Police have launched a criminal probe into the scandalous case of a Russian convent school that reportedly tortured its students, as human rights experts confirmed the reports to be true.

Last week, the media published statements by three underage pupils who escaped from the boarding school at the Svyato-Bogolyubovsky convent in central Russia. The girls complained that pupils at the convent were repeatedly beaten, deprived of sleep, starved and not allowed to leave.

Russia’s human right ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, confirmed the children’s story after his committee conducted an independent investigation. According to the ombudsman’s press service, pupils of the boarding school told investigators they were made to work in the field 18 hours a day and read the psalms out loud until 2 a.m., that they were locked up and given nothing but bread and water for up to 16 days.

At the same time, nuns at the monastery told a completely different story, saying they never punished the children cruelly: the only food the students were deprived of was sweets, psalms were read for 10 minutes only, and work in the field lasted several hours a day, and only if approved by the children’s parents.