By Sophia Kishkovsky, Ecumenical News International

MOSCOW (ENI, 10/20/09) — Patriarch Kirill I of the Russian Orthodox Church has taken personal charge of an investigation into a children's shelter at a convent after two young women fled the institution, one of whom has made allegations of abuse there.

"His Holiness the Patriarch has approved the working out of a list of recommendations regarding this shelter," Hieromonk Savva (Tutunov), an official of the Moscow Patriarchate told reporters on Oct. 14.

In an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev, and copied to Patriarch Kirill, Valentina Perova, one of the young women who fled and is now aged 17, wrote of rigid practices at the convent. These included forcing children to face down on the ground 1,000 times without a break for "giving the wrong look."

The letter was published in Ezhednevny Zhurnal, a Moscow-based Internet magazine.

"Our teacher asked the heads of the convent to give her the old rules from 1803 and forced us to live according to them," wrote Perova. "When the children's choir sang the morning service … I and another girl … sat down, and the choir director didn't like this … They decided to cut our hair off."

Sergei Rybko, a Moscow priest whose parish first took in the runaways, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency on Sept. 19 that a third girl had attempted to run away, but she was caught and taken back to the convent.

The children at the shelter at the Bogoliubovsky Convent are said to be the offspring of formerly married women or single mothers who became nuns there.

The case has highlighted the status of hundreds of such shelters and orphanages at convents and monasteries across Russia.

Valentina Perova wrote in her letter that her mother left her alcoholic husband and moved with her three children to the convent, where she worked while the children were raised in the shelter. The children were rarely allowed to see their mother, who died of cancer in 2003.

The Public Chamber, a Kremlin-affiliated civil society body, is investigating the situation at the convent in the Vladimir Oblast, a region east of Moscow.

Archimandrite Pytor (Kucher), the convent's spiritual father, is known for his protests against the issuing of personal tax numbers to Russians, saying they represent the mark of the devil. He has also been criticized for holding rites in which believers are instructed to repent for a list of centuries-old sins such as an uprising in 1825 against the tsar who ruled at the time.

Kucher has not been quoted directly about the scandal. Staff of Zavtra, a newspaper that supports him, however, wrote in September after visiting the convent at his invitation that "during a confidential conversation he gave to understand that influential circles in the highest echelons of power are ready to start an anti-church campaign". He also said that the "Bogoliubovsky Convent might in the immediate future become the target of anti-Christian forces."

Adding fuel to the scandal, Deacon Andrei Kuraev, a professor of the Moscow Theological Academy known for his mission work among youth, told Ecumenical News International in a telephone interview on Oct. 16 that discipline at the convent was excessive. Its rejection of state bureaucracy means that children do not have proper documents and access to state medical care, he noted.

But he said he fears that the cruelty portrayed by some in the media is exaggerated and could be used against shelters and orphanages throughout the Russian Orthodox Church.

"There is the sense that somebody wants to use this letter as a pretext for attacking monastery shelters in general," Kuraev said.