Boy, 8, has surgery to remove grains from knees after 'stepfather punished him'
A young boy had to have skin from his knees surgically removed after being forced to kneel on grains as a punishment.
Monday 16 December 2019 17:40, UK
An eight-year-old boy was made to kneel on buckwheat grains until the seeds rooted inside his knees and had to be surgically removed, according to Russian media.
Sergey Kazakov, 35, a computer programmer, is accused of torturing his stepson by forcing the child to kneel for up to nine-hours at a time and through the night on buckwheat grains.
In a case that has shocked Russia, he apparently filmed the abuse, which included footage of him kicking and pulling the boy's hair. Kazakov said he did it to try "to raise a real man", according to the European News Exchange.
Speaking on the first day of the trial that opened on Monday in the Siberian city of Omsk, Russian news publication Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that Lyudmila Sharapova, a nurse at the Omsk Clinical Child Hospital, said: "We were absolutely shocked when we saw [his injuries].
"I have worked [as a nurse] for 43 years and I have never seen anything like it, anyone treated like that. The wounds were terrible.
"I remember standing close to him [during the procedure], and he asked me: 'Nanny, will I get to go to a good family?'"
The young boy recently underwent surgery to remove areas of skin on his knees in order to remove the grains.
The publication reports Kazakov and the boy's mother, Alina Yumasheva, are accused of torturing, for causing harm to the health of a minor and failure to fulfil parental obligations.
The stepfather was described by the paper as a "tyrant" and reported that the mother was "very afraid" of him.
Larisa Boldinova, a spokesperson for the Omsk region's investigative committee, said: "The accused intentionally filmed everything to make sure that the eight-year-old boy did not try to get up and stayed on his knees for the entirety of the punishment.
"The investigators have confirmed cases, when the boy was forced to stay on his knees for the entire night."
The spokesperson added: "The parents were sound asleep in an adjacent room during the entire process."
Komsomolskaya Pravda also reported the child endured days without food and was treated for exhaustion.