Russian boarding school worker who exposed alleged student abuse sentenced to four years in prison

A Russian court has sentenced Valentina Fedorova, a former boarding school employee who alerted the media to the alleged physical abuse of students at the institution in 2023, to four years in prison. State prosecutors claim Fedorova was abusing students herself, though she says she wasn’t even at the school on some of the days when the incidents are alleged to have occurred. Here’s what we know about the case against Fedorova.

A former employee of a boarding school for the deaf in Russia’s Yakutia who spoke out two years ago about abuse at the institution has been sentenced to four years in prison, according to the independent outlet 7x7.

Valentina Fedorova was found guilty of torturing minors and giving false testimony. The court also barred her from working with children for two and a half years and ordered her to pay 600,000 ($6,200) rubles in damages to the families of children she was accused of beating. Prosecutors had sought an eight-year prison term.

In the summer of 2023, Fedorova and another staff member, Maria Anisimova, publicly alleged that children at the boarding school were being beaten and humiliated. They provided media outlets with a video in which students described mistreatment by another teacher named Lyubov Prokopyeva. Anisimova linked the abuse to pressure from school administrators, claiming that teachers were pushed to show high academic performance.

Following these allegations, prosecutors launched an investigation, and the school’s director, Oksana Vinokurova — who had previously served as the head of the United Russia executive committee in Yakutia — dismissed Prokopyeva. The case was widely discussed at the time, including by regional lawmakers.

According to Fedorova, after the scandal broke, school administrators began pressuring students and their parents. In December 2023, Yakutian media received letters, purportedly from one of the students in the video, asking for all complaints to be withdrawn, calling them a “deception” and a “mistake.”

In January 2024, authorities opened a criminal case against Fedorova, and she was fired from the boarding school. The case was based on claims by students that she had physically abused them — though Fedorova stated that she had been on leave on some of the dates in question. Three months later, she won a court ruling reinstating her at work, but was suspended again pending trial. Anisimova also lost her job, but her attempt to challenge the dismissal in court was unsuccessful.

In her final statement in court, Fedorova maintained her innocence, claiming the charges were fabricated to protect the reputation of former director Oksana Vinokurova. Vinokurova was dismissed from the school shortly after the scandal, though she insisted she resigned voluntarily. According to Fedorova, Vinokurova’s removal was due to “numerous violations, including poor-quality food for the children.”