Classification: Documented

Kuřim: the children, Barbora Škrlová and the assumed identities

A baby monitor accidentally captured a scene inside a neighboring house in the Czech Republic. The ensuing investigation exposed prolonged abuse of two brothers, an adult posing as a child, and failures of protection that persisted beyond the discovery.

Kuřim, Morávia do Sul, República Tcheca · See stories from this place and nearby

A signal that reached the wrong house

On May 7, 2007, a resident of Kuřim, near Brno, set up a baby monitor. It picked up images from another house. What appeared on the screen prompted a police response and the discovery of a boy confined in a room in the home of his mother, Klára Mauerová. The accidental transmission explains how the authorities reached that house. It does not, by itself, explain what had already been happening there. The case took the town's name, but its center is two brothers who needed protection.

Czech reporters documented the discovery almost as it happened. Investigators subsequently assembled witness statements, expert assessments and recordings. This dossier does not reproduce images of the minors or graphic details of the acts. The point essential to understanding the case is that the trial established sustained abuse involving adults close to the children.

Before May 2007

According to a judicial timeline assembled by Czech Television, the abuse continued from the summer of 2006 until May 2007 and took place in Kuřim, Brno and Veverská Bítýška. The scene captured by the monitor was therefore not an isolated episode. The boys were in an environment where adults could control both what happened to them and the account presented to outsiders.

The discovery activated child protection services and investigations into the mother, her sister and others close to them. Later accounts need careful reading: the facts proved in court should be kept apart from sensational descriptions circulated online. The violence and the criminal responsibility of six adults were established. A single, certain explanation for all their motives was not.

Who was “Anička”?

Another person had been presented as a girl of about thirteen named Anna, or “Anička.” After the authorities intervened, she was taken to a child care center along with the brothers. She soon disappeared. Investigators found that “Anička” was Barbora Škrlová, born in 1974: an adult who had assumed a child's identity.

A less familiar detail is that the false identity had also passed through a guardianship proceeding. Before the discovery, a court had entrusted the supposed girl to Klára Mauerová's care. Czech Television later reported a judicial reprimand connected with the handling of that proceeding. This does not make every court employee or carer an accomplice. It does show how a persuasive story presented by adults can pass through institutions charged with checking vulnerability.

It is easy to ask, “How did nobody notice?” That question oversimplifies the sequence. Škrlová's appearance, paperwork and accounts became elements of an impersonation scrutinized in separate proceedings. Her arrival at the center came during an urgent effort to protect actual children. Understanding the timing is more useful than mocking people who acted with incomplete information.

Disappearance and the name “Adam”

After leaving the center, Škrlová surfaced in Norway, where she presented herself as a Czech boy called Adam. She was located in January 2008 and returned to the Czech Republic. Both assumed identities are documented in the case timeline. They do not, by themselves, justify conclusions about gender identity, a particular psychiatric condition or a complete explanation of her actions.

The discovery in Norway gave an already complicated investigation an international dimension. It also shifted public attention toward the case's most unusual figure. That shift can obscure the central point: the impersonation mattered because it affected the investigation and protective response, while the two brothers were the victims of the crime being tried.

What the investigation established

Klára Mauerová, her sister Kateřina Mauerová, Barbora Škrlová and three other adults were tried. Klára admitted abuse but said she had been manipulated. Accounts of instructions from a supposed “doctor,” together with expert interpretations of a religious group's influence, were examined in the proceedings. An expert hypothesis concerning religious motives is not the same as a final judicial finding that a sect directed everyone involved.

The line between testimony, expert interpretation and a court decision matters greatly here. Škrlová's defense portrayed her as a victim, but the courts concluded that she participated in the abuse. Other claims that became popular, including cannibalism narratives, are not established by the rulings and verified reports used for this dossier. The proven case is grave enough without additions.

A trial with limits on public access

The trial began in Brno in June 2008. In one session the court excluded the public while examining recordings involving the minors. The measure, reported by public radio iROZHLAS, illustrates a tension running through the case: courts need to evaluate evidence and work openly, yet they must avoid exposing children further.

In October 2008 six adults were convicted. The mother received a nine-year prison term, the aunt ten years, and Barbora Škrlová five years; the other three defendants also received prison sentences. An appeals court upheld Škrlová's conviction in April 2009. Czech Television's timeline records the rejection of the final appeals by the Supreme Court in December of that year. These sentences do not answer every question about power or motive, but they establish concrete criminal responsibility.

The acquittal often confused with the conviction

A legal distinction changes many short versions of this story. In May 2008, Škrlová and Mauerová were acquitted in a separate case concerning alleged harm to others from presenting the adult as a child at the care center. That result concerned a specific charge. It did not overturn, anticipate or contradict the later conviction for abusing the brothers.

When one article says Barbora “was acquitted” and another says she “was convicted,” each may be referring to a real ruling in a different proceeding. Erasing the distinction creates the false impression that the court never settled whether she took part in the violence. Her conviction for that participation was upheld on appeal.

What followed and what remains uncertain

Later coverage recorded Škrlová's conditional release in 2012 and Klára Mauerová's in 2013. Those events concern the serving of sentences, not a reversal of guilt. The brothers grew up under protection, and later reporting recognized their privacy more rigorously. There is no public-interest reason to track their current lives or publish information that could identify them again.

It remains difficult to reconstruct definitively why each adult acted as they did, or the real weight of beliefs, manipulation and individual decisions. What is not uncertain is that the children's suffering belongs at the center of the story. Kuřim's enduring question is not merely how an adult passed as a child, but how a family and institutional network left two boys vulnerable for so long.

Reading the evidence carefully

The core facts are supported by the judicial timeline and contemporary reporting from Czech Television and iROZHLAS: discovery in 2007, assumed identities, trial, convictions and appeals. Claims of a sect as an all-purpose explanation, informal psychological diagnoses and lurid details repeated without documentation are treated here as unproven. The exploration links allow readers to distinguish the legal proceedings and return to the sources without viewing footage of the victims.

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