Warning: Graphic Content
East2West NewsA ‘sadistic’ stepfather and mother are being investigated for torture after their eight-year-old boy had to have a crop of buckwheat surgically removed from his knees.
Computer programming entrepreneur Sergey Kazakov, 35, forced the boy to kneel on the buckwheat for up to nine hours at a time, a court has been told.
The unnamed child’s mother Alina Yumasheva, 27, claimed she and Kazakov found the form of punishment on the internet and inflicted it on the child after he was late home from school and playing outside.
East2West NewsAfter the horrific form of punishment was approved by the mum, grain seeds began taking root in the boy’s bloody knees. Eventually, the crop growing on him had to be surgically removed under general anaesthetic in an Omsk hospital.
The feeling was reportedly akin to kneeling on rough sandpaper, with reports of the boys crying: ‘It hurts’ as his stepdad kicked him.
You can see the picture of the boy’s knees below (warning: graphic content):
East2West NewsClaiming to not see any harm in the punishment at first, the mother told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper:
I checked on it myself and set up an experiment. I knelt on it. It didn’t hurt me. So [Kazakov] was allowed to apply this punishment.
Despite Kazakov telling police he had only inflicted the punishment once, investigators report that a further half dozen deleted videos were traced on his phone. The young boy was also starved for up to four days at a time.
The eight-year-old’s nightmarish ordeal only emerged after fleeing the family home and begging their female neighbour to help. After noticing his bloodied buckwheat wounds, she phoned the doctors.
East2West NewsKazakov – who logged his ‘torture’ in a diary – and Yumasheva are facing an ongoing trial in Omsk, under investigation for causing damage to the child’s health and failing to sufficiently educate him.
The young boy was ‘severely exhausted’ and ‘psychologically depressed’ after running away. His class teacher Olga Pidzhakova noted that he was academically bright but believed he had been too scared to complain.
She explained:
He is a good, positive child. His mother constantly attends parental meetings, comes if I call. He is always clean, and neatly dressed.
Neither I, nor other teachers or children were even aware that he was being bullied at home. It is only now that I find out he was simply afraid to complain to us.
Despite the pain they inflicted on the child, he was returned to his mother’s care after just a month in hospital, according to Russian reports – regardless of the boy’s pleas to the nurse: ‘Will you send me to live in a good family now?’
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues, and want to speak to someone in confidence regarding the welfare of a child contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000. If you are a child seeking advice and support call Childline for free on 0800 1111.
After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.