Pictures have revealed how children in a Russian care home were spreadeagled on metal beds with their arms and legs tied to the frames.
The disturbing pictures, which the Mirror has chosen not to show, were released to the media amid suspicions officials are seeking to cover up grave child abuse on a widespread scale.
The images purportedly show children, some with mental disabilities, tied or tethered to beds and benches at a care home in the Voronezh region.
A criminal case has been opened after an initial conclusion that no “objective evidence” of “unlawful actions taken against the foster children” - some of whom appeared emaciated - has been derided by experts.
Russia ’s top detective, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee and a former classmate of Vladimir Putin has taken “personal control” of the case.
Senior staff have sought to blame a disgruntled former employee for staging the pictures.
Care home director Nikolay Skolznev called on law enforcement to “find the person who took the photos" and that justice should be served.
Experts have come forward to highlight the widespread use of such tactics against children and adults by Russian social services in home and state boarding schools.
Clinical psychologist Maria Ostrovskaya said: “Both children and adults are often tied up, in the most varied ways. They tie a wheelchair to a radiator so that a person cannot move, or they tie it to a bed."
They use nappies or “soft materials” to avoid “bondage” injuries, she said.
Prominent Russian humanitarian expert Anna ‘Nyuta’ Federmesser revealed: “In recent years, I have visited dozens of Russian care homes and I have not come across boarding schools where physical restraints are not used.
“It's scary to realise that these photographs no longer shock me. It's really scary…but it happens and exists next to us for our taxes, in every city, in every region where there is a care home.”
A criminal case is continuing in the Voronezh region case.
