Prague - A Czech court Friday sentenced six people to prison for torturing two boys whose ordeal came to light when a neighbour accidentally tuned in to a camera trained on a naked, tied-up child. Klara Mauerova, 31, was sentenced to nine years for the abuse of her two sons. Her sister, accused of inciting the torture, drew 10 years and four others were sentenced to up to seven years' prison.
The case came to light in the southeastern town of Kurim in May 2007, shocking Czechs much as incest father Josef Fritzl upset Austrians this spring.
The tormentors, four of whom had worked with children, beat the brothers, locked them up in cages, cut them and burned them with cigarettes.
In its ruling, the county court in the city of Brno likened the torture to "eradication of child soul."
The abuse was exposed by chance when a new father in Kurim, 200 kilometres south-east of Prague, was tuning the signal on his baby video monitor.
On the screen, he saw the neighbour's son, Ondrej, lying naked and tied up in a dark closet in the house next door.
Police arrested Mauerova - Ondrej's mother - and placed his older brother Jakub and stepsister Anicka in a children's home.
Anicka, supposedly 13 years old at the time, fled the children's home. Mauerova family acquaintances soon acknowledged she was actually a 34-year-old woman, a music composer named Barbora Skrlova.
She emerged eight months later in Norway, where she had posed as a 13-year-old boy. In the end, she was convicted as an accessory in the abuse.
Skrlova was among the six defendants sentenced Friday. She drew a five-year prison term.
Media reports have linked the defendants to a children's hiking club lead by Skrlova's father. The reports said the club has evolved into a religious sect.
The court shed no light on the existence of any sect, but called the tightly-knit group's behaviour peculiar.
"They selflessly provide their time, money, cars, buildings. That is not normal," the Czech news agency CTK cited judge Pavel Goth as saying.
Klara Mauerova claimed she was brainwashed into torturing her sons by her sister Katerina, 35.
The mother testified she received instructions to discipline the boys from an alleged doctor via cell phone text messages. The police later found that the phone number belonged to Katerina, who had been Skrlova's roommate.
Klara also claimed that she had been duped into believing that Skrlova was an abused orphan from Norway. She ended up caring for and adopting the bogus girl.
Skrlova has claimed innocence and said that she had been also tortured by the Mauerova sisters. But the court did not believe her.
The six convicts can appeal the verdict.
