Exorcism Fatal to Ukrainian Boy

MOSCOW — A 12-year-old Ukrainian boy died when his mother and four other women tried to exorcise him of evil spirits at a site known as Wolves’ Mountain, the Ukrainian Communist Party newspaper reported.

Pravda Ukrainy described the mother, R. Kudryashova, as a religious fanatic. It said she became alarmed when her son, Sasha, told her someone had begun teaching him “black magic.”

With her older sister, she went to a Ukrainian monastery last month and collected three other women who took her to the foot of the nearby mountain and began dousing the boy with buckets of freezing spring water.

When the boy cried out for help, the women replied: “It’s the devil speaking from inside you,” the newspaper said.

The boy died of exposure to cold before an ambulance, summoned by a passer-by, arrived.

Pravda Ukrainy said criminal proceedings had been initiated against the five women. It carried the report in its Thursday edition, which reached Moscow on Saturday.