Moscow, Russia - A Lipetsk court imposed a fine of 800 rubles on a member of the cult ‘Mother of God Center’.
Under the pretence of history classes the cultists indoctrinated the schoolchildren and led a whole class to hospital. However the investigating officials failed to prove that the cultists acted upon the children psychologically, the NTV said.
Meanwhile the schoolchildren’s parents are determined to launch a new suit. They want the cultists to be judged as criminals, not as administrative offenders (for the contempt of religious feelings of citizens), and demand compensation of moral damage.
The case was being heard during a week in the Levoberezhny Court of the Peace. The schoolchildren told they had been invited to visit an historical exhibition dedicated to GULAG but instead they were indoctrinated with the teaching of certain ‘Blessed John’.
‘Exhibition guides... disrespectfully spoke of the Orthodox religion. In particular, they said that Jesus Christ did not exist, that there was only one god to be worshipped, i.e. the Blessed John, that the Bible did not exist either, that the children should die but not obey their parents,’ Judge Elena Nefyodova said.
After visiting the exhibition the teenagers felt unwell. They said they had headache, high temperature and auditory hallucinations. It happened two month ago but the doctors are still anxious about the children’s psychical health. The teenagers suffer depression and sleep disturbance, they cannot forget what they were told about the new ‘true’ church and purification trough suicide.
‘I am still unwell. The parents say I became greatly aggressive and they cannot explain that. I have nightmares,’ the schoolgirl Kristina Lesnikova said.
Nine members of the so-called ‘Church of Mother of God Derzhavnaya’ (‘Mother of God Center’) were arrested by the law enforcers on 9 December, but only one cultist, who also claimed to be a manager of the international foundation ‘Solovetsky Memorial’, faced the trial.