Children tortured 'in the name of God'

A trial of a mother who’s alleged to have tortured her children is underway in the Czech city of Brno. The alleged cruelty of 31-year-old Klara Mauerova is said to be linked to a religious cult called the “Holy Grail Path”. The case came to li

The man saw seven-year-old Ondrej lying naked and tied up in a dark closet.

In the course of the investigation it appeared that Ondrej and his ten-year-old brother Jakub had regularly been subjected to physical abuse and psychological terror for almost a year. It’s said the boys were forced to stand in their own urine, spent hours in a cage and were cut and burnt by cigarettes.

The woman forbade the children from calling her ‘mother’. Mauerova would make them stand still and beat them if they made the slightest movement. To check on this, she even put flour on the floor so that any step would leave trace.

Then she installed a camera and a wireless radio device, a signal which was eventually received by a neighbour who used the same video device to look after his son.

The State Prosecutor had asked for the trial to be behind closed doors, saying that seeing the proceedings in the media would further traumatise the boys.