The ACC media agency reported that on 24 June 2025 a monitoring group of the Chernivtsi Regional Military Administration visited a house where children live. C4 and the Information and Education Department of the UOC call it a children’s home at the monastery: the Bancheny Ascension Monastery in Chernivtsi region. The administration’s Children’s Service head said the group included the Ombudsman’s representatives, police and psychologists and that the visit answered media and social-media publications.
On 17 July the department, citing C4, reported that the group’s psychologists noted the children’s healthy appearance, openness to communication and absence of signs of violence or stress. It said the group found no confirmation of several media’s claims of improper upbringing of children in the care of Metropolitan Longin of Bancheny, and even of violence, and that the conclusion found no threat to their lives or health.
ACC (16 July, from the administration’s reply to its request) and C4 (17 July, cited by the department) add that, according to the group’s report, the children had been prepared for the visit, nuns came into the rooms during talks, leaving the quarters required the nuns’ permission and company, and the arrangement resembles a boarding-type institution with adult control.
Both outlets say no threat to the children’s lives or health was found (ACC: on the day of the monitoring visit; C4: at present) and the guardian was given recommendations; ACC adds that no external signs of stress, aggression, bruises or wounds were found.
The administration’s reply, as ACC relays it, says information on an analogous fact, about a social-media video on forced labour and physical violence against children who lived in the village of Molnytsia, was entered in the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations and a pre-trial investigation is under way. The protection of the children’s rights, the reply says, stays under the administration’s constant control.
Sources: ACC, 24 June 2025, and ACC, 16 July 2025; C4, 17 July 2025; Information and Education Department of the UOC, 17 July 2025.
