By John Bingham, The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2008
Published: June 21, 2008, 00:08
London: A seven-year-old boy was kept chained in a closet as relatives hacked off pieces of his flesh to eat, a court has heard.
In a case with ec**** of the Fritzl family horror in Austria, Ondrej Mauerova was partially skinned in the closet in a cellar at his home in Kurim near Brno, in the Czech Republic, according to reports.
The abuse - involving members of a religious cult - was uncovered by chance last May when a neighbour's television baby monitor picked up graphic pictures of what was happening next door.
Ondrej and his nine-year-old brother Jakub were locked and chained in the cellar for months by their mother Klara, 31 - a member of a group called the Grail Movement.
He was caged, beaten and gagged to stop him screaming, according to reports.
Mauerova had the monitor installed so that she could watch the abuse from her kitchen but the images were picked up by a neighbour who used an identical system to monitor a newborn baby. Police were called and the two boys were freed. Mauerova has admitted the abuse.
