Conviction New religious movements Messianic / communal movement Novosibirsk, Russia · 2025

Vissarion community leaders: convictions for psychological violence and serious harm

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Disposition and response

Material that narrows or disputes the record

Appellate history

2025-12-01

Novosibirsk Regional Court upheld the verdict.
2026-05-18

Cassation filed; pending — conviction not yet final.

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

founder and self-proclaimed spiritual teacher, religious-community leaders

Organization

Church of the Last Testament, Vissarion Community

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The cited record identifies psychological violence, hierarchical religious authority, economic dependency, and isolation and deprivation as the material spiritual doctrine, practice, authority, or pretext connected to the documented harm. The relevant authority role is founder and self-proclaimed spiritual teacher and religious-community leaders.

Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2025-06-30 · criminal judgment and sentence

Railway District Court of Novosibirsk, Russia. Sergei Torop and Vladimir Vedernikov received twelve years in a strict-regime colony; Vadim Redkin received eleven years. The court also granted civil claims.
2025-12-23 · criminal appeal

Novosibirsk Regional Court, Russia. The appellate court left the factual findings and prison terms unchanged while modifying the structure of compensation for moral harm; the judgment entered legal force.

Documented coercion mechanisms

psychological violence
hierarchical religious authority
economic dependency
isolation and deprivation

Cited record

Sources

official newspaper court reporting judgment report Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 'Sud v Novosibirske vynes prigovor osnovateliam Obshchiny Vissariona' (June 30, 2025).: Contemporaneous judgment reporting based on the regional prosecutor's account records the three sentences, sixteen victims, serious and moderate health harm, psychological violence and civil awards.
prosecuting authority appellate disposition Prosecutor's Office of Novosibirsk Region, appellate disposition in the Vissarion community case (Dec. 23, 2025).: The official prosecutor release records that the regional court left the factual findings and sentences unchanged, modified only the compensation arrangement and made the judgment final.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://rg.ru/2025/06/30/reg-sibfo/sud-v-novosibirske-vynes-prigovor-osnovateliam-obshchiny-vissariona.html Corpus classification: official-newspaper-court-reporting; evidentiary role: judgment-report. SHA-256 23780031e9d18d6345aa77452db471412ae2149dea1b22c2cb365bdcd439f0f4
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://epp.genproc.gov.ru/ru/proc_54/mass-media/news/regional/e8330499/ Corpus classification: prosecuting-authority; evidentiary role: appellate-disposition. SHA-256 fb095badc9739091c996948cf6b84212e59f998bbd8d6ab2093152246e1fbdc3
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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