In the Voronezh region, first-graders beat the son of a Protestant pastor who refused to participate in an Orthodox ceremony

In the village of Gribanovsky, Voronezh Region, on September 1, the son of the pastor of the local Protestant Church "Commonwealth of Christ" - the community belongs to the direction that broke away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) - Alexei Perov, who came to the first grade, was beaten by his peers. According to the Slavic Legal Center , the reason for the beating was that the boy did not participate in the prayer service performed on the occasion of the Day of Knowledge by an Orthodox priest, whose son began to study in the same class.

“During the break, the children went to the playroom, and it was there that the children attacked the first grader and began to beat him,” the SOC reports. “They beat him after the second lesson and after the third lesson, because they found out that he was not Orthodox, which means " stranger".

Most of all, the pastor - the father of the child - was struck by the reaction of the school teacher, who showed indifference to the fate of the child and preferred the aggressive style of communication with the parents of David Perov. After the first-grader was beaten several times, he hid in the school toilet for some time, and the teacher could not even tell his parents where he was. The teacher, Elena Petrovna Sorokina, told Alexei Perov that the parents were warned at the general meeting about the arrival of an Orthodox priest and about the ceremony. In addition, the teacher said that a first-grader could not participate in the prayer service, although it is not clear how a seven-year-old child could leave the class. According to Perov, everyone in the village and at the school knows that he and his children belong to a different faith, but no one warned him about the prayer service."

As a result, the parents of the injured child transferred him to another class.

The SOC also notes that "the ground for such a monstrous incident at the school, according to the pastor, was prepared in the village a long time ago. Rumors were constantly circulating that the non-Orthodox were sectarians and traitors, who also gathered in our church. The Orthodox said Aleksey Perov pointed out to me that my children (the pastor has four of them) needed to be re-educated. The priest, who came to school, was convinced that something had to be done with my son. Orthodox culture", but this subject will be taught by secular teachers. In the event that this lesson is entrusted to a local Orthodox priest, then conflicts, according to pastor Perov, cannot be avoided.

Even now, as Aleksey Perov noted, Orthodox children are being bullied in the same way that they were bullying the children of believers in the Soviet Union. Believers of the Protestant Church do not try to conflict, but they want to raise their children according to their own rules. The Orthodox Church, according to the pastor, can also be regarded as a "totalitarian sect" because it imposes its faith and its rituals. Aleksey Perov specifically noted that the village of Gribanovsky is "not Moscow, and everything is different here, the prosecutor's office and the police do not work here, and people have become more withdrawn compared to the Yeltsin era and are afraid of everything."

September 12 Gribanovka was visited by an ORT film crew, whose journalists met with all the participants in the incident. Shortly after the reporters left, the head of the public security department of the local police department, Stanislav Pokhvaschev, and Oksana Kobzeva, an employee of the children's room, arrived at Perov's. According to the pastor, S. Pokhvashchev was "indignant" about the fact that he "reported badly on the Internet about the work of the local police" (A. Perov assures that he did not comment on the work of the police anywhere). Employees of the District Department of Internal Affairs took an explanatory note from the pastor.

At the end of September, A. Perov received a response to his appeal to the department for education, youth and sports of the administration of the Gribanovsky municipal district of the Voronezh region regarding the holding of an Orthodox prayer service at the school. The department conducted an appropriate check and announced to the principal of the school "a disciplinary sanction in the form of a reprimand" "for violating the constitutional rights of students to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion." A similar reprimand was announced to the class teacher of the pastor's son, because a prayer service was held in her class.

The response of the department of education also states that on September 1, at the parents' meeting, the rector of the Orthodox church suggested that the parents of first-graders consecrate the classroom, and this proposal was supported by all those present. "You," the letter says to A. Perov, "were not informed by the teacher about the religious rite, because for some unknown reason you were absent from the parents' meeting."

Administration officials are sure that "no violence, coercion on the part of the priest, the teacher in relation" was applied to the pastor's son - the boy voluntarily participated in the ceremony. Moreover, as follows from the response of the administration, none of the classmates knew anything about the boy's religion, and consequently, the children had no reason to "mock him." "Despite your son's claims that a classmate hit him in the face during recess, this fact has not been confirmed by either the teacher or his peers," the letter says.

A. Perov appealed to the prosecutor's office with a complaint about the actions of the principal and the teacher.

On October 2, the police began to re-check the circumstances of the beating of the schoolboy.

After a story about the incident in Gribanovsky was shown on Ren TV on November 6, the prosecutor's office of the Voronezh region issued a press release. The text of the press release reproduces the provisions of the response of the prosecutor's office of the Gribanovsky district to A. Perov.

Sources

• A first-grader, son of a Protestant pastor, was severely beaten as a "sectarian" after an Orthodox prayer service on Knowledge Day // Slavic Legal Center. 2007. 6 September.
• Police officers of the Voronezh region showed interest in the incident with the beating of the son of pastor Alexei Perov // Portal-Credo.ru. 2007. September 18.
• Voronezh Region: A teacher in whose class a priest performed a prayer service and a school director were reprimanded "for violating students' constitutional rights to freedom of conscience" // There. September 25th.
• Parents of a first-grader beaten in the Voronezh region for belonging to a Protestant church will defend their rights in court // Slavic Legal Center. 2007. September 26.
• The police are re-checking the fact that a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate held a prayer service in the premises of the Gribanovskaya school // Portal-Credo.ru. 2007. October 3rd.
• The prosecutor's office of the Voronezh region is investigating the fact of holding a prayer service in a school class // Blagovest-info. 2007. November 15.