The St Petersburg Prosecutor's Office has filed criminal charges against a controversial "foreign" church, accusing it of running an educational program that violates human rights.
"A long-time investigation by the police has convinced us of criminal activities within the Collegiate Association for Research of the Principle (CARP)," said Tatyana Vasilyeva, senior assistant to the prosecutor's office press center.
The criminal charges have come on top of a civil rights violation suit filed eight months ago concerning allegations of "brainwashing."
Officials from the Unification Church -- which runs CARP -- said they had not been officially informed about the criminal charges. Neither had they received any official summons to a court, they said.
Tomy Alihaampera, a Unification Church missionary, said he hoped that the church would eventually win the case.
But Irina Mikhailova, president of the Association of Parents for Freedom of Conscience (PFC), an organization supporting the church, said, "The court is doing everything to make sure that the CARP will lose."
Eight months ago, the Inter-regional Committee for the Protection of Individuals from Totalitarian Sects (ICPITS), filed a civil suit against CARP.
The committee accused CARP of a series of individual rights violations, including "brainwashing of its members and the church's systematic program to cause splits within family units."
ICPITS demanded CARP's activities be stopped immediately and that the organization pay a considerable fine for moral damages to those who allegedly suffered from the program's activities.
Pending the Dzherzinsky district court's decision regarding the civil case, the justice department in the city had denied CARP official registration.
In a petition letter to the court, the ICPITS's president, Ninel Russkikh, said her daughter, Yevgenia, 19, and two other church members have radically changed their family outlook due to the psychological effect inflicted by the church since they joined CARP.
But in an open letter to St Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, the PFC said the trio had the right to decide their own lives' course as long they are grown up.
April 29 has been scheduled for the next hearing in the case against CARP.