quickly located Ondřej and Jakub, and arrested Mauerová. The boys were handed over to Klokánek, a Brno crisis shelter for children. As the investigation progressed more accomplices were arrested.

After the arrests, authorities believed Škrlová was in fact the 13-year-old she pretended to be. She was placed in the crisis shelter along with the two boys but escaped a day later. A nationwide search was organized, her true identity as a 33-year-old woman was discovered, and she was eventually arrested in Norway in January, where she had been attending school as a 13-year-old boy named Adam.

Court proceedings

After the prosecution read its statement June 17, Mauerová broke down and admitted her guilt. “I did it in order to help everyone. I believed that if I followed the instructions, Anička could find a new family with us, Ondřej would not have to go to a mental institution and Jakub would grow up to be a proper man,” she said.

“She must have completely suppressed her motherly instincts,” Nejezchleba observed. “I cannot think under what circumstances anyone would willingly treat their own child like that.”

Mauerová’s accused accomplices, however, admit no guilt, and are instead trying to blame each other.

The boys’ aunt accused her sister of lying and says no torture ever took place.

Škrlová claims to be another victim. “I was abused and even raped several times,” she said in court, despite the fact that doctors have proven such claims to be impossible.

Jan Turek, who allegedly provided the dog kennels, said, “I thought they just wanted to keep dogs in them. I had no clue what they were doing.” But the boys identified Turek as one of their torturers.

If convicted, the accused face up to 12 years in prison. But the case is likely to take a long time to unravel. The judge wants to view video recordings of the abuse and has called more than 20 witnesses to testify.